Showing posts with label fan film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fan film. Show all posts
Friday, December 1, 2017
"Feather of Owlbear": A D & D Fan Film
This project started way back in 2014, but now it's finally finished. I made a few puppets inspired by the original 1977 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual, and they're all covered in previous posts on this blog. Here are links to all of them:
The Owlbear.
The Rust Monster.
The Beholder.
The Umber Hulk.
Friday, June 2, 2017
Darmok & Jalad: Our Heroes
The last, but very important, part of my Star Trek fan film entourage is the two main characters, of course. I decided to make them slightly smaller than my usual puppets, simply to have the beast of Tanagra look more imposing next to them. It's a case of having one over-sized puppet vs two under-sized puppets. Hopefully it'll all work out perfectly in the end.
The two tiny heads of these characters were sculpted in Monster Clay medium grade. As you can see I sculpted the mouths open, but after casting the latex heads from plaster molds I decided that they wouldn't be expressive enough. I'll get back to that in a bit.
I wanted to have eyes that could be animated, so I had to place them in some kind of socket. I reverted to an old eye-making trick of mine, which would allow me to work comfortably with the tiny plastic beads I chose for the eyes. I simply pushed them about 1/4 into soft clay and added latex on top.
To add stability I soaked cotton in latex and then placed that over the eyes. This will make the sockets leathery -sturdy but still flexible.
Here's the cleaned-up latex castings of the heads. I've cut holes for the eyes using very sharp and pointy scissors, and covered the mouths with tinted latex. The puppets will be getting replacement mouths instead.
Here's how the eyes look with their sockets removed from the clay cradle. I painted brown irises on the plastic beads and put some black paint into the holes that were already there to create pupils. I can rotate the eyes by simply putting a needle down each hole and turning the plastic bead in its socket.
I'm using liquid latex as a "glue" to attach the cotton/latex sockets to the insides of the heads. It's a bit tricky and fiddly working in such a small scale, but after a few tries and a bit of swearing they got in place.
These tiny (it's hard to get good focus in this scale) sausages are the lips and mouths of the characters. These will become the very simple replacement mouths of the puppets.
And here's a selection of latex mouths. I'll be using a couple of drops of flexible super glue to make them stick temporarily.
My usual thermo plastic and aluminum wires armatures are put into use. Each foot has a trimmed wing nut as a tie down. The fingers are tiny aluminum wires covered with sewing string and tinted latex.
To pad the bodies I used a slightly different method than usual. I cut long strips of soft polyurethane foam and soaked them in latex by dabbing them with a foam sponge. The trick is to make the foam strips saturated with latex but not dripping with the stuff. A hot air gun helped the latex dry very fast, but a hairdryer would've worked well too.
This latex-saturated foam takes on a clay-like quality, and it can be cut in bits and almost sculpted onto the armatures by kneading the material. This way you can control the shape of the foam padding exactly, which is very handy when working with smaller puppets.
To create clothing for the puppets I used old castings of latex skins that I had saved. I also dabbed tissue paper with tinted latex down onto a bit of plastic sheet. These bits of latex were then cut into patterns and draped over the puppets.
Darmok and Jalad each has a weapon, one has a spear of sorts and the other a huge knife or short sword. These were made from a wooden dowel and a piece of dentist's wood tongue depressor cut and sanded into shape. These were later painted with a white enamel color to give the blades a sort of ivory look.
So here's our dapper heroes almost finished dressing up. All of it is latex. My workbench is very messy.
The finished puppets with their weapons and a pair of happy replacement mouths stuck on.
Darmok is supposed to be a mythical hunter, so I gave him the spear-like weapon, and a bit of nicely colored fake fur. These chaps belong to a race known as Tamarians, which, as you can see, has very long thumbs.
His buddy Jalad is more of a mercenary/ warrior type. He carries his sword on his back, as good fantasy heroes are want to do, at least they were in the 1980's. The sword scabbard is paper covered with a latex skin.
Hopefully their meeting with the beast of Tanagra will look something like this in the film. The look of the Tanagrians were designed by Michael Westmore for the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode "Darmok". I have tweaked their clothing a bit to look more ancient, but the color scheme is basically the same as seen in that episode.
The two tiny heads of these characters were sculpted in Monster Clay medium grade. As you can see I sculpted the mouths open, but after casting the latex heads from plaster molds I decided that they wouldn't be expressive enough. I'll get back to that in a bit.
I wanted to have eyes that could be animated, so I had to place them in some kind of socket. I reverted to an old eye-making trick of mine, which would allow me to work comfortably with the tiny plastic beads I chose for the eyes. I simply pushed them about 1/4 into soft clay and added latex on top.
To add stability I soaked cotton in latex and then placed that over the eyes. This will make the sockets leathery -sturdy but still flexible.
Here's the cleaned-up latex castings of the heads. I've cut holes for the eyes using very sharp and pointy scissors, and covered the mouths with tinted latex. The puppets will be getting replacement mouths instead.
Here's how the eyes look with their sockets removed from the clay cradle. I painted brown irises on the plastic beads and put some black paint into the holes that were already there to create pupils. I can rotate the eyes by simply putting a needle down each hole and turning the plastic bead in its socket.
I'm using liquid latex as a "glue" to attach the cotton/latex sockets to the insides of the heads. It's a bit tricky and fiddly working in such a small scale, but after a few tries and a bit of swearing they got in place.
These tiny (it's hard to get good focus in this scale) sausages are the lips and mouths of the characters. These will become the very simple replacement mouths of the puppets.
And here's a selection of latex mouths. I'll be using a couple of drops of flexible super glue to make them stick temporarily.
My usual thermo plastic and aluminum wires armatures are put into use. Each foot has a trimmed wing nut as a tie down. The fingers are tiny aluminum wires covered with sewing string and tinted latex.
To pad the bodies I used a slightly different method than usual. I cut long strips of soft polyurethane foam and soaked them in latex by dabbing them with a foam sponge. The trick is to make the foam strips saturated with latex but not dripping with the stuff. A hot air gun helped the latex dry very fast, but a hairdryer would've worked well too.
This latex-saturated foam takes on a clay-like quality, and it can be cut in bits and almost sculpted onto the armatures by kneading the material. This way you can control the shape of the foam padding exactly, which is very handy when working with smaller puppets.
To create clothing for the puppets I used old castings of latex skins that I had saved. I also dabbed tissue paper with tinted latex down onto a bit of plastic sheet. These bits of latex were then cut into patterns and draped over the puppets.
Darmok and Jalad each has a weapon, one has a spear of sorts and the other a huge knife or short sword. These were made from a wooden dowel and a piece of dentist's wood tongue depressor cut and sanded into shape. These were later painted with a white enamel color to give the blades a sort of ivory look.
So here's our dapper heroes almost finished dressing up. All of it is latex. My workbench is very messy.
The finished puppets with their weapons and a pair of happy replacement mouths stuck on.
Darmok is supposed to be a mythical hunter, so I gave him the spear-like weapon, and a bit of nicely colored fake fur. These chaps belong to a race known as Tamarians, which, as you can see, has very long thumbs.
His buddy Jalad is more of a mercenary/ warrior type. He carries his sword on his back, as good fantasy heroes are want to do, at least they were in the 1980's. The sword scabbard is paper covered with a latex skin.
Hopefully their meeting with the beast of Tanagra will look something like this in the film. The look of the Tanagrians were designed by Michael Westmore for the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode "Darmok". I have tweaked their clothing a bit to look more ancient, but the color scheme is basically the same as seen in that episode.
Sunday, May 21, 2017
Darmok and Jalad: Alien Plants
Calm down, calm down -plants are cool too, especially if they're alien. It's not just about the monsters. Actually, there might be some fun tips and trick in here about how to use puppet-making materials to also make props, and props that you can animate at that.
I wanted some weird plants on the world of Tanagra. You're never shown how that planet looks in the Star Trek Next Gen episode on which my film is based. I will be using lots and lots of Photoshopped images of strange fungi, weird fruits and such, but I also wanted some plants that I could position for my own photography, as well as some I wanted to animate. Thus, the three aluminum wires above will form the very simple armatures for a bunch of strange growths.
To build up the basic shape of these plants I'm wrapping the wires with thin polyurethane foam.
After that I built up more detailed shapes using cotton dipped in latex. Pointy sculpting tools were used to press lines and wrinkles into the gooey material. Actually, one excellent thing about the cotton / latex mix is that it will create its own subtle textures as it dries. Small and very organic-looking bumps and wrinkles will appear naturally.
And here's how the finished three growths turned out. They're based on fungoid animals from Earth's primal seas. The plants are attached to a clump of Polymorph plastic, into which a wing nut is attached. I can then bolt this flexible prop down, and animate it to make it sway in the wind, for example.
The next plant is also growing in a clump. A bunch of aluminum wires wrapped with soft string make up the stems.
The string is covered with tinted latex -let's make `em pink. I'm only adding one layer of latex, so the string will still be visible and form a wrinkly texture.
The stems are attached to a block of Polymorph plastic with a wing nut at the base. The tops are small bits of rolled up paper with balls of cotton, all of it covered with latex. Here's the deal with these plants: They will be eaten by an animal, covered in my previous blog post, with a funnel mouth, and the tops will slide off the stems and fly into the critter's mouth. In other words, the tops come off easily for animation, but are also quite secure while stuck on the stems.
Another plant will be kind of palm tree-like, but will be swaying in the wind like an underwater plant billows back and forth. To create the branches / leaves I sculpted this simple shape in medium Monster Clay.
This dental plaster mold was made over the sculpture and with a pointy tool I added these sort of fern-like shapes, just dripping the tinted latex into the mold.
The dried latex leaves are pulled out of the mold and attached to aluminum wires covered with sewing string and tinted latex.
The trunk is yet another bit of aluminum wire, wrapped with polyurethane foam and a latex skin. The four leaves / branches are attached to the top with Polymorph plastic, and a wing nut foot keeps the plant stuck to my animation stage.
The last plant won't really be moving, except that I may animate it being uprooted in the fight between the beast and the heroes of the tale. I sculpted a trunk inspired by the look of a cycad.
Again, I've made a plaster mold from the sculpture into which I could cast a hollow latex skin. I filled this skin with a fast-setting plastic, and attached some flexible garden wires at the bottom along with my customary wing nut. The cone-looking thing at the top is simply cotton dipped in latex, with more tinted latex drops added over it.
That's it for the plants. I hope they'll all look good and weird when duplicated many times in After Effects, and help create a truly alien-looking landscape.
I wanted some weird plants on the world of Tanagra. You're never shown how that planet looks in the Star Trek Next Gen episode on which my film is based. I will be using lots and lots of Photoshopped images of strange fungi, weird fruits and such, but I also wanted some plants that I could position for my own photography, as well as some I wanted to animate. Thus, the three aluminum wires above will form the very simple armatures for a bunch of strange growths.
To build up the basic shape of these plants I'm wrapping the wires with thin polyurethane foam.
After that I built up more detailed shapes using cotton dipped in latex. Pointy sculpting tools were used to press lines and wrinkles into the gooey material. Actually, one excellent thing about the cotton / latex mix is that it will create its own subtle textures as it dries. Small and very organic-looking bumps and wrinkles will appear naturally.
And here's how the finished three growths turned out. They're based on fungoid animals from Earth's primal seas. The plants are attached to a clump of Polymorph plastic, into which a wing nut is attached. I can then bolt this flexible prop down, and animate it to make it sway in the wind, for example.
The next plant is also growing in a clump. A bunch of aluminum wires wrapped with soft string make up the stems.
The string is covered with tinted latex -let's make `em pink. I'm only adding one layer of latex, so the string will still be visible and form a wrinkly texture.
The stems are attached to a block of Polymorph plastic with a wing nut at the base. The tops are small bits of rolled up paper with balls of cotton, all of it covered with latex. Here's the deal with these plants: They will be eaten by an animal, covered in my previous blog post, with a funnel mouth, and the tops will slide off the stems and fly into the critter's mouth. In other words, the tops come off easily for animation, but are also quite secure while stuck on the stems.
Another plant will be kind of palm tree-like, but will be swaying in the wind like an underwater plant billows back and forth. To create the branches / leaves I sculpted this simple shape in medium Monster Clay.
This dental plaster mold was made over the sculpture and with a pointy tool I added these sort of fern-like shapes, just dripping the tinted latex into the mold.
The dried latex leaves are pulled out of the mold and attached to aluminum wires covered with sewing string and tinted latex.
The trunk is yet another bit of aluminum wire, wrapped with polyurethane foam and a latex skin. The four leaves / branches are attached to the top with Polymorph plastic, and a wing nut foot keeps the plant stuck to my animation stage.
The last plant won't really be moving, except that I may animate it being uprooted in the fight between the beast and the heroes of the tale. I sculpted a trunk inspired by the look of a cycad.
Again, I've made a plaster mold from the sculpture into which I could cast a hollow latex skin. I filled this skin with a fast-setting plastic, and attached some flexible garden wires at the bottom along with my customary wing nut. The cone-looking thing at the top is simply cotton dipped in latex, with more tinted latex drops added over it.
That's it for the plants. I hope they'll all look good and weird when duplicated many times in After Effects, and help create a truly alien-looking landscape.
Monday, March 27, 2017
Darmok and Jalad: The Beast
2016 was the 50th anniversary of the first Star Trek episode broadcast, but I seemed to keep myself too busy to make something fun out of it, contributing to the celebration. However, I had for years planned to make my very own Trek fan production. I am a dedicated Trekkie, or Trekker -whatever you prefer to call it.
One of my favorite Star Trek episodes ever is the Next Generation story "Darmok", about the starship Enterprise encountering and trying to communicate with an alien race speaking only in metaphors. Within this story is the tale of Darmok and Jalad, two strangers who become friends when they have to join forces to defeat a common enemy -the Beast of Tanagra. A few years ago I found a YouTube video of a guy named Oliver Mains, aka Tachyon Beam, performing a very Dylanesque song retelling the myth of Darmok and Jalad, and I thought it was both clever and catchy.
I quickly received permission from Oliver to use his song in a video project, but time passed and I was busy with lots of other projects. However, a couple of months ago I decided to pick up the threads and get on with the film. I contacted Oliver again, who provided me with a better recording of the song, which you can now find on iTunes.
I contributed an illustration for the song, and if I'm not mistaken there might be more collaborations of this kind further down the road.
I decided to make this video all-puppet, with my usual brand of Photoshopped backgrounds. Starting off I focused on the Beast of the story, and went through a bunch of designs. In the end I went with none of them, but incorporated certain elements that stuck through the various ideas I had about the creature.
I started sculpting virtually with no idea of how the end design would end up, except for it being big and scary. So a huge mouth into which I could stick lots of teeth seemed like a good idea, as well as pointy things and spidery eyes. In the end, what I wanted was a representation of brutality and horror that would be worthy of a mythical monster. At the same time I wanted to honor the many excellent creature designs we've seen on the various incarnations of Star Trek through the years. My sculpting material here was Monster Clay medium grade. The eyes are scrapbooking beads, which I've used for lots of my puppets by now.
The mold for this sculpture was made in one piece from dental plaster. I cast a thick skin out of tinted latex into the mold, though not so thick that the skin wasn't perfectly flexible.
I decided to make crustacean-like segmented arms for the monster, and sculpted the segments and a shoulder section in Monster Clay.
The arm segments were cast in latex reinforced with cotton dipped in latex, and threaded onto a bundle of aluminum wires that also made up the three-pronged claw.
I also sculpted and cast a back and tail section continuing the bug / crustacean theme. Again these latex skins are just thick enough to hold their shapes, but perfectly flexible too.
The armature was my usual aluminum wires concoction, held together with Polymorph thermo plastic. You can see some wire extensions which were eventually covered with plastic. They're there to help build up bulk on the puppet while providing stability when I grab onto the puppet while animating.
The body was covered with a build up of layers of thin polyurethane foam. The torso is actually filled with cotton balls, and not foam. This helps keep the puppet as light weight as possible.
I have a bunch of older skin texture molds in dental and gypsum plaster that I can always rely on for interesting and detailed skin casts. I'm using liquid latex to bond them to the foam. The scaly back and tail pieces are also joined in this way.
The teeth are cotton dipped in latex and rolled between my fingers into pointy shapes. The claws on hands and feet and the tail horns are latex cast into plaster molds for big pointy teeth. I re-use those molds over and over again too. When all the patches of scaly latex skin are in place I cover up the seams with more tinted latex and a pointy sculpting tool. I also use this tool for placing drops of latex here and there in order to connect the various textures.
The finished Beast is painted with a mix of ProsAide cosmetic glue and acrylic paint. Finishing touches are made with acrylic airbrush paints. I forgot to say that I also added a tongue that can be animated, and that the feet have extra big threaded bolts for tie-downs during animation. This puppet turned out to be a big bugger, exactly 50 cm from nose to tail, so he needs all the support he can get to stand up while being animated. Though not being very heavy, the puppet is clumsy. But I wanted it to look huge when compared to the Darmok and Jalad puppets I'm also working on, and the Beast will be able to grab them, and look intimidating at this scale.
I'm not a huge enthusiast when it comes to fan films, but I'm approaching the Star Trek-verse in a way that I don't think has been done before. Anyway, I'm enjoying myself, and that's the only excuse I need. More to come on this project very soon!
One of my favorite Star Trek episodes ever is the Next Generation story "Darmok", about the starship Enterprise encountering and trying to communicate with an alien race speaking only in metaphors. Within this story is the tale of Darmok and Jalad, two strangers who become friends when they have to join forces to defeat a common enemy -the Beast of Tanagra. A few years ago I found a YouTube video of a guy named Oliver Mains, aka Tachyon Beam, performing a very Dylanesque song retelling the myth of Darmok and Jalad, and I thought it was both clever and catchy.
I quickly received permission from Oliver to use his song in a video project, but time passed and I was busy with lots of other projects. However, a couple of months ago I decided to pick up the threads and get on with the film. I contacted Oliver again, who provided me with a better recording of the song, which you can now find on iTunes.
I contributed an illustration for the song, and if I'm not mistaken there might be more collaborations of this kind further down the road.
I decided to make this video all-puppet, with my usual brand of Photoshopped backgrounds. Starting off I focused on the Beast of the story, and went through a bunch of designs. In the end I went with none of them, but incorporated certain elements that stuck through the various ideas I had about the creature.
I started sculpting virtually with no idea of how the end design would end up, except for it being big and scary. So a huge mouth into which I could stick lots of teeth seemed like a good idea, as well as pointy things and spidery eyes. In the end, what I wanted was a representation of brutality and horror that would be worthy of a mythical monster. At the same time I wanted to honor the many excellent creature designs we've seen on the various incarnations of Star Trek through the years. My sculpting material here was Monster Clay medium grade. The eyes are scrapbooking beads, which I've used for lots of my puppets by now.
The mold for this sculpture was made in one piece from dental plaster. I cast a thick skin out of tinted latex into the mold, though not so thick that the skin wasn't perfectly flexible.
I decided to make crustacean-like segmented arms for the monster, and sculpted the segments and a shoulder section in Monster Clay.
The arm segments were cast in latex reinforced with cotton dipped in latex, and threaded onto a bundle of aluminum wires that also made up the three-pronged claw.
I also sculpted and cast a back and tail section continuing the bug / crustacean theme. Again these latex skins are just thick enough to hold their shapes, but perfectly flexible too.
The armature was my usual aluminum wires concoction, held together with Polymorph thermo plastic. You can see some wire extensions which were eventually covered with plastic. They're there to help build up bulk on the puppet while providing stability when I grab onto the puppet while animating.
The body was covered with a build up of layers of thin polyurethane foam. The torso is actually filled with cotton balls, and not foam. This helps keep the puppet as light weight as possible.
I have a bunch of older skin texture molds in dental and gypsum plaster that I can always rely on for interesting and detailed skin casts. I'm using liquid latex to bond them to the foam. The scaly back and tail pieces are also joined in this way.
The teeth are cotton dipped in latex and rolled between my fingers into pointy shapes. The claws on hands and feet and the tail horns are latex cast into plaster molds for big pointy teeth. I re-use those molds over and over again too. When all the patches of scaly latex skin are in place I cover up the seams with more tinted latex and a pointy sculpting tool. I also use this tool for placing drops of latex here and there in order to connect the various textures.
I'm not a huge enthusiast when it comes to fan films, but I'm approaching the Star Trek-verse in a way that I don't think has been done before. Anyway, I'm enjoying myself, and that's the only excuse I need. More to come on this project very soon!
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