crazysteve's scratchbuilt ARK
Back in early 2000 I was on this really intense stop motion animation kick. I was filming everything from music videos to old toy commercials to cartoon episodes all in stop motion. It was grueling work, but I loved it. I made lots of elaborate backgrounds and sets for my stop motion movies. The most ambitious project I undertook was a stop motion version of the Transformer cartoon "Transport to Oblivion". The very first scene is an outside shot in front of the Ark. Since no Ark playset was ever made, I realized if I wanted to make the film I'd have to build a full scale Ark. I had a lot of fun with this once I built it, and I even entered it in the diorama category at Botcon 2002.
The very first version I made I left unfinished-that is I didn't paint it or add any details. The picture to the left was taken soon after completion. I would set up little scenes with my Autobots in front of it because it just looked so cool. You can probably tell it was made up of nothing more than corrugated cardboard, brown paper grocery bags, toilet paper rolls, and lots of tape, glue, and staples. The simulated boulders that flank it were crumpled up grocery bags. Although it was physically huge, the cost of materials was in the $5 range, and that's just because I had to buy a two bottles of glue and all those staples. The picture at the top of this page was taken after I decided to draw in lots of detail with a black sharpie marker. I don't know which I liked more-the "clean" version or the sharpie marker version.
Here's a shot of the rear that reveals the craptastic engineering that went into this. The whole structure was extremely unstable and prone to collapsing forward because all the weight was concentrated towards the front. I didn't care about that because all I ever intended to do with it was prop it up in my living room so I could use it as a background. When I decided to take it to Botcon '02, I reinforced the trapezoid-shaped base with some wood 2x4s so that it wouldn't collapse. I was still kinda worried about it, though. Even with reinforcement it wasn't the sturdiest of backgrounds. I guess worst case scenario would have been if it fell on a little kid at Botcon and knocked him out. But that never happened so it's all good.
The sheer size and detail of this piece was always so impressive to me. When I decided to take it to Botcon, I had to disassemble it and pack it in a suitcase. That wasn't easy to do as I never built it with the intention of taking it apart. But it did break down rather easily and when I arrived in FOrt Wayne I spent that Friday night assembling my Ark. I forgot to take grocery bags with me to simulate mountains, but luckily my hotel was next to a McDonalds and I took lots of paper bags from their dumpster. At first I was worried that it may have been too big to fit in the art room, so I emailed 3H before Botcon and Jon got back to me. He too was concerned about the size, but he told me to just take it anyway and see iwhat happens. At over four feet long and two feet high, it was the biggest diorama that year!
I never took any pics of the final version, when I painted orange just before I took it to Botcon. Sadly these pictures are all I have left of the Ark. After I brought it home from Botcon '02 I never reassembled it because it was too big and I no longer needed it for stop motion filming. The worst part is that during the last move we made in 2003 the box containing all the pieces to the Ark got thrown away. So even if I wanted to reassemble it I couldn't. But pictures of it are out there online. You see, I wasn't the only person at Botcon '02, and thankfully lots of those other guys had digital cameras. You can find pictures of my Ark diorama online at various other Transformer sites' Botcon '02 coverage, and a small picture of my Ark diorama even made it into the Botcon article in Lee's Action Figure News October '02 issue!
