Thursday, January 26, 2017

The Dam Project


This was the first project we worked on in 2017. It was an interesting one. Full of several firsts at Falana Films.

ATREE is a non-profit organization working to conserve India's biodiversity. They were celebrating their 20th anniversary with a conference in Bangalore City. The conference would feature several stalls by various departments of the organisation. We were commissioned to build a functional diorama of a dam on a river.

We started with this simple sketch..
..which was further refined, till we had the right kind of river and terrain planned out.
the next step was to mock it up in 3d and share it with the client..
We decided to use Sketchfab for this as it requires no plugins or apps to be downloaded and just works in the browser. 
The first model was a rough mockup of 
- The table (height and proportions)
- The proportion of the dam to the river
- The path of the river
- Basic outline of the plumbing system that would allow water to flow through the model.


    on Sketchfab

A subsequent model was shared to discuss the mechanics behind the dam itself, which would be 3d printed.

    on Sketchfab

Once these plans were approved it was time to get building.
The dam was printed in-house on a Makerbot running for almost 24hrs straight. It was printed with channels/holes that we could pump water through. 

The table was constructed using metal square tubes for the legs and Plywood for the top.

On top of which we build a tray that was water proofed and carnished. After that we started sculpting the terrain with styrofoam + plaster of paris + automotive clay 


Started painting it right away to make sure we had the right look..


The dam was sealed into place with epoxy compound and then the painting continued..
A video posted by chaitanya krishnan (@c2ktheotherartist) on
As per agreement, our team would paint the riverbed and river banks, since we had to waterproof it asap. The Atree team painted the rest of the model.



The Atree team added everything from endangered species that have been saved thanks to their NGO's intervention as well as .. certain ground realities of the regions they work in

The skimmer(Rynchopidae) starts nesting in the area again .

The gharial (Gavialis gangeticus)making a comeback

Dacoits(bandits) in the region!


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