Sunday, October 26, 2008

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.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

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.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

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.