Making a mold of Draper's Face

I won't say it went well, but it certainly wasn't the disaster I sort of expected.

If you've been paying attention, you probably know I just got supplies for making my own prosthetics. I've never really attempted anything like this before, nor am I really familiar with the materials involved or how they work.

The biggest problem I ran into was the fact that when I ordered the stuff, that ultimately cost me $550 after shipping and customs, $400 before, was that I asked - on the phone, so I was talking to a real person - if there was anything else beside what came in the kit that I would need to do this. The answer was a more or less no, maybe a few little things I could most likely get any any convenience store. I was okay with that, seemed reasonable.

Well, that was sort of a lie. A very big, another $200 lie actually. I won't bother going into what else was needed, but it was fairly easy to track it all down. Still, it would've been nice to have some idea, since it was pretty obvious from the phone conversation that I had no idea how to do this.

Anyway, I guess it was worth it. I probably could've spent three times as much experimenting on my own trying to figure out what I needed. It was a big help for the first step in doing this. I will say I learned a lot, and I know better what I need to do for next time.

I won't bother breaking down the process in too much detail, there's much better information on how to do this online pretty much anywhere if you really look.

First, I tried to minimize the amount of mess, so Draper
got himself a fancy new wardrobe.

Now a swanky bald-cap!

Then I slathered face cream and petroleum jelly on his face,
just for fun - this wasn't really part of the process.
Actually, it's so all his facial didn't get ripped out.

And then I mixed up some alginate - I hate this stuff.
It's one of those picky ratio mixes and you can really
only use it once to make a casting - it's really crumbly
and sets up fast.

Mulder was amused by the whole process at least.

Then some plaster bandages to give the alginate
a strong backing, it's too weak to hold it's shape on it's own.

And about 20 minutes later it came out not too bad.
Not great, but not bad for my first attempt.

I sucked at this part. Again one of those weird ratio mixtures
38:100 - Ultracal to Water.

And after leaving it for as long as I could stand this thing came out.

There were some air bubbles, they can be removed with a dremel though - if you have one. But the area around the nose was pretty broken. We were nervous about getting too much of the alginate around his nose, it was so runny and heavy it kept sliding down and almost covering his nostrils.

No worries though, the prosthetic I intend to make doesn't need nostrils. The other annoying part you can't really see here is that I did have any proper way to support the mold while putting the Ultracal in and it kinda flattened the tip of the nose - shouldn't effect it too much though - I wasn't planning on added too much prosthetic there either.

So now I have to sculpt the prosthetic mask I want to make on this, and then make a negative mold. The two will then go together with the liquid foam latex in it, I'll cook it for a bit and if I did alright I will have my very first prosthetic - which will be for the character of Cronus in The Monkey Rodeo: Cronus.

We'll see how that all works out soon enough.

Post Demon Rum

Upon seeing Demon Rum I've had a few people who've asked me when Malice will be done. And a few misconceptions that Demon Rum is somehow a clip from Malice - it's got nothing specifically to do with Malice. Demon Rum is entirely a movie within itself, it just happens to be connected because of the Monkey Rodeo world.

And as far as when Malice will be done, it'll be done when it's done. In other words, I don't know. I can tell you it won't be tomorrow, or next week, or even May 2009. I've been making some great progress, but that's only been in creating, I guess what you could call, "assests" for the movie. CG characters and props and sets.

As far as the CG characters, only one is left. And that's the main villian of the movie, Mal'Vash. I started working on modeling him yesterday and so far I'm really happy with how it's coming along. His design isn't incredibly unique, but rather sort of familiar. He looks like a villian, and of course someone you would refer to as a Demon Lord.

I won't be posting any pictures of him, maybe a blurry Sasquatch type image, but that'll be it. And other then him, I've a few minor CG weapons to create, those are always easy since there's a real world version. And I think just one digital set, The Library.

Once the assests are completed I've been starting from the first scene and working my way through the entire movie scene by scene. I'd estimate each scene will take a month or so. And there's 50 scenes, by the way. But not all of them require a massive amount of post though, so it won't be another 5 years or anything. I do think it'll be by this coming fall if all goes well.

Anyway, next up is Cronus. I'm hoping to get the script nearly finalized for February and starting in with shooting by April or sooner if it works out that way.

Prosthetic Stuff

My supplies finally arrived to make my own prosthetics, well, 5 copies of one full face or several smaller pieces apparently. I probably won't get around to actually starting anything until maybe the weekend, or whenever Draper's face is free for a couple hours.


My only concern is that this stuff isn't happy with being in the cold for so long. Most of the clay and oil based stuff should be fine once it's warmed up, but the chemicals for the prosthetic itself I'm a little worried about. It's cheap to get more anyway and I most likely will have to eventually.

I guess I'll find out soon enough. I'm hoping to get some footage, if not just some pictures of the process. Should be interesting.

Demon Rum done

After several annoying hours of backtracking through all my files and trying to figure out why the final version of the movie looked like crap, I finally fixed it. It's all technical and not terribly interesting, so I won't bother explaining it and just say that The Monkey Rodeo: Demon Rum is finally done.



In the meantime I've been working away on the remaining CG characters, and even a few props, for Malice. It's all coming along well for the moment and pretty soon I'm hoping to actually start working on the movie itself. If everything stays on track, I'm hoping to put together a trailer that will include a lot of finished shots - we'll see how that goes.

The Librarian

For some reason the costume part of this character was more of a design issue then the actual character. I think there were two previous designs, one was just a massive misshapen lump of a head, the 2nd was a more human looking version of the final design.

As far as the costume goes, I originally had a massive collar of sorts on him, but wasn't thrilled with any of them. So in the end I just settled on a simple brown hooded cloak. I even added thousands of little tiny threads all over the cloak, but it was too small of a detail and the scene he's in is rather darkly lit and it won't really be noticed - so why bother?



In any case, he's all ready to be animated once the scene is properly set up, so that's another one down. I should point out, other then the Demon I just finished, the Titan and this guy had been partially completed and slowly worked on over the past few months, so don't go thinking I've been cranking all these CG characters out from scratch recently.

Although, from here on out they are just on paper at the moment, so they will be an bit of an effort. And like everything else about this movie, there are way more CG characters then I originally planned. There are 5 scripted ones, and aside from the Demon, they even all have dialog. However now, there are 10 or more, the new ones are all CG stuntmen though - no worries about the design process at least.

And I'm sure I've been ranting and raving about this before, but very shortly I'll be getting supplies to make my first foam latex prosthetic. The first one will be custom made for a specific actor, and based on another prosthetic that had some major limitations. It'll be for the short movie Cronus. And yes, there will be pictures I'm sure.

The Demon

Well, it's done now too.

I ended up doing way more adjusting then I thought I'd do - there are still a few minor things I'd like to fix, but given how long it'll be onscreen and the massive amount of backtracking and redoing nearly everything it'd take, I'm not doing it. The texture's a little stretched and whatnot in a few places, nothing I can't live with though.


I'm hoping to have The Librarian done by this time next week.

And also, I'm literally a few hours work away from finishing Demon Rum. I'm doing some foley this week and ordering the final music for it as well. I'm hoping to have it on the go for this weekend and will most likely post it here temporarily, I'll be removing it and replacing it with a link to the eventual website I'll be doing - no idea what that'll happen, but you'll find out pretty much as soon as I do.

Another one almost done.

I spent a the better part of the day rigging up the Demon from opening of the movie, the one that's only seen for a few shots. And while there's still a few minor little details I'd like to work out, he's pretty much done - again, like the Titan, it's just a few simple adjustments to the texture now that the pain-in-the-ass work is done.

This guy will be rendered in layers, moreso then the other CG characters to really give his skin a wet, slimy kind of look, it's a little dry looking otherwise.


I also managed to fix The Librarian character up quite a bit, the main body is done, rigged and working properly now, I just need to adjust his clothing a bit to make it work properly once he's animated. I'm hoping to get some time to finish him off this week and then I have a few more minor CG characters to do before I start in on the big bad of the movie Mal'Vash.

The Titan, finally done.

It seems each character goes through 3 steps of completion once I hit the modeling aspect of creating it. the first version is usually pretty simplistic and really needs a lot more work, the 2nd is pretty much done and even the texturing and whatnot is pretty good and then I manage to finally get everything as close to perfect as I realistically can on the 3rd pass.

I posted yesterday an almost final version of the Titan, and now I think I've managed to complete it as well as I can. As with most things, I could tweak it forever, but I'd be at this for several forevers with the amount of work ahead of me to finish this movie. There's a small chance I'll make some minor adjustments, but nothing that requires as much work as going from the 2nd pass to the 3rd.

It's not too bad, I wasn't trying for ultra realistic though.

This actually brings to mind, in an odd way, something I was going to write a whole post about, and that is people's general misconception about doing 3D work. Now of course I can't accuse everyone of thinking this, I'd be being just as narrow minded as the folks I'm about to insult.

I've had several instances over the past couple years, where I encountered some pretty blatant ignorance about how much work this sort of thing is - whether it be creating a CG character or animating something. And it's that some folks truly believe this stuff is simple and easy because the computer does all the work.

That's like saying your car drives itself or your fridge does your grocery shopping.

The average person making this statement I can easily forgive, not everyone knows exactly what goes into this sort of work - nor is there any reason why they should. The folks I'm talking about are the ones involved in the arts, and some very specifically in charge of arts grants.

I'll even go so far as to say I don't care if you know anything about doing CG work, but if you're in a position that hands out money to various artistic mediums - how can you be so ignorant about it? And if you don't know, admit you don't know, it's not like it's a crime to not understand something. But don't make a statement so obviously wrong and ignorant to show off what little you really know - you could at least ask before deciding your lack of knowledge on a subject must be the truth.

It's not even so much the money aspect, or ignorance of 3D computer animation, but they would make a decision based on personal opinion. By that I mean, you can't honestly tell someone the moon is made of cheese for a fact when it so obviously isn't. There's a difference between fact and opinion. If you're about to hit someone with your car, your opinion might be they'll bounce off and be perfectly fine, but the fact is you'll probably kill them.

Same holds true here, and I'll even spell it out in case you're still foggy. You might have the opinion that 3D animation is easy, but the truth is it isn't. So where's the justification in passing it off as something simple? If that's what you think, then it's your opinion, but you're wrong - the computer does not do all the work, it's just a tool like any other, without a person with some amount of skill using it, it's just a lump in the corner used for internet porn.

I've even once had a guy who was involved in animation (2D however, and so bad it made those 70's Spiderman cartoons look like a freakin' Miyazaki movie) actually say to me that "it's not really animation". Yeah, tell that to Pixar, but make sure you've got a clear path to the exit.

If you've watched the movie Wall-E and saw the extras, one of them states that if one person were able to do that entire movie, it would take them 462 years. Doesn't seem to me like it's that easy. and I really hope Malice doesn't take that long, if so, I've got 458 years left to go.

Anyway, I've ranted enough - I assume all that made sense. I'm going to sleep.

The Titan again.

I've been working on him quite a bit the last week and I think I'm nearly done. Here's a shot of how he looks at the moment.



The only thing I'm really not happy with, seeing this version totally completed, are the joints. They definitely need to be broken up more with more debris sort of floating about. It's a little annoying to have to go back and redo the last weeks worth of work - all the texture maps and whatnot will totally have to be redone as well - but it should be worth it.

It's just a matter of breaking the left shoulder off from the torso, maybe a crack straight through the torso and a couple cracks on the right elbow and wrist. So far so good though, it at least stays consistent with how I thought the process would work, seems I have to complete it 3 time before I'm done. This represents the 2nd pass at finalizing the model and texturing, so a couple more days and he'll be done.

Also, I'll be updating again this week to show off my first attempt at making a silicone mold.

An actual update for a change...sort of

I've made some progress with some of the CG characters from Malice. Mostly a very minor background character I nicknamed Cthulhu Jr. He'll only be on screen a few seconds here and there in 2, maybe 3 scenes - all depends on how they're edited, which they're not at the moment.

This is just a roughly done composite, there's still a bit of work on the texture and just how he'll be added into the shots. But otherwise, he's come a long way from some of the previous versions.

Cthulhu Jr. is ready for his closeup.

The remaining characters to do are The Titan, which is already modeled - baring any issues with texturing him he should be nearly done. The Demon - from the opening sequence, the one I've had the most trouble setting on a design of - is finally designed and ready to be modeled. And he's going to be an ugly little bugger, even if he only looks half as good as the designs.

I'll also be doing CG stuntmen for some actors, I've been working on the one for Malice, it's coming along. I need another pass at the clothing textures and redoing the head is a strong possibility. It's not too bad at the moment, considering she'll never be any larger then 1/4th of the screen, it won't be used in any really bright scenes and will usually be moving pretty fast to notice any possible imperfections that might show up.

I hate having to quality it like that, but at the moment that's how it stands. Unless I end up with a near perfect final version, I'm at least happy with what I have to work with at the moment.

There's still some work to do, but it's coming along.

I'll even be doing CG versions of the Demon Army characters. Well, one really - they all look alike.

Lastly there's Mal'Vash. He's all designed, as I think I mentioned before and he'll be last on the list to work on. I want to make sure I know as much about what I'm doing as possible before trying to work on him.

So far...

I realized today it'd been awhile since I bothered updating this, not a distressingly long time, but long enough.

I finally finished working on an animated short film for Dan Caseley. I believe I've mentioned it before, it's called Mr. Toesley and the Love Powered Space Machine. It has been in the works for about 2 years and just this very afternoon I finished working on the last shot - there's still a small chunk to be rendered, but my work is over in any case - time to move on.

After the experience of working on this project, I've been rethinking the idea of doing a Monkey Rodeo animated movie. I'd have to keep it pretty contained and limited if I actually decide to go through with it, otherwise it'd some time after the others are finished before it'd be completed.

I should have more time to work on Malice over the few weeks. I'm hopnig to get the CG characters for the movie done by early December - we'll see how that works out.

Took long enough...

Finally I've come up with the perfect design for the Demon Lord, Mal'Vash. Of course, I'm not going to show you because he's the big bad surprise that appears in the movie...maybe not exactly a surprise any more now, but you get the general idea.

Even when I wrote it in the first place I never had an exact image of him in my head, other then he's about 15-20 feet tall and has to look like a major evil badass. Even over the course of shooting just what happens at the end of the movie changed, so what I needed him to be able to do changed somewhat as well.

There was a version of him in full armor where I'd cheat by shooting a real face in makeup and add into the CG under a helmet so it'd have a more realistic look and be way easier to create. I deserted those ideas because he would've lacked any presence and personality, so I decided we really had to see his face.

He'll have some minor armor, I'm still debating how "clothed" he'll be. It'll be armor of course, I'm just not sure how much of it there will be.

He's basically humanoid in appearance, much bulkier and hunched looking, sort of darkish, semi-reptilian skin with bizarre looking tattoos even. And horns, he had to have horns. He's a bit of an amalgamation of several other characters from various TV shows and movie, I took note of certain aspects that I really liked and eventually it just all fell together. As these sort of things tend to eventually.

So this takes care of the last major unknown element of Malice...At least I think it does.

The Monkey Rodeo Winter Schedule

Things are moving slowly, so there's not much to update about really.

Over the course of the winter, here's what I expect to happen.

Malice: I'm hoping to get a final edit done, then start in with the visual effects and any other post production stuff. I'll be looking at putting together a (fairly) portable sound studio and start in on the dialog recording by February or March if things stay on track.

Otherwise, I've been taking a few hours here and there to finish up a photo book of Malice. It's a collection of all the photos taken over the last couple years, as well as some shots of the Cg characters and the props and whatnot. Hoping to have that done by December.

I'm also planning on having a website for Malice up and running by the new year if not sooner.

Demon Rum: It's pretty much done. I need to tighten up the edit a bit, get the music in and re-record all the dialog. The attempt at recording our sound while shooting didn't work out as well as I'd hoped. Luckily there's very little by way of dialog in this movie.

The Monkey Rodeo Project: Demon Rum was the first of these, but the rest are in various stages of pre-production. I'm planning on having all the scripts in at least their first draft by January, so I can then start sussing out location, casting and props.

This time around I'm also planning on making all the prosthetics myself (which if you've been paying attention shouldn't come as a surprise). I'll be using the Project to come up with ideas and more or less test out and show off the prosthetics and perhaps even some props that I've made.

By May, I should be ready to start filming the first of the Project, starting with Cronus (maybe earlier if it works out).

By next summer, I'm hoping to have the prosthetic shop up and running and even be in the position to start selling them online. That's the plan at least.

That's pretty much it. Over the winter I'll be experimenting with the whole prosthetic thing, so there'll more then likely be periodic updates about that stuff. As well, in the next month I'm hoping to put Demon Rum online somewhere.

Not much of an update

I realized it'd been some time since I made any updates, so here goes:

There's been some minor progress with some of the CG characters for Malice. I'm hoping to get further in the next month, so far things are looking pretty good. I only have only of the major 5 characters really left to design - god knows how long it'll really take though. I'm hoping I'll find time.

Demon Rum is taking way longer to edit then I'd planned - that part of the project is a bit of a failure. Only in that other work is really getting in the way, I hadn't taken that into account, nor did I realize how difficult it'd be to cut together. It's looking pretty good though, so no worries there.

And here's some odd news. Sort of odd. I'm starting a (sort of) special effects company. Nothing over the top, nothing too out there. I've been thinking for the longest time of getting into sculpting and creating resin casts - for various props I myself use, but offer them for sale as well.

In keeping with that idea and how much makeup work I did on Malice, I've been looking into doing my own prosthetics as well. It's not as hard it might seem, I reckon the really hard part will be creating the actual face to create a prosthetic from. I'm thinking I can do it with some work. I've got some really good ideas that I think will work really well as an online retail business selling prosthetics.

And finally, one step further, I've been looking into silicone mask making. This is fairly new stuff, maybe in the last couple years (I'm not 100% sure on that though, just what I inferred from a few articles) and it combines the visual effectiveness of a foam latex prosthetic with the ease and reuse of a latex pullover mask.

It's kinda hard to really describe, but it'd allow me to create a full head mask that would slip on pretty much any actor (the only difference they say is from male to female, so you'd have to design it specially for one or the other) and once done, you can slip it off again and reuse it over and over. It moves just as well as the glued prosthetics, but takes a fraction of the time to put on.

And it looks a little more realistic as well since it's silicone it has that same translucent look it as flesh. You don't have to worry about the actors hair, or even if they have a beard. I'm pretty sure I can pull this off. It, again, isn't as hard as it seems I don't think. It just takes the time to really to learn it well.

So I'm starting small, working on the resin casting with some small little things. See how that works and move on to a much larger sculpture eventually. As well, I'm getting a kit that will give me everything I need to do my own prosthetics, half of which is reusable so it's a pretty good deal there.

From there I'm going to try my hand at latex mask making, it seems really easy actually compared to everything else. And then if all goes well I hope to have this silicone mask thing down by the time I start into The Monkey Rodeo Project next summer. I could be way off on the time, might take me longer - but it's always been my favorite part of movies, I was fascinated by it as a kid and I guess the timing just seems right to finally really jump into it.

I guess we'll see how things go.

More Rum

All the footage looks good as far as I can tell. I probably won't get around to editing as quickly as I'd hoped, but definitely sometime this week.

Overall, the shoot went pretty well. We were running behind schedule almost from the beginning and it sorta kept getting worse and worse. We ran 2 hours more then I'd really planned on - as simple as the whole thing seemed, there were just so many shots and so many little things that had to be timed just right. Made it way more complicated then I'd figured.

But I'm not complaining, I reckon the final product will be pretty peculiar and kinda surreal in it's own little way. So, thanks to everyone involved, Kim, Draper, Bob, Thomas and Bobbie Jo, it was entertaining to say the least.

Demon Rum done

All done shooting. I just have to go through the massive pile of footage and piece this thing together as best I can. I think it turned out pretty well, regardless it turned out pretty weird.

I have quite a few pictures and whatnot I'll upload later, I just finished the poster for the movie and thought it'd hold you over until I have some more stuff to post.

Demon Rum Shoot

Everything looks to be in order for a shoot this Saturday.

Since we're doing the whole script (5 1/2 pages) all at once, at one location with live sound, there's a lot of little details to work out beforehand - otherwise the project is project is a bit of a failure. That might sound a little overly dramatic, but we're considering this a test. Can we shoot an entire short, with as much setup and work as this one needs, in one day?

It's a proving ground sort of deal for the rest of The Monkey Rodeo Project. If this goes well, it will calm a lot of the worries about doing 8 or 9 more short movie like this. Demon Rum is the easiest of all of them, even though it does have 4 actors in and out of prosthetic makeup.

One of the little problems encountered was with one of the prosthetics. One of them is sort of a spider looking thing, with 6 eyes and a bunch of teeth protruding from around the mask's mouth. Problem is those teeth were all separate - they had to be glued on individually. I've never dealt with a prosthetic that actually came "some assembly required".

Not that this was the problem, the problem was the teeth were wrong. It was pretty obvious they were just scooped up and tossed in without checking to make sure they were the right ones. So I had to make my own set, about 6 of them on top of the 4 original ones that actually were useful.


They don't really look like much, but they're identical to the original ones at least. These were just made from Sculpy.

We've got a big pile of equipment to be taken to the location and set up - we're doing some minor lighting as well, including a quick photoshoot once the actors are all in makeup.

As well, I have a documentarian (big word, not sure if it's even a real one) for this shoot. So I'm hoping to be able to upload a short "making of" or "behind the scenes" video eventually.

The movie itself should be done within a week of shoot. The editing should be done that weekend, the minor visual effects should be taken care of quickly. I just have to wait on getting the music, which is royalty free - but sounds really great. I think royalty free music has a bit of a stigma attached to it. I know I used to this most of it was crap (and some still is) but there's some genuinely great pieces out there for very little money.

So that should be everything. I guess we'll see how well this all went by Saturday evening, not sure if I'll get to do much of a post then - but I'm sure I'll have time at least to say it went well or not.

A quick update

Things are moving along slowly, pretty well - but slowly. Which is of course much better then things moving quickly and terribly.

The main project I'm working on right now is Demon Rum. Which is nice because it's pretty simple to fit in my head with everything else I'm involved in. It's already cast, the prosthetics ordered (although because of random customs retardation, 2 of them are severely delayed in getting here), most of the major props (such as they are) are sorted out, a rough shotlist and shooting scheduled\ has been hammered out, lighting tests have been done and even the music has been picked.

Right now all that's holding me up are the 2 prosthetics and nailing an exact shooting date. Could be anywhere within 2 to 3 weeks, not exactly when I'd hoped but hardly totally off schedule. Hope to have more to update with soon.

Demon Rum Update

Malice might not be going anywhere anytime soon, but Demon Rum has been progressing pretty well. We've got all our actors rounded up (that was the hardest part), the location, a basic shotlist, props and even sound has pretty much been taken care of.

I'm just waiting for the prosthetics to come in, there should be a pretty decent cross section of creatures in this movie. A lot of the online shops I use tend to release new ones close to this time of year, so there was some really cool new stuff to chose from.

That's it really, not too much else on the go. As I mentioned, Malice is on hold until I finish off another project I'm nearly done with. After that I'll be making some major headway with it. Until then, Demon Rum will take up a couple days - there should be some good pictures to post from it once we're done. I plan on shooting in 2 to 3 weeks.

Demon Rum

I believe I mentioned that next year I'm doing a series of short Monkey Rodeo movies. The first one, Demon Rum, will actually be shot next month if all goes as planned. It requires only 4 actors, a large apartment and one night of shooting - we got 2 actors and a large apartment at the moment.

The (sort of) main character of the movie is the Demon Rum itself. I could've let myself off the hook easily and just used something common that I bought at Winners or something like that, but I wanted something unique - as is the point to doing these short movies.

I want to take each movie and put as much work into it as I did with the feature, that mainly includes, prosthetics (I will be learning how to make my own very soon), props (I'll be making most of these as well, and creating more rubber weapons too) and more CG creatures of course.

I was just about to start going on about what I most like about movie making and what I'm getting horribly bored of. Right now, if I don't have at least one standout thing per scene in whatever I'm doing - I might as well scrap the project. Two people sitting in a room talking, no matter how interesting the conversation, is boring to me - now make one of them a 10 foot tall, 3 headed, fire breathing demon and I'm sold.

And that's pretty much the principal behind The Monkey Rodeo Project, to throw as much crazy assed stuff onto the screen as possible. It's hard to work all the ideas into a single feature length movie, but if you chop it up into several 10 minute movies -you can pretty much do whatever you want.

So, back to the point. The bottle of Demon Rum. I wanted something that no matter how tasty whatever is inside might be, you'd probably think twice about it given the look of the bottle. So, I had to make it myself, it myself, took about 5-6 hours. I still need to put a cork in the bottle, and I've yet to decided exactly what I'm doing with that part. As well, there's a label that has yet to be created and stuck to it. But otherwise, here it is.




The pictures almost don't do it justice. I need a better setup for taking pictures of my props I think. In any case, I'm pretty damned happy with the final outcome. I never sketched out any ideas or anything, it was more or less made up as I went along. And yes, it is modeled over a bottle of Absolut.

Given how it turned out, I'm looking forward to some of the other props I had in mind but wasn't too sure of.

Prelude to the Awesome Thing

There was that "something awesome" I mentioned in the last post. Well, it is indeed awesome - depending on how you take your awesome that is.

In any case, it's partially done. I need another day and some more supplies (nothing major) and I will reveal the ending to this nail biting mystery...or I'll terribly disappoint you, either way I'm actually pretty happy.

So iffen you're the sort to check here a lot in the hopes of something new to ogle, well be prepared to ogle your little brains out...I just realized there's no way in hell I can live up to this hype I just created, so my only hope is you're all poor readers or are currently on serious mediation that prevents you from getting all excited. Don't operate any heavy machinery and check back on Friday (hopefully).

Blah

I didn't want to do another post unless I had something awesome to show off...well, I don't have anything awesome to show off - so why am I bothering with this? Just to say, I'm working on something awesome that I will eventually have to show you. And just so whoever's reading this doesn't think I've abandoned it.

There's at least another year's worth of stuff to blather on about, so if you're willing to keep reading, then I'll more then likely keep posting stuff. Even if you don't bother reading actually.

I'm still working at getting my last few shots. Hopefully soon, real world work has been keeping be both occupied and annoyed (as any real job, good or bad, should), so I haven't had a lot of time to work on the movie or editing. Plus I'm very, very close to finishing another project, the animated movie I'm doing with Dan Caseley - it's coming along slowly, but we're so close to having the animation part of it complete.

So I reckon in another month or so I'll have way more time for Monkey Rodeo stuff, until then you probably won't hear from me.

In the works

Well, it's been quiet the last week. I've been trying to get stuff down for other projects and work, it's been slow but at least there's progress.

As far as The Monkey Rodeo goes, there's been some minor progress as well.I've managed to make a list of all the missing little insert shots, I should have them all in about 2 weeks time.

I've also been going over some of the CG characters and seeing what needs to be done to get them up to speed. As well as attempting to edit the final few scenes.

On the other side of Monkey Rodeo news, I've finally started something called The Monkey Rodeo Project - a temporary title for now. It'll be a series of short movies based off the same world as Malice. They'll be designed to be shot in 1-3 days, around 5-15 minutes long, nothing that requires months and months of shooting. I was hoping to have at least 7, and I've already got them, plus a few more ideas. So it's looking like around 10 perhaps.

I'm doing pre-production on these over the winter and shooting in the spring. The first one Demon Rum will be shooting end of next month. 1 night shoot, very little dialog and a minor CG character that's already done. We'll see how the first one goes.

That's it for now.

Running time

I've been sorting through all the footage, so far I can see nothing I'm missing. At least nothing that I already knew I was missing, I'm in the process of cataloging and attempting to get those shots.

I've been trying to get a rough idea of the running time of the movie, I knew it had to be fairly long - I was aiming for feature length. Right now we're looking at 70 minutes and there's still 15 out of 55 scenes to edit. 4 of those scene are major dialog/plot scenes and the rest are the entire ending of the movie. And then there's the title narration sequence that explains a bit of Malice's background and just why she was brought to the Brotherhood.

This should add, at least, another 15 minutes onto the movie. So I'm looking at at least 85 minutes, possible longer. Won't know until I try to make sense of out all the unedited footage.

More pictures of the battle with the demon army

I just some more photos that were taken from the shoot the other day, some turned out really nice. Courtesy of Devon McGregor.