Season5, Episode 15: A Hole in the World. Original Air Date: 25 February 2004. When an ancient sarcophagus arrives in the laboratory at Wolfram & Hart, Fred opens a small compartment and is infected by an ancient disease that slowly begins to kill her. As Angel and Spike travel across the world in order to help her, Wesley slowly begins to realize that there may be no stopping the disease.

I wanted to make this scene where Fred falls back into Lorne's arms after spitting blood on Wesley because this was such a huge twist to the show.

I knew this was going to be a challenge since I had to recreate the Wolfram & Hart staircase. I had steps that I wanted to use, but they were not for a 6 inch scale. Also, dollhouse staircases were not possible. My staircase is probably not entirely proportional to the 6 inch figures but it looks pretty good.

I had mapped out the stair case with cardboard pieces and constructed it to see how it looked. The hardest part was to make the stringer (the part where the steps sit on). I was never any good in geometry and the rise over run confuses me. It wasn't too difficult to figure out once I had the idea how it needed to look. Here are some pictures of the staircase. I was going to use balsa wood to make the steps but the weather didn't permit me to get to the craft store. Wal*mart had this foam board (it's a foam pad sandwiched between two thick sheets of cardboard). It cuts well and it worked great! I was happy about this.

Here are the parts I used to make the three characters in this scene.

Fred: (Illyria head and chest, Kennedy extra arms, and Charmed warrior legs).

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Lorne:

Wesley ("Bad Girls"):

Here are the sculpted pieces:

Fred:

For Fred I sculpted her curly hair, the sleeves on the shirt and I gave her a larger chest. The original figure was quite flat. Kennedy's arms are glued in and the joints are sculpted over. This was hard to do since the arms are so delicate and small, plus the sculpy didn't want to stick! I also sculpted the dress and around the boots (since I cut some of the boot away to make them shorter) and I filled in the leg joints.

Lorne:

For Lorne I had an equally tricky time sculpting the big shirt. It had to go over his jacket and it had a big collar. He also had this scarf thing around his neck. I also cut away the breast pocket one the jacket and sculpted over that.

Wesley:

Wesley was the easiest of the three. I just had to sculpt the turtle neck sweater. I cut off the jacket on the original figure, and cut back the cuffs on the sleeves. I wanted a tighter, smaller fit for the sweater. I also used a wash cloth to press over the shirt to give it a bumpy look. I only sculpted over the arm joints since Wesley's shoulders were looking out of proportion.

Here are the finished pieces: Though you can't see it, Fred has streaks in her hair which turned out nice. Her dress was very difficult to paint since there was not any real good shot of her dress. I must have redone this 3 times before settling on what you see.

Lorne's shirt was a challenge to color. I don't like doing tiny details on clothes especially when I'm doing this all with a paint brush. My hands are too shaky to make it look like the real piece. What I have isn't so bad, thought. The other thing I saw when I was finished painting, was his collar looks huge. I decided to let it go and leave it alone.

Wesley was easy to paint. I tried to make his flesh tone a bit darker. It was hard going around his eyes. I'm not good with painting eyes so I wanted to leave his alone. His cheeks do look a bit too blushy but I decided to leave it.

For the steps: I loved painting this. I mean, it was very hard and time consuming to get all the details and painting that poster board is hard to do (on the foam siding, that is). For the steps, I used brown, and put in details to make it look like wood with a lighter brown and black). The side wires are string, spray painted. I had to thread this through the side pieces. This was not easy--and there was 8 of them! Finally the marble top. I'm sure Wolfram & Hart don't have marble floors, but I thought it went well with the nice staircase. For this, I first painted the floor black. Then I had three shades of green on a piece of paper. I used a sea sponge to dab into the 3 paints (blotting it one the paper first until it made light marks), then went around the base. I got carried away blotting on the paint so I rinsed the sponge and went back in some spots to blot away the paint making the black peek through. The finally step (after a few trials and errors) I discovered that if I painted a trail of water first, then take a little white paint on the water path, and smear it with my finger or brush, it would give it that veiny look. I love how this turned out. It looks so real! To make the surface shine (and the wood steps) I tried glue which didn't work. I had some scenic water and I knew it had a shine to it when it dried. I put that on with a brush and it worked great. My only complaint is I should have not put this on with a brush for the marble--I should have used my finger, which is what I thought of doing. It has a streaky look to it and marble floors are not streaky. The streaks look great on the steps and it is fitting.

Here is the entire, completed set.