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.

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.

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.

Ancient Tibetan Fire Starter

Used by Tibetan Monks as a single use fire starting device, created specifically for use in conditions where traditional fire starting methods were not possible.

Later a group of alchemists modified the device, with the aid of a Shaman known only as Nyima, to emit small projectiles of flame repeatedly. It is believed to predate the earliest known firearm, approximately 1288AD, by at least 400 years.

Currently there are only a handful Tibetan Fire Starters in existence and fewer still are the individuals who know how to properly use them.

*This is a minor prop from the movie Grayson & Gortch.

A Short Rant

This is one of those things that not specifically any one person's fault - but just plain old bad timing.

So far, Grayson & Gortch has to be the most nightmarish project I've ever tried to schedule. I want to very clearly point out right now that I'm not blaming any one individual or even a group - just pointing out the frustration at the utterly bad timing and total chaos of their collective schedules. It's truly awe inspiring how horrible this movie has been already to try to shoot.

Plus three of my actors are all taking consecutive vacations. Seriously, they all overlap by 1 or 2 days to end up with the entire month of May going by and unable to shoot with all three of them (and they're in 2 major scenes all together). I even had another actor drop out on me due to work.

So rather then just give up and be pissed off, I'm taking this extra time to work out some details which remain a little sketchy for the project. Originally I was doing pre-production on 2 at the same time, that isn't happening anymore. The other was pushed back to June 25th. So this just leaves me with more pre-production on a few key scenes.

Plus I want to build a crash mat, finish a couple prosthetics and redo one as well and even make a shoulder holster - got all kinds of time for that now. So hopefully this will be the big snag on this project and it means things will go smoothly once we're back up and running.

Another awesome shoot.

Today was the 2nd day of filming on Grayson & Gortch. It was a short day, just one small scene. Spent more time doing the makeup then actually shooting, but the result was really good.

We had Draper Bulger as Mr. Eliah and John MacDonald as the teleporting twins, Thark and Thork. Most of the pictures were taken by Kim Johnston.

Draper and John getting ready.

Mr. Eliah poses.

Thork, Mr. Eliah and Thark.

Just a small part of The Eldritch Syndicate.

And now a couple still from the movie.

Mr. Eliah and his huge '80s cellphone.

Thark and Thork arrive.

Thork and Thark get ready to take out Gortch.

And that's it. I'm shooting again on Wednesday and hopefully again early next week and then a bit of a break while my two lead actors take vacations.

Prosthetic Problems

I like the title of this mainly because I foresee many people inadvertently landing here when searching for ways to ease their issues with their fake limbs. Sorry, not that kind of prosthetic if that first sentence applies to you.

This kind:

Now, when I say "problem" I don't mean "ah shit, everything's screwed and gone straight to hell". No, in fact all I really mean is that one of the prosthetics for Grayson & Gortch, the one for the character of Mr. Eliah in particular is being problematic. To be more accurate, the mold is being problematic.

An experimental sculpting technique caused some unforeseen mold issues. While most of the other mold suffering from this problem are fine, this one - Mr. Eliah - is just getting worse. And of course it's too late to just scrap it and redo it since that character has his first scene tomorrow morning.

So I guess I'm willing to run the risk of him looking a little different in this one scene. There's just no way I can get another decent prosthetic from that mold anymore. Ah well. At least there's time before the next scene and I'm mostly done all the stuff that has to be created so I look at this as a little more practice. Not only do I have to recreate it, I need to make it look as close to the original as possible while improving on it slightly.

We'll see how that goes.

Otherwise, I'm still working away at creating a prop for tomorrow morning's shoot. It'll be ready just in time and the paint might even still be wet - but it'll be ready.

Nearly completed Troll Feet Props

I finally got the mold finished up yesterday, tried running the Flex Foam-it through and see what came out. It was a bit of a rough start. First of all the mold itself was an experiment - that actually worked. I made a block mold of the clay foot that I'd sculpted, which was tricky to pry from the mold but I did and it's pretty much intact too.

Since it had to be painted I knew I needed a better base coat then the natural white, so I got so dye - which works brilliantly. I was amazed how little was needed.

Tasty Troll Feet!

Then I had a problem with getting the liquid into the mold in time. The pour spout was too small, ruined batch #1. Tried to widen it, not enough, batch #2 no good either. So I cut a small air hole to allow air to escape better and it turned out not too bad, batch #3 usable, but not awesome. Since the mold is rather detailed, I was getting air pockets, not huge ones but enough to be annoying. I think I can patch them up anyway. So batch #4, nor perfect but pretty good.

Anyway, it's not painted yet - this is about 2 minutes after I pulled it from the mold and did a quick job trimming away the excess along the seam. I hope to get about a dozen of these bad boys. And for those interested, I will be selling them if I can get them a little more perfect.

The Day After the First Day of shooting

The first day of shooting on Grayson & Gortch went pretty well, things started off potentially wrong - the night before one of my actors had a horse riding accident, I think she's fine, she just wasn't up for shooting. I wrangled myself a replacement and things started off well, got delayed but pretty much stayed on track for the remainder of the day.

I realized I really have to rethink shooting dialog heavy scenes. Not that there's anything wrong with them, I just have to develop more of a style that makes them feel a little less dead. I haven't even tried to edit it, so I could be wrong about that in this case. I just know I was thinking after I left the shoot last night that I'd wished I'd shot it handheld maybe, giving it more of a actiony feel to it. Might not've worked though, at least this way my footage is stable, handheld can just make things look very amateur if it's not handled right.

In any case, some pictures to break up the rambling:

The shoot was pretty light on props for once.

Evan Dickson and Derek Martin getting ready.
Evan was a last minute addition, huge thanks to him for stepping in.

Supernatural CSI.

Jonathon Driscoll...way too happy looking for a crime scene.

Don't drink the Red Kool-Aid.

Keeping the world safe from evil one
ODed Demon at a time...or something.

And then a little before we wrapped up, before 7, Aleshia Farrell showed up to start getting ready for her scene. I have to give her credit, this was her first time doing something like this and it couldn't have been a more strange experience for someone first time acting.

She played a stoned demon girl wandering about her swanky apartment in lingerie and eventually ODs. (The scene is our version of the opening of the first Lethal Weapon movie.) She was naturally a little nervous, but did a great job. She spent more time getting into makeup then shooting too.

Aleshia before.

Putting the prosthetic on.

Then Savannah Belsher-MacLean stepped in to do the makeup, it was her first time working around a prosthetic - otherwise she's quite used to doing normal makeup.

And then end. The seams are pretty noticeable in this picture, but they aren't in the footage, I find pictures usually are a little more severe in showing any flaws in the makeup. But it still looks pretty good.

Demons and Drugs don't mix.

And we were out right on time. I was pretty sore and tired by the end of it, mainly because of the floor in the location we shot in - I wasn't wearing shoes and the floor was just too hard or something, I don't know what it was.

Now some stills from the movie:

Opening titles

And now I've got a pile of work ahead of me this week - aside from movie stuff, so we'll see where things go from here. Off to a great start though.

First shoot for Grayson & Gortch tomorrow

I just realized last night how long it's been since I shot something. I think the last day of shooting for the 3D Movie was late-October? I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it was at least around Halloween.

So I've been gearing up all week to get ready for the first shoot for Grayson & Gortch. The script is done, aside from the final fight and epilogue, but this will come pretty soon - no worries since the final fight is the last thing we'll shoot. I've got about a month before I have to wrap it all up.

Most of the props are taken care of, I'll be working the last few out next week. And I've finally gotten the perfect foam latex, so that's a huge relief. I'll be cranking out as many as I can next week as well. I still need to make some molds for a could but I reckon all the molds will be made by end of next week too. It'll be a busy week

Casting is wrapped up as well, I think there's 2 roles I'm unsure of - mainly because I'm having trouble finding just the right person to fill them, but I've got a few ideas rattling around.

Locations are nearly taken care of as well. I lucked out this week and came up with, what I think, is a great location for a gun fight scene between Gortch and 3 drug dealers. We'll be shooting it in a car salvage yard, my main concern was finding an interesting looking place with lots of cover for a gun fight and I can't think of anything better. This should turn out to be a pretty cool scene.

And as far as Breath of the Dead goes, things are working well for that too. Most of our locations are taken care of, hopefully we'll have casting wrapped up in another week and I'm hoping to start in on making the props and whatnot in the next 2 weeks.

This is the first time I've allowed two projects to overlap like this. I've had a few overlap as far as post and pre production, but not like this. So far it hasn't been too bad, I'm feeling productive at least while I have the time.

And the website. Right now, if you've not seen it yet, it's pretty simple. I took the time this weekend to re familiarize myself with the whole website building crap. Can't say it's awesome fun, but I think I've got a decent site worked out. Not very polished or high end looking, but I'm happy with it, it's nice and simple - no flash or crappy plugins or apps, just straightforward html. I might jazz it up later on, but for now I just want a decent, easy to navigate site to host the movies on and hopefully sell some stuff.

It should be online within the next week if I get the kinks worked out. I'll let you know.

Foamy goodness

I've been having issues with the current brand of foam latex I've been using. Now, I've heard (although there's always varying opinions) that each of the 3 brands, Monster Makers, Burman and GM are specially made - so the logical assumption would be they're slightly different from one another. The run times and instructions are definitely different for the Monster Makers and GM - I've no idea about the Burmans since the kit I used came with no instructions whatsoever, but using the same runtime as the Monster Makers worked fine.

This was the first time I've used the GM Foam and at first I was not impressed, it sort of worked but wasn't very foamy. And with each batch it just got worse. I couldn't really figure out why, it was just coming out runny - still usable, but not the best. I bought some Micad, it's supposed to give you some extra foaminess. And did it ever.

It was hard to figure though if it was just the Micad or the fact I turned the bowl a little faster while mixing. They say it's a really sensitive procedure so I'm assuming the speed of the bowl turning could be a factor since previously it was turning it much slower.

In any case, it appears to be working, I've got the first one baking away right now so I won't know for sure until about 3pm. Either way, I'm way more impressed with the quality of it now and I'm hoping this gets the prosthetic making back on track - I've got buttload to make for Grayson & Gortch and out of 5 runs of foam only 1 usable piece.

SEVERAL HOURS LATER...

Well, it definitely made the foam softer and much more closer to where I'd like it to be...but it's too foamy now. That's to be expected since I'm still more or less testing. The problem with being too foamy is air bubbles tend to get trapped in the mold. At least I'm getting closer. I should have foam latex left to get all the prosthetics I need done. If not, at least it's not as cold anymore and I don't have to worry about heated shipping anymore.

Severed Baby Troll Feet

One of the props for Grayson & Gortch are several Severed Baby Troll Feet, not something you can just buy online - at least not that I've ever encountered. So of course I had to make my own. Pretty simple, I just got some armature wire and about 1lb of clay and eventually I had one.

I'm still making the mold, I ran out of silicone just before the model was covered. Silicone will adhere to itself, so I'm hoping that once I get more in that the mold will continue on just fine. I guess I'll find out soon enough.

One of the main issues with the prop was painting it properly afterward. I used some airbrush paint on the fake foam axe and the latex alien brain monster masks and it just didn't hold up to a lot of wear and tear - not that these little buggers will be seeing that much action, but I'd like to make sure I'm doing it properly.

You need a product called PAX paint, which isn't cheap at all. Luckily I recently discovered you can make your own fairly easily with some Pros-Aide (the same adhesive I'm using for prosthetics) and regular old acrylic paint, equal part of each. If you want it for use in an airbrush, just another equal part of water to thin in out - I would assume it's possible you could end up ruining your airbrush if you don't clean it properly afterward.

So that's a huge expense taken care of over the next few projects, since I'll need the stuff for a fake foam hand axe, sledgehammer, rock and maybe some other stuff. Also, these props might actually be available for sale online by June if all goes well.

Speaking of other projects and other stuff in general, casting is pretty much sown up for Grayson & Gortch, location scouting is nearly done as well. I need to do one more pass at the script and I think it'll be done, just in time too since our first shoot is next weekend. I just need to finish up my prosthetics and I'm hoping that will happen next week as well.

As far as Breath of the Dead, it's progressing really well. The script is 99% complete. I'll be doing a pass over that today and then I'd imagine there will be a serious rewrite to tighten it up and shorten it down from the 26 pages it sits at now. I'd like it to be a little less dialog filled and more action/quiet. Easier to shoot.

There were already some minor changes. We unfortunately had to make the choice to remove the breakaway beer bottle in the face gag - too much work, too much money and I was a little uncomfortable since the warnings on the material to create breakaway props was a little severe. I think we've come up with a decent new death idea, pretty cheap but pretty brutal.

I'm hoping to see a little more progress with this in the next 2 weeks.

Balls

I hate redoing old work. I came to the realization today that I'm probably going to have to redo most of the molds I've made recently for the prosthetics. Partially because I made a few mistakes in the sculpting process and more then a few in the molding process - however, as much as I usually hate taking a huge step backwards, I'm actually sort of looking forward to it. I guess because I see it as more practice and hopefully it'll result in a nearer to perfect quality prosthetic then I had originally.

Anyway, I think all this has helped work out the kinks in my process, problems with air pockets, issues with excess talcum power ruining the mold - all sorts of stupid little things. All gone now at least.

The first redo I think will be the Gortch prosthetic since I'm really hoping to get to do a photoshoot soon. We'll see how this goes, this will be the 3rd attempt at this one.

Otherwise, things are still going along alright. The next few weeks should see a lot more things being produced, the first being the Severed Baby Troll Feet prop. The sculpt is looking really good, should have the mold made by Wednesday.

That's it for now.

Productive couple days

Things are suddenly picking up a little bit of steam, which is hardly a bad thing at all.

Got some actors all lined up, even a couple new locations potentially lined up. I started outlining all the prosthetics and props I'll need to make for the next two movies - so far it all seems pretty reasonable.

I got to test my underwater camera case, it was a little nerve wracking at first since I wasn't sure just how reliable these things are or how the camera itself would react under water. I first just tested it in the sink while the case was empty - that worked. Then I let it dry out and filled up the tub, if you think the tub looks a little dirty, it's actually been stained a little pinkish from all the blood splatter tests I did last summer.

I'm just sculpting a new prosthetic tonight and I'll probably start another one tomorrow and that'll leave only 2 more I think. In total there will be 8 different prosthetics created for Grayson & Gortch. Not too bad.

Once I get my foam latex stuff next week, hopefully Monday, I'll be doing up a copy of the Randall Meincke prosthetic for Breath of the Dead - that's the name of the deformed voodoo zombie. It'll be a pretty elaborate makeup job too, there will be a main face, a rotting gimpy ear and a somewhat bulbous headpiece for the back. The actor will be wearing a baldcap under all that and will have some straggly hair added as well. Should look pretty funky.

Unfortunately I'll be keeping pictures of Meincke under wraps for now, so you won't be seeing him until the movie is done. In fact, no one but my self, the actor and a couple of the crew will ever see it until the first shot he appears in the movie - so the actors are in for a bit of a surprise I think. Hopefully that one take will end up making it into the movie and we'll get the reaction we're hoping for.

That's pretty much it for today. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

Another update without pictures.

Sorry to disappoint the slightly illiterate people who try to read this, but no pictures today. I don't know why I felt the need to point that out.

Here's what's happening so far:

Breath of the Dead. Script is coming along. Casting has begun - pretty happy with some of the folks tentatively onboard. Working out the special effects, that's going to be the best part of this project. The budget is pretty reasonable so far too. My underwater camera case should be arriving in a matter of hours, it'll be scary/fun testing that out.

Grayson & Gortch. Script is 95% done. Got lots of molds for prosthetics made - still waiting on my foam latex to arrive, that's been a pain in the ass. I need to create about 5 or 6 more prosthetics for this and a few props as well. Casting is slowly trudging along but I've got the word out to a few folks and hopefully that will be all nailed down in a few weeks.

We'll hopefully be doing a photoshoot for the poster in a few weeks, that'll be pretty cool.

And in older project news:

The 3D Movie. Soundtrack very soon to come. It's gotten delayed but I think it'll be well worth it.

Cronus. Hoping to get back into this next week. It's been shelved I think mainly because it took so long to get edited and I lost interest in it. I have to really rework everything, my workflow has totally changed in editing since I started this so it's a real mess to get it to where I need it to be. We'll see I guess how this turns out.

And one that's very much slipped through the cracks unnoticed:

All About Monsters. You'd really have to be paying attention to remember this one. It's more of a PSA about monsters then a movie. The bulk was shot last year, almost a whole year ago actually, and the reenactment sections will be done this summer hopefully. I have to design the monster and I'm hoping to get a new system for doing 3D work soon.

And that's it.

I was going to mention the online shop, but it's at a standstill for the moment because of crap that's really not interesting enough to mention.

Lost in Shipping

Things are progressing well. I'd like more time, but I'm not complaining.

There's a near final script for Grayson & Gortch finally. I've just completed a breakdown of all the characters and extras, and there's a lot, as well as the locations, which seem relatively easy overall.

There's 22 roles in it. A lot are background, one or two lines. A couple are non-speaking, only one or two scenes. So that all seems doable. Most have to look like Special Agents, all suited up - which is pretty easy to organize. The hardest most time consuming will be working out the makeup - there's going to be a lot of it, but that's going to be part of the fun.

I think I'll be starting on the casting as soon as possible. I'll have to circulate the list around to my usual contacts and see what turns up.

The props should be easy, not too many and only a couple will need to be hand made, but well within my skill range. And they should make for interesting items to sell once the online shop opens (I still have no idea what that is going to happen unfortunately). There's going to be some Severed Baby Troll Feet, a weird demonic looking glass of sorts (no design for this yet, but it will feature an eyeball I think) and a medallion that shoots bursts of energy. Pretty standard weirdness.

So we'll see how that goes progresses.

Breath of the Dead has a really solid outline I'm pretty happy with, I started writing the script and hope to do some character outlines tonight. Casting will be pretty tough on this one, especially our lead - not only will she have to be an incredibly instantly sympathetic character, but she'll have to be a pretty tough chick to pull off the ending. She gets full body tackled into a river and has to fight underwater. This is going to be a really hard find.

I mentioned we'd worked out the deaths I think last post, this week I hope to start really designing them on paper and should be doing some field test for some of the more tricky - and messy - deaths.

Now to explain the title. This is a messy situation that I have a little trouble wrapping my head around given the number of hands involved. I recently place a pretty huge order with a company in Quebec, I needed some foam latex and this time of year is has to be shipped via a heated vehicle, which isn't cheap hence the large order to justify the shipping cost.

The company Sial Canada I believe they're called, I could be wrong about the full name, has been awesome to deal with, really nice helpful folks - no complaints whatsoever with them. And no complaints really with the shipping company since they've been incredibly communicative and helpful, but like I said "lost in shipping". I received 2 items out of 10 or so. The missing 8 were all boxed together and contained the foam latex. Now, I'm not sure where the fault lies yet.

Apex, the shipping company, handed it off to another company to haul it to their depot in Monction and then to another, Armor, to take it from there to here. Well Armor never received it. So I can't blame them. Apex claims it went through them with no problems, so it's obviously this other company - who took it from Toronto (I think) to Moncton. That's a lot of space in between to get lost.

Like I said, I almost can't complain because the folks at Apex have been so helpful in attempting to track it down. I really don't think I'd get this kind of help from any other courier server, certainly not Canada Post. And Sial has already confirmed that if nothing shows on the radar by tomorrow afternoon, they will ship a replacement at no cost to me. Awesomeness.

So really, I'm just left to complain about the annoyance this whole thing has caused, because the people involved are more then willing to take all blame and correct it with no expense to me. I'm hoping it works out, I'd really like to get to making some of the prosthetics and see how they look. And post some pictures of them.

Blood spray and gore galore

Dan Caseley and I sat down today and hammered out the plot and script outline for Breath of the Dead today. It's a fairly typical 80s horror movie I think, it's got a good solid back story, a touch of weirdness with the voodoo, a fairly logical story progression - I think there's a few things people won't expect, at least not when it happens - and lots and lots of blood and gore.

We're planning on some SFX tests throughout the next month, a lot of really great ideas - even when we came up with them we were laughing at just how horrible, silly, bloody and gory they were. There'll be exploding heads, a couple rather horrible deaths, some creative uses for intestines and a good example of why you shouldn't leave beer bottles lying about when there's a undead deformed killer on the loose. Hopefully they'll all work out and this will be a really good, maybe even scary, little movie.

Meanwhile, still cranking out as many prosthetics as I can. I'm aiming for at least 12 different demons for Grayson & Gortch, not including Gortch himself.

Breath of the Dead

So that's it, the new title for the 80s Slasher Flick, which is really more just an 80s horror movie in general now. Struggled with this one for the longest time. We really wanted something kinda vague, that almost doesn't suit the movie but does once you watch it - although you'll have to figure it out on your own.

In any case, that's some progress made on this one. We're hoping to get the plot roughed out in the next few weeks, too many movies make their characters do stupid unrealistic things just to move the plot along, set up various deaths or just to get themselves out of a corner they've written themselves into. One thing we really want to do is to make sure no one does anything overly stupid, there's realistically stupid and then there's "no one would ever do that in that situation" stupid. We'd like to avoid the later.

Then it's onto designing the special effects - that's going to be the best part of this shoot. With the literally thousands, of onscreen horror movie deaths, it'll be hard coming up with a couple original ones. It'd be nice to have a couple that really make you squirm when you see them.

And lastly there's the makeup aspect of the movie. Not only is the killer horribly disfigured, but he's also been dead for some time and now is undead, having been raised through evil voodoo - should be swanky. The other major makeup job is taking a 20some year old girl and making her look like a crazy 90some year old voodoo lady whose been living in the woods for about 75 years on her own - even swankier.

If all goes as planned, this one will be full HD as well.

DVDs

I just got a couple emails through The Monkey Rodeo website asking about DVDs. These were from people who just happened to stumble upon it online too, not people I actually know. While it's awesome that folks would actually like to purchase these movies, I figured I'd do a short explanation of why it's not publicly available on DVD.

Each short, while totally viewable on its own, is part of a larger collection of short movies intended to be viewed all together. Not every time, but at least at once. I don't want each short floating around out there unattached from the larger project. And I don't have the money to professionally produce individual copies of all these movies, nor do I want to do it myself and create amateurish looking DVDs, especially when that is not my goal in making these movies in the first place.

Again, I certainly appreciate the interest in them, but they won't be made for sale (only viewable online) until the entire collection is completed. Which could be some time at the rate things are going. Until then, I might make then available for download possibly, but that's something I'll have to look into once I get the storage space to host them all somewhere other then Vimeo.

Thanks for the interest, we'll see how the rest of the project goes and hopefully even more folks will be interested in the future.

Gortch and friends

I did two attempts at this, just because I was still getting used to sculpting and figuring out my own style and technique. I'm pretty happy with the results of the 2nd version. This is for the character of Gortch, who will be played by Graham Putnam in Grayson & Gortch. This character has a small part in the feature Malice and the short is sort of a Lethal Weapon style 80's action movie.
I do want to point out that I did not design the prosthetic. It was based off a existing design, "Boaris" by The Scream Team - the reason I'm just not buying it from them this time around is mainly cost since I'd need several over the course of shooting and the original used in Malice wasn't the best fit for Graham's face, this one was done off a cast of his face so it'll fit him perfectly and should blend in better.

I'm hoping to get a foam latex version produced as soon as I get more supplies in sometime in the next 2 weeks or so. And I'll probably do a full photoshoot with him in full costume if I can.

Also, I've done another prosthetic, this one will be for the online shop. It's the obligatory vampire forehead prosthetic that every prosthetic shop seems to have. I figured it'd be good practice even if it didn't turn out, but I think it turned out pretty damned good.

The design is nothing spectacular, just another version of the typical furrowed brow look but I made sure my version would be more of a generic fit for both male and female. I found some of the other prosthetics I've bought over the years had rather large foreheads and had to be trimmed back to fit females. Hopefully this will be a better fit for more people.

And here's some others I've been working on:

A weird bat nose - not great,
but I like the idea of it.

The "Thug" from Cronus redone.

I created a lower jaw for the "Thug".
Looks silly by itself, but awesome with the top piece.

"Bofa" from Cronus, redone and modified.

Slasher Flick

It's been awhile since I update this - mainly because nothing's been going on. Just waiting on the soundtrack for the 3D Movie - no idea when that'll be done. All the audio for Cronus still needs to be done, I'm hoping to get out under a pile of work and crap to get that started soon.

Karl and Grayson & Gortch have taken a bit of a backseat for the moment, they're still being worked on, just taking forever. Although a first draft of the script for Grayson & Gortch is done.

Otherwise, I've been making some progress with the Slasher Flick. It will have a real title, just haven't come up with a decent one yet. The movie has taken a more serious tone then originally planned, not overly serious, not dramatic serious just not as campy as Bimbo Zombie Killers! was. We're kind of hoping it'll have the same tone as the movie Slither.

The plot is pretty decent, a little involved and told fairly simply, but you'll have to actually pay attention or it won't make sense. Bad news for folks who had trouble understanding Bimbo Zombie Killers!

We have our location, scouted it out this weekend and with a little work it should be perfect. It'll be a single weekend long shoot. Strting Friday afternoon until late Sunday afternoon. Mainly because it's a two hour drive to the location and it's pretty isolated. I'm pretty confident we can shoot the whole thing pretty quick, we'll just have to storyboard the hell out of it so we don't miss anything - at least nothing that can't be reset and shot elsewhere more convenient.

The location as it looks now.

Still got a few months work on it anyway, I think our target date is May sometime to shoot it.

Lots of FX to work out, should be pretty gory in places and the final scene takes place underwater even. Should be interesting.

In other news, I've been busy working away at sculpting prosthetics and while I won't say I'm pretty awesome at it, because I'm not, I am getting much a better feel for it. I thought it was odd at first how everything I read refused to say there is a standard technique for sculpting - as I progressed with it I realized that the technique I'm most comfortable with doesn't match any of the descriptions I read -makes sense now.

I've got a couple done, nothing spectacular, but fairly decent. Obviously as I get better at sculpting I'll probably become more adventurous with the designs.

The hardest part is finding a decent supplier during the winter months, since latex is a water based product and it has to be shipped in a heated container. I need to find out what the shelf life of this stuff is, maybe I can just stock up when it's warmer.

YouTube account deleted

I just deleted my YouTube account - well, the videos, I'm keeping the account because it's like getting a new cellphone having to copy all the info over or whatever. Reason being is I was recently accused by GoDigital Media Group of copyright infringement - this claim was false - but because of YouTube's ineffectual policies and no way to properly defend my claim, they opted to place ads on my video - for which I assume YouTube gets revenue from. I don't know about that last part, but I don't see the point of doing it otherwise.

So, they won't remove the ads, I removed the videos. I'm currently moving my videos to another site and eventually they'll be hosted on my own site. So YouTube can piss off.

First "commission" piece

As the title says.


I did my first commission piece this weekend - although to be accurate it's not really. I volunteered to do it, mainly for the practice. I find when it's for yourself it's hard to come up with ideas or get motivated, but when someone mentioned they need something very specific and within a specified time (a reasonable specified time too) it's much easier to get into.

I did a post a long time ago about gelatin prosthetics, there's the kind made from gelatin that's more of a prosthetic grade and then there's the homemade stuff that's more like weird jelly rubber. This will be made of the homemade version, mainly because it's so quick, cheap, durable and easy to replace and duplicate.

All those things were pretty much necessary in this case.

I don't want to say what it's for at the moment, other then it's for a web series starting I think in May. I'll post a link once it's online.

This does look good for starting up my online store, which should happen in February maybe. I don't expect to make much from doing local work, but it's nice that it's there as a possibility. And depending on the sort of piece I might be able to produce it for my shop, which would allow me to create it cheaper for whoever commissioned it.

I doubt I'll be doing commissions online though, seems like it might be more trouble then it's worth in the end. I guess it would all depend on 2 things, if the piece is something I feel is something I could sell, or of the person is willing to pay enough to make it worth the effort. I haven't really thought too much about it, something these things end up being a huge pain in the ass anyway.

That's it for now. I started resculpting one of the prosthetics from Cronus for online sale. Should be done later this week.