Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Shel's guy's NEW HEAD


Here's the new (non-captain kangaroo-ish) head for Lola's arch enemy.

(.....and a couple hands).


the second half of his mold is firming up as i write, i'm hoping to foam him tonight.
and i have a pup (Justin's Gerald the Dog #7) in the oven too (#s 8 & 9 armatures are waiting in the wings, we're hoping these are the last set of dogs we'll need for the film).
we did our final POUND PUP shot list last night and it looks like justin has 26 more days of shooting (or in his case 26 more late nights of shooting). we're thinking we'll be done with all the shots by april. it really feels like we can see a distant but clear light at the end of the tunnel!!!
today is x-mas but we did our big turkey presents bonanza last sunday when our family was in town, so in Raschville today it's just ART DAY with cookies and candy canes!

hope your day is just as funfilling. merry merry to you all!




Wednesday, December 19, 2007

SHEL'S WRASLER



hi ya'll. i'm making a new "friend" for my puppet lola to play with (more like an archenemy actually). justin's been calling him WRASLAR which may stick. this pic is him in his first incarnation but i decided i'm not so much into the captain kangaroo look so i took his head off and am making him a new head and some hands now. (who knew captain kangaroo was lurking around in my sub concious!)





the thing i'm most excited about is that i made a ball and socket armature out of bits and pieces (left from our attempts to make an armature for the Gerald the dog). i'm hoping that the armature will work out cuz i got real discouraged by the wire breakage i was getting on lola. i spent alot of time playing with armatures for lola too, but i gave up, cuz i just don't have small enough pieces, she's really skinny. we're still looking into maybe hiring out options for her....and justin suggested giving her permanent elbow and knee pads which would help alot with the fat armature joints.....more to come on that when i figure it out.

i haven't been animating AT ALL since september (it started by me saying i just have to get all these kids settled in school....). i'm sure i forgot everything i was starting to know but i'm itching to get back to my animation education so when this guy is done.....(feel free to hold me to that). it's so easy to distract myself by making puppets (and sculpting and making sets for our super top secret project that we can't talk about but if we could we would report that it is a very exciting process).

Friday, December 14, 2007

RAW Shot - Wire gardens

Hey guys....

I decided to share a RAW spy frame view with you guys.........of this my latest work mainly because its cool to see some of the {Inside the magic} visuals. I am happy with how the shot worked out. It plays a little slow in this .avi for some reason...but The real frames look and Play great! 20 more seconds in the CAN.

by the way....the hitch in the cam was only my spy cam....I actually moved it to see more of the field at certain points in the anim. The real frames are nice and locked down.

onto the Next shot.

jriggity

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

MONSTER shot!! and Another Winter.

Hey Guys,

In the deep feeling of not moving forward enough....I decided to take one of the remaining HUGE shots I have left.{The Tough Dog} This shot I had in my mind for a Long time now.....and was excited to do it {as well as scared} . This of course requires {THE DREADED SETUP} This always take me FOREVER!!! I had to sculpt a bunch of new angry heads and clean up a bunch of used ones from othershots. This took an entire day. Then I had to setup the camera and computer....this takes time......then and most importantly I set up {my mind}. 2 days of thinking /imagining the shot / discussing the shot with shel

......Finally..... into the garage I go.Its cold in there. This reminds me that I was in there last winter too. Wow!! Time is going WAY to quickly.

This shot require my dog to drag his bowl to the center of the cage and then attack it with gusto. Easy enough / but Something I completely forgot a bout untill I got a ways into the shot was that my dog bowl is full of dog food. Uh ohhh....this shot just got way more difficult.Hmmmm......I thought....Maybe CG Dogfood....thatd be easy!! But itll look sooooo not part of the scene to me.Lighting is not my strongest talent.

Well I decided to not think about it and let whatever I decided the moment the first food would fly be what happens. Well it happened allright. all over the place. I had a harryhausen moment keeping track of the food particles flying all over the cage.

Im 2 Full night shifts in to this shot and hope to finish tonight....Except for one of my tiedowns breaking midshot..... Everythings looking good. The shots a keeper.

one things 4 sure.....Im gona have a monstrous ammount of wire removal in the end... POWERFULL!

jriggity