///Initial Sketches & First tank shoot.

These are some initial sketches I did for the tank. These mainly involve drawing alien plants that I can then make into plasticine models. The sketches were very helpful for reference when I mas modelling later, even if they weren't always stuck too. But these sketches were never supposed to dictate exactly what they would look like just give an idea which i can work with instead of modelling with no reference at all.

A dragon egg with spaghetti 

A lampost and its eggs

The rearview tree

The models aren't very complicated but they're only supposed to give the illusion that this is the surface of an alien world, and as such the details on the plants started to become less and less significant. What was significant was the shapes of the bows and arms of the 'trees' and thus I decided to focus on this. A

I also realised that I needed a background. So I asked one of my friends who is on fine art to create me a background for the tank. She used marbling ink to create a really unique and trippy effect onto a piece of white paper.

Now after all the preparation it was time to start filling up the tank. The cloud tank process is very simple if somewhat time consuming, however the results are pretty incredible so in my opinion its well worth the wait.

MAKING A CLOUD TANK

you will need. 

1x rectangular fish tank.

LOTS of rock salt/dishwasher salt works fine.

Water (obviously)

A sauce pan

Things to squirt things (pipets, anything with a spray nozzle) 

Food colouring, paint, anything colourful which you can shoot into the tank

1..First, you need to put your salt into a pan, fill and spread out till bottom is no longer visible. Then fill with water, and boil for 20 minutes. 

2..When all you can see is clear (salt) water, with no excess salt, let it cool down, because it could melt the polyfiller used in fish tanks to keep them water tight. If you can still see salt, top it up with fresh water and stir until gone. Repeat this step till desired concentration is reached. If making the salt water is taking a long time to cool/make add some fresh cold water to the salt mixture to speed the process along. This doesn't affect results in my experience as well. 

3..Once added to the tank leave the salt water to settle for 4-5 hours. The longer left the more chance you have of getting a very defined salt and fresh layer.

4..Now this is the tricky part (or at least the trickiest). You now need to go find yourself a bin bag and put it into the tank over the salt water. Push the bag down into the water so it pushes evenly against all four sides. This isnt vital but it helps. 

You then need to slowly fill the bag in the salt water, with fresh water. So essentially you have a bag of fresh water in a tank of saltwater. After you are happy with your water levels you need carefully remove the bag from the tank. Pick a side and start to pull the bag from oneside so the otherwside is eventually submerged.

5.. hey presto. You can see very clearly here the difference in the transparency between the two layers. What you do next is entirely up to you but I would start by squirting various different colour liquids into the tank. REMEMBER, that stuff that sinks in fresh water may not in salt water which can provide some very interesting results.

A previous video of mine showing results of this technique. filmed and edited by myself.

After completing this process you can do whatever you want in the tank. These are my results in picture form from the first tank shoot. 

 I think the first tank shoot went really well and some of the footage I got was great. Using the light behind the background really made the models pop and using them as silhouettes was a much better idea than using their full colour forms.

I love how the light encapsulates the models, colours and background.

Because the colours were made with fresh water they reacted well with the saltwater when introduced

The initial plan for this project was too create some sort of apocalypse with black ink, to signify an infection or disease. Along the way I started to realised that this was not going to work. To create an actual story with the cloud tank was going to be very difficult due to the random nature of the liquids once in the tank. It would also be a lot more time consuming and as this project isnt very long I decided to focus on getting the shots I wanted. At this point the nature of the project had changed but not massively. I realised by cutting out the 'apocalypse' scene I had more freedom in the shots I could use. 

      Also by using the black ink would just flood the macro lens and it wouldn't be able to focus on anything resulting in a blurry shot.