Animatic for Surge

Animatic for war of the worlds SURGE

so finally here is the animatic, we can now see the vision in my head that we are trying to create. none of the sounds are final i just used a few free sounds and a few recorded tracks we did in the recording sessions. all comments are welcome :)

Read More

INVASION!!!!!!!

the studio is being invaded by the 1953 version of war of the worlds

Read More

The church set construction 2

been an amazing week this week, everything has started clicking into place. Its been hard doing so many little things at once but finally we can now start to see some results.

This week Naomi Bennett was able to join me and Joel on set building, and did an amazing job on building armitures for the trees,. we discussed different ways of creating them and i decided on wire and tin foil would work best for the result i wanted. so i asked her to just give it a try and see what you come up with. I wanted to see if Naomi could figure out a better armature than the one i had designed. this is just because i love trail and error when creating, "if things don't go wrong from time to time we dont learn" plus who knows what you can create if you don't try yourself. After a few try's i showed Naomi the way i had designed and she sat down for a few hours and create some great armitures.

 

 

Naomi's fully covered tree (super sculpy on top of wire and tin foil) i then sculpted into the tree and heated and cooked it.

one cooked and sculpted tree :)

 

 

 

one finished tree (amazing)

i did this just to give an insight to the direction the set is going

constructing the church (maquette to finished set)

foamboard with plastercine add ontop (for sculpting the stone work)

front of the church

Naomi still building trees :) and Joel painting the path

 

 

 I decided that with Joel's amazing talent of detail painting (warhammer) that i asked him if he wanted to build the gravestones for the set, we went over the process that i wanted him to do and he was very happy to go ahead pics below...

foamboard cut outs paint with sugar paint, dry brushed then added toughs of grass. (beautiful)

MR. Joel hard at work

finished gravestones "thank you very much Joel great work)

a very special gravestone Joel did for my son (plants vs zombies)

 "he loves it, thank you)

this week we have had a problem with the path, me! i couldnt decide how i wanted it so we, me and joel re-painted it  and are still trying to get the vision in my head right.

here is the armiture for one tripod leg, all ready for the latex.

armiture legs for the CORE-PODS

the church construction

the back, this is were the cylinder has crashed into

here you can the the troubles we have had with the path

looking good, although that tree isnt going there :)

so a great week and hopefully followed by another very busy but productive week. this week ahead is the last week on the church set and will all be complete by the 2nd of march and we can move onto the village and martian wasteland.

Read More

Main set production...

Its been a bit of a hard week with the main construction of the church set, lots of planning and measuring to make sure everything is to scale, i was hoping to have the main tripod built by now so i could use it for scale, but there was a bit of a problem with the mold drying (the dryer was switched off) and with Daryl off all week ill i have had to wait for the latex part. anyway after a massive clean up of the over messy studio (G-13) the church set has started to take shape...

a nice blank set to start with, although i had to add another A1 sheet of wood to the front as the scale was off for the camera angles i wanted.

building up the foliage parts with foamboard and cardboard.

and sealing the midsections and edges with masking tape

adding two layers of paper Masha to the landscape

using the studio lights as heat lamps to force the paper Masha to dry faster, this makes the edges of the paper Masha to rise, creating a bowl structure

Shane smith helping me for a hour painting the set white and picking my brain about set construction for his collaboration brief .

all white now

a full day on Wednesday measuring the church maquette while ill, not a fun day but i had to get on with it.

the maquette construction

finished maquette, you can now see what i am sort of aiming for

the studio after i cleaned it

constructing the church from foamboard

Joel helping paint the set with acrylic and sugar (does not taste nice)

this is to give the path a nice texture for painting.

the church

the small gravestones

at this stage it looks like a primary school set but all will slot into place in time

here you can see the grain of the path

 

 

so a good week finally on production even with illness, but next week see's the finished animatic (ready in time for rushes) and animatrion plus CGI test, more set construction and the building of the main tripod and core pods. a great week to look forward to

Read More