WOW, where's the time go?

OK, I'm back and alive.

I've been back for over a month, probably closer to two. I'm still a little hazy on just what I can say.

I was down at Precinct 13, Robert Kurtzman's shop in Ohio working on a movie filming overseas. I did some mold making and some mechanics work. Met some great people from LA, KNB folks to be a bit more accurate. Learned a lot, had an absolute blast, miss it.

Besides that, work on Jean Claude continues.,,I've moved on to CGI stuff now on that. We'll probably have one more day or shooting pickup stuff that will need a little makeup.

So, is there anything new? Oh yes! The big job since I've been back has been The Attic. I've been working on a few the characters. An ogre named Cyril, wounds for Dagger, and the (or should that be a) soul cribber. Since I like to spread out the exclusives a bit, and myspace has some in progress shots already, anyone reading this gets to see Cyril's foam appliances. These are so-so runs of the face and ears resting on a copy of Frank's lifecast. I plan on gluing one of the "bad" sets to this head, paint it all up and use it as reference. Did I forget to mention that The Attic is a series? Oops, well it is. It'll also serve as a cool display head to show off.


If you look closely to the left you can see something else...I wonder what those might be? Stay tuned and maybe you'll get to see more of those.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that Cyril also has an eye patch over the eye with the giant scar running through it.

I know you're thinking to yourself "WTF?" and all I can say is see the website and stay tuned. Makeup tests for one of the characters are coming up soon, so Cyril will be fleshed out a little more.

Also helping out on a student film, doing some weapons wrangling and CGI for it.

Beyond all that fun stuff I've trying to wrap up a few personal projects that sat untouched all summer, so things are busy. I'll try to post more regularly in the near future.

MIA

I'll be MIA for a few months (I hope, or at least if all goes well)

Just work stuff, nothing to worry about.

I'll continue to post stuff when I can, but it'll likely be sporadic.

Consider yourselves warned! Bwahahahahahaha!

Overly dramatic, check. Vague, check.

That is all.

He will be missed

Stan Winston has passed away at the age of 62.

A sad day for the FX and entertainment industry as one of the greats has been lost.

My condolences to family and friends.

another day, another shoot

Today we shot some footage of the narrator, and his encounter with Jean Claude.

Well, I was snapping BTS pics when I could, and wound up with this one.




Now, being that I was just snapping and quickly glancing at the shots on the small LCD monitor I didn't actually catch this at the time. Since I'm a geeky fanboy sometimes as soon as I saw this after downloading the pics I just KNEW what it was going to become when I was done.






So, without further ado, I present...










The tribute poster made from the above. This was not condoned by the production, it's just a goof based on the shot I took. Kyle had his head just barely out of whack for it to be a perfect match, had he turned about an inch to his right the images would be "dead" on.


Anyway, besides that the shoot was OK. We had some storms roll through and a water issue that delayed the start a little bit. I'm uploading the shots to my site right now. Just head here and click on Jean Claude to see some more BTS stuff.

Jean Claude The Gumming Zombie

I haven't updated much here, but over on my site I added a whole bunch of behind the scenes shots.

Where's the time go?

Well, things keep on moving along.

As promised on myspace... some test footage of an arm gag for Jean Claude.




This past weekend was a big shoot with all kinds of zombies and a few gags, including the above if I could have got it working right again. The thing worked, but I had to change a couple things to make it work for the shot, at which point it ceased working correctly. It's OK, the way we did it looks just fine and actually worked out better anyway, so I'm not too disappointed by it.

Another one of the gags involved a woman being drug off and her fingers bleeding as she scratches at the pavement. Here's the rig I whipped up for that from things on hand.



The thin, 1/16" ID, tubes run down the bottom of the fingers. An air can filled with blood was pressurized and hitting the gray button while holding it upside down would send blood shooting out onto the pavement. There was also chalk glued to the actresses' fingertips under fake nails that was supposed to look like her nails grinding away, when it ran out the blood was to flow. Well, priming the tubes blood got on the chalk and ruined that effect. Oh well, at least the blood worked.

Besides that there were bloody bod parts and lizards and zombies running all over the place. Beautiful day with sun and no rain, unlike the day I shot the arm tests where it was in the mid low high 40s. Got a few great shots, and I'm happy if the director and the rest of the crew is happy.


In other news, working on a bunch of self adhesive wounds and may have a lifecasting marathon this weekend for another project. I'll sneak a shot or two of the wound test applications for ya.

More on the teleprompters.

Since I'm getting quite a few hits to the teleprompter post, here's a few more pics. It was made from things I had on hand mostly. The exception being the 1/16" aluminum angle for the monitor frame.



Showing the mounting system for the shoulder rig. Carriage bolts, washers, and wing nuts. Nothing fancy or expensive.


The mount is 3" wide, 1" leg AL channel. A slot was milled into that to mount to the shoulder rig. The monitor and glass framework is all 1/16" thick 1" AL angle. It simply bolts together. The cutouts for monitor cables and controls were milled.




The bottom showing the way in mounts as well as the hole to secure the monitor via a 1/4-20 thumbscrew.


Front view

Adhesive backed Velcro was used to hold the sides in place as well as the "glass" that was some Lexan sheet I got for $1/ pound as scrap. I never measured it, but I think it's in the 1/8" ballpark.


In terms of construction it was straightforward. Measure monitor, determine cutouts for cables and controls as well as mounting position, cut and mill to size/shape. Drill holes and bolt everything together. Adjust position of glass and make the brackets. Maybe a day or two of fussing with it. I would have liked to bead blast and anodize it black personally.



The "presidential" style prompter was even easier. It involved adapting a microphone holder and was all scrap AL angle, 1/8" thick and bolts.

Torture props

I get all kinds of weird requests. This is a torture device for an independent film from 4th Floor Pictures. Another quick job. The shaft is a dowel rod. Apoxie sculpt was used for the handle, which on further review I should have painted to look like ivory or bone as I could have done some great blood stain paint job on it. The head is a piece of cast resin I turned on the lathe and milled slots for the bass wood fins which were finished with a diamond wheel in the drill press to accept the real (ground flat) razor blades. A wooden honey thingy, a cast resin copy of an air freshener cap, and a piece of leather cord complete this brutal piece.

Just add blood and screams.

Monitors and rigs and teleprompters OH MY

ZOMG!

Teleprompters? Yep, those nifty little devices for feeding the talent their lines. I just built two of them. One that uses a small 7" DVD player/monitor that mounts to a shoulder rig. A couple pics of it below as it sat on my very cluttered workbench. The heaviest part is the monitor. I would have liked to make this one a bit more adjustable, but it works so why worry too much. The first pic is essentially done, but lacking the fabric covering and sides to seal light out (and make it easier to read.) The second pic is it mounted on the shoulder rig with the sides (black foam core) in place. Fabric was added once the camera was on it.




The other is a "presidential" type that will sit on a microphone stand with a monitor on the ground. In this pic you can see the rear of the mount I whipped up out of some scrap aluminum angle I had sitting around. This one measures about 17 inches square. The protective film is still on the plastic, some scrap Lexan I had.


They're both pretty rough by my standards, but for a couple days and being made mainly out of junk I had sitting around they turned out OK in my book.

These are NOT for Jean Claude as someone asked me earlier, this is for an industrial video.

Jean Claude continues shortly

So a bit of a break here due to scheduling. Bummer, I know.

We shot some really cool stuff and Kirsten and Kris got to have all the fun.

don't fence me in

I cranked out some foamcore fence for the next shoot the other day.


Just a few shots it'll be needed for. The foamcore was free, so no big deal.

Jean Claude the gumming zombie!

The first teaser trailer is out. With a mere 2 days of shooting under our belts what did you expect? Lighten up, it's a teaser.

If you;re interested, you can learn more here or here. Of course, I'll be sharing some nuggets here as well. Like these pictures.


The sculpture of jean claude's makeup, an elderly man who is unknowingly zombified while enjoying his day. A quick sculpture done in monster makers clay. Sadly, it doesn't seem they will be making it anymore. I've grown to love it, soft when you want it soft, hard when you need it hard. I wish I would have grabbed more.

Day two of shooting. Jean claude is ready for his scenes.


Nummy nummy. I monitor the monitor as our pathetic French zombie is fed people food by mother.


Here's a few shots of some of the real behind the scenes stuff that went into making jc come alive...or would that be come undead?

A freshly demolded casting of jc's makeup. Cast in monster makers foam, with some GM flow enhancer added in to help out. The foam's somewhere in the 6 1/2-7 volume in a small sunbeam bowl, so very soft. Most of it is under 1/4" thick, but the jowls, chin, nose, and front of the neck is thicker, at the thickest it's about 1/2" A couple of drops of blue pigment added. It's a comedy, he's a zombie. Deal with it.

The mold for the makeup. Originally I had intended to run a cowl for him as well. I didn't set out to do a silicone mold for this, it just happened that I had to. The mold itself is brushed on dragon skin from smooth-on and is fairly thin. The support shell is ultracal 30. I ran into a few undercuts that I hadn't corrected due to the initial cowl idea...time demanded I get it done and run. Running the foam latex in the silicone hasn't proven to be too difficult. Baking in an old holding oven that requires constant attention to prevent the temperature running away is a bit of a pain. Every 10-15 minutes I have to manually adjust the temperature, for about 6 1/2 hours. No steaming yet, and the oven temperature is being held at about 150 degrees. The only other thing I have to be careful about is watching the edges, the silicone still wants to give just a little bit, so pushing that lifecast in well is critical for good blending edges.

I was a bit nervous about the foam, so the silicone could have ran some gelatin appliances if needed with ease. I'd also be willing to bet I could still get a nice silicone appliance out of this mold. I've run some compatibility tests with dragon skin and after the doom and gloom and dire warnings people have given me about platinum silicone and sulfur I was worried, but experimentation shows it to be very possible with a little cleaning before hand.

jc's "teeth." Don Bumgarner whipped them up for me quickly as he's my go-to for anything dental. I stained them a little bit, but would have liked to do them much darker.

I've got some props to build, and other things to work on. As I get the OK I'll be sure to post more on this.

James and the Giant Peach.

About a year ago I had made 3 masks of the farmers from The Fantastic Mr. Fox for Signstage on tour. This year the play will be James and the Giant Peach and I got an email asking for more masks. Excellent. They wanted 6 masks initially, the rhino was added along the way along with a giant "spanking hand." One of the aunts will chase James with the giant hand, about 4 times the size of a normal hand during the play.

Shown here are some of the things that went into making the heads and working out the final designs.

The maquettes of the grasshopper, spider, and worm. Thrown together quickly to show where I was headed with the sketches I had done. They've got some lines carved in that approximated what I saw as the pattern pieces for the foam masks.

The shark and rhino.

The cloudmen. You can click on any of the above for a larger view.

The final masks were created in sheet foam. RIT dye was used to color the foam and some airbrushing of details. Hard hat suspensions were used and will allow adjustment for the actors. You can view them in the sample puppet gallery on my website.

Once again the job was a fun time, and a welcomed change from the usual things I get involved with. No zombies. No extremely dangerous chemicals. Just a bit of contact cement fumes and scalding water with the dye.

Sorry there aren't any horror stories of things gone wrong. The worst thing that I ran into on this was sticking a T pin into my knuckle, painful at first, but it faded quickly.

Been a while

So to catch up...Merry Christmas, happy new year and all that.

Busy working on some foam heads for a play. Similar to the last batch, actually, for the same people. It's been almost a year now since I made any. Now that I think about it, those were the reason I started this blog, specifically to thank the few people and blogs who pointed me in the right direction. Well, the thanks still hold up. I wish I had gotten a little more practice at this kind of thing over the past year, but I haven't. In fact, besides those and the little bit of foam work I did for Near West recently I haven't touched any sheet foam this year.

I'm not sure what I can or can't say right now, so I won't say much. There are 7 characters in progress, just under a week until they're needed to leave on the tour. Cutting it close again, not that there's anything really new about that. I'll have some pictures of them when they're all done and I get an OK to post them.

Beyond these heads lurks some zombie work. Due to a few things here and there it will be a big rush to turn a young man old and then to zombify him through a few phases for a short film. I'll get yet another tiny part in this as well, and I can say I'm not a homeless person. Always good to stay away from typecasting.

More in the near future, and I hope to keep this blog updated a bit more frequently.