Sunday, May 23, 2010

3D-ish


And that's it. Not awesome 3D, but 3D-ish. It's a totally brand new style.

Some news-ish type news

The latest project, Grayson & Gortch has ground to a halt, but this is for the best I think. I'm hoping to resume it again in mid-July. If that happens there'll be some changes made for the better, nothing anyone will really notice - it'll just make things easier for me.

Recently I did a little video for a film festival about special effects and visual effects. I filmed the entire progression of a prosthetic from sculpting to applying it. Here's the final result.

Maddy doesn't look as thrilled as Draper does.
A nose piece I did. Came out pretty good.
And a forehead.

These 3 pieces, were for extra, non-speaking roles in Grayson & Gortch. And while they certainly turned out decently I'm rethinking them. Not because they don't look good, but for time. Let's see if I can explain this quickly. I'm now doing the movie Breath of the Dead first. In this one there's a deformed voodoo zombie, which was originally going to be done with prosthetics - and still might be depending.

One of the elements of the makeup is a deformed hand, first time I've made a three piece foam latex mold, or a glove type prosthetic. I was a little worried about it ripping while being applied so I began to rethink it. I decided to attempt to cast it in silicone instead. Not only to make it easier, but as a test since I do intend on doing silicone masks at some point.

The idea is the same for a full mask, so if the glove works out, I might do a 2nd hand and a full head all in silicone. It'll definitely make the shoot go faster and make life much easier on myself and the actor. Plus this will be a good test to the durability of the silicone pieces.

I don't know exactly how to do it, but I think I've worked out the details and did enough research to do this properly. We'll see how it goes. Should find out in the next couple weeks.

So back to Grayson & Gortch, if the silicone mask works out for Breath of the Dead, I'll seriously think about doing silicone masks for the extras in that movie - much less time spent doing makeup on those demon heavy cast days. So we'll see how all this goes.

I also just noticed today, after a week of it being online, that the 3D version of the Horrible Alien Brain Monster movie had no sound. Kinda surprised no one mentioned it. I just uploaded it again in any case. I'll post it here once it's all done.

So that movie all done now. I'm just waiting on the 3D glasses to get here so I can package them up and get them to the actors.

In the meantime, here's some pictures Phil MacNevin just sent me that he'd taken the first day of shooting.

Brain Minion Steam Bath
The Brain Minions had a hard time with their lines.
I can only imagine what all the vehicles driving past must've thought.
"Summon the Brain Lord!"

And there you go. I'll be doing a post on the 3D movie very shortly.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Summon the Brain Lord!

It's finally done. Here it is, The Invasion of the Horrible Alien Brain Monsters from Outer Space in 3D. The 3D version will be online later this week, this is just the regular version.

Sunday, May 02, 2010

Severed Baby Troll Feet

Most commonly used as a powerful hallucinogen and breath freshener. Pictured here are 5 pairs of Troll Feet with a street value of $200,000. It's so expensive because of the process by which they're harvested, which is a closely guarded secret by those who dare do so.

Troll Feet, the infant variety, first appeared on the black market in the late '80s - although the adult variety has been used for centuries by various cults and sects in certain bizarre black magic rituals. People didn't take notice until Leonard Cohen first sang about them in the song "Jazz Police" - whose lyrics were changed after the song was played live for the first time.

The lines:

"Stick another turtle on the fire
Guys like me are mad for turtle meat"

Were originally:

"Stick another troll foot on the fire
Guys like me are mad for troll feet meat"

Most people were perplexed by this, as it was widely known that Troll Feet, the common adult variety, was nothing more then a foul smelling headache remedy and cure for inverted eyeball syndrome. It wasn't until someone suggested trying the infant variety that it became a popular narcotic.

Severed Baby Troll Feet can be ingested in a variety of ways, but the most effective (and traditional) method - ensuring the user a very strong high - is cooking them over a campfire.

*These are props for a drug bust scene in the movie Grayson & Gortch. They were originally sculpted in clay, a silicone mold was made and finally cast in Flex Foam-It V. The paint job is just homemade PAX paint.