Voyage Trekkers: The Great Hall VFX

This is another guest article by Diane Cook from 2011.  It is slightly revised with Diane’s permission.

At the end of July (2011), David once again asked if I would like to help him on another one of Nathan Blackwell’s web series, Voyage Trekkers. The premise for this show is not a parody of Star Trek, but homage to all sci-fi. The twist being, “With all the starships in the galaxy, somebody’s gotta be the worst”…or as the tagline goes, “These are the voyages that don’t make the captain’s log”.

Blackwell gave us the footage for episode nine, “Fabulous Technology”, filmed entirely with green screen background. David chose to do physical models for these shots instead of digital. I was in charge of making the models, while David was responsible for prop designs and post-production effects.

Our assignment was to create a columned great hall similar to one in Star Wars (c).

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Mantecoza Steam Horse – Guest Blog by Diane Cook: Part II

Hello! In order to share this fine article with more people, I invited Diane Cook to re-post her experiences in modeling a steampunk style mechanical horse. Diane has generously agreed and offers these reflections. This is part 2:

Most of the horse was now spackled, but there were still more pieces to add. David was not convinced that this model would hold up and the spackle would eventually crack. I tested the main body for pliability by squeezing it slightly. Anywhere that seemed weak was reinforced with pieces of wet muslin coated with carpenters glue. Once that dried, it was covered again with a layer of more newspaper. By doing this, I was able to feather the new skin into the older one. A light layer of spackle was applied and later a thick latex primer.

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Mantecoza Steam Horse – Guest Blog by Diane Cook: Part I

Hello! In order to share this fine article with more people, I invited Diane Cook to re-post her experiences in modeling a steampunk style mechanical horse. Diane has generously agreed and offers these reflections:

Arizona has a small independent film community that relies mainly on volunteers to work on their projects. Last summer, Emmy award winner David Stipes and I met many aspiring filmmakers at Phoenix Comicon.

One project that caught David’s attention was the steampunk fantasy, Mantecoza. It centers on the character of Sebastian King, an average office worker, who is suddenly thrust into the neo-Victorian world of Mantecoza, where he struggles to learn how to be a wizard in order to fulfill his destiny. The realm of Mantecoza presents as an alternate steampunk fantasy reality, which the Wizard of Mantecoza accesses by a magic ring.

After meeting with the creator, Sue Kaff, and looking over the script, David felt more steampunk qualities could be added to the film. His idea was to build a miniature model of a steam horse for a forced perspective shot. Although the model would only be about 12 inches tall, with the camera close to it the model would appear larger and in scale with the live action background.

Inspired by Dutch artist, Theo Jansen’s strandbeest, David created a concept design of a horse powered by steam.

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Building the “Normally This Weird” Death Ray Weapon part 4

Here is the challenge: how to construct a detailed prop with virtually no budget. Well, there are some strategies for accomplishing such a task. 

If you have a lot of money, time and resources every part can be meticulously designed, rendered or blueprinted . You can take the designs and manufacture every item on your prop by hand or subcontract it out.  Or you can do as our little team did for the Death Ray prop built for “Normally This Weird,” the Sci FI web series. Read the rest of this entry »

Building the “Normally This Weird” Death Ray Weapon part 3

As I mentioned in my prior post, my friend Diane Cook introduced me to a fantastic, low cost craft material that we put to use in a number of ways on our death ray prop and on a put-it-together-quickly  “time machine.”

What is this material?

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