Plants and trees of Mars! Part 1

I now had to tackle making the vegetation of Mars, I wanted to tackle the trees first as they would the most important things to see on screen before the details of the wooded area becomes clear to the viewers.

Unlike my 2004 version of a prehistoric Mars, I wanted to have consistency with my trees, where as before I used found dried sticks on the floor, this time I would use one straight branch and cast it to make resin copies. This was a lot harder than I had envisioned.

For starters I did not have access to the right materials for making the mold walls, so I had to make do with a plastic board (which I would later regret using), once the mold walls where sealed with hot glue and the mold floor was fixed in place I mixed up the silicone; I could only do so much at a time in quantity as the mixing pot was not big enough. Literally half way through the third silicone pour the sides of the plastic board split the hot glue and silicone poured out onto the floor, I'm still unsure if this was due to the failure of the hot glue, the film of the plastic board or both? I know I've used both before (be it on a wider mold and half the height) during my time on Project 390 in Ireland, but still, I knew from the start this should have been a double foam core wall. A few day later of stopping and starting silicone pours, repairing mold walls and hours upon hours of scooping up silicone and putting it back into the mold as it cured, I finally made the mold!

Demolding it was easy, I made sure to cut a zigzag along one side and then it would always lock into place. 

Now came the resin pour. One thing I wanted to do was use a wooden dowel down the center so that it would make the cast tree lighter and save resin material for other students to use, but it would also act as a drill point for the screw to be inserted, add strength to the resin when being demolded and if it was dropped less likely to shatter into pieces (but it would still chip) so measuring the length of each dowel, I tipped it off with a kebab stick to keep the dowel central in the mold. When pouring the resign the dowel would float upwards, so required been held down in place with tape. Elastic bands also helped keep the mold together. It takes a little over 1 hour for each casting to be cured before the next could be made, and I had 14 trees to make to give the illusion of a forest.

Once all the trees where cast, I took them into the workshop to flatten the ends via the band saw. I could now attach them to their stands and begin painting them, luckily I had my friend Amy Callaghan coming over to help with the plants so I also enlisted her to paint a few trees.

For the trees canopy I wanted to use something that wasn't normal but could be seen on earth. I came up with an inspiring idea to use an old Christmas reef that I had stashed away, the twigs had been covered in white polystyrene balls of all shapes and sizes, and they could easily be turned into alien plants. Once they where painted green, they kind of looked convincing, sadly their wasn't enough to make a thick canopy so I'll have to make the remaining density using boards with holes cut into them.

Once everything was prepared for the finished paint jobs all I needed to do was dress them with lichen, seeds and potpourri, these acted as the many forms of plant life we get in our own trees, fungus's, other plant life, methods of plant reproduction etc.

Over all I would say I was "happy" with the end result, I mean it isn't exactly the deep woodland I wanted but with such a tight reign on budget and space, it is what it is.