I'm actually working again! Far out. Didn't bring any pictures though.

Lights should be here any day now. Can start working right away when they show up.

Wee hands. They're not great, but they get a pass. Hands are hard. I made them gloved - a bit of cheat.

There's supposed to be some lighting equipment being ordered, but it ain't happening. It's bringing things to a halt, which is kind of bumming me out. Not much has been happening the last two weeks.

Almost done this puppet costume. Boots aren't quite done - they need edging around the feet, and soles. But they're close.

Lord William is coming along pretty good.

I'm getting sick of making puppets. Oh well.

Waistcoat in progress. It's going to look like it's really straining at the waist.

The hardest part of the costume is done; the inner shirt contour thing, and the heavy jacket. It was pretty tricky, but I got through it in one go, without screwing up and having to redo anything. With Cornelisz, I remade the sleeves four times.

It's fun using these three hundred year old patterns - you can see their secret hidden logic when you put them together.

Jacket in progress. This is probably going to be the hardest costume, because of the bulky stomach. The white thing is the stiff undershirt base - i'm tailoring it to the contours. Once it has enough layers of fabic on it, it should hold its shape.

Some of my patterns, ready for printing.

After scaling up my pattern, I print or draw it out, and cut out a rough working copy to see how it fits. I adjust that, then finalize my pattern. The top image is an HDR test of Lord William's jacket material, dyed. I thought I botched it, but the unevenness looks neat-o. I like the idea of nobody in this film looking too clean or even.

Before I started making costumes, I assumed i'd go and and buy various coloured fabrics for various clothing items, sew them together, and that'd be it. Not at all. I've found that only cotton accepts colouring well, and is glue-able. So the process has been to use an assortment of cottons of different weight. I then laminate them together to control the stiffness of various parts of the costume (very important). I then colour them with various mediums, which all give their own level of stiffness. Even in a huge fabric store, there never seeems to be the right colourin the right type of frabric. Regular drawing ink works well, and doesn't increase the stiffness. Acrylic ink (due to the resin) makes it very stiff and crusty. Oil stain looks weathered, and makes it moderately stiff.

I almost feel guilty doing the fun part of the puppets first (costume) rather than the tedious robot heads. But i'm still waiting for clay to dry.

Johannes' and Lord William's jackets (justacorps). I'm feeling pretty pro with the puppet process now - I just do it, instead of sitting there scratching my head for days and staring into space.

This here's an earlier version of Johannes. He's since had his chest mass reduced. But he's done now.

Wooden Armatures

I've determined the limit of my wooden armatures. They're not as good as metal ones. Specifically, the joints can't be made super-tight. We're planning on having the armatures suspended in mid-air via a steel rod at all times. They won't ever have to be tied down to a floor. Though they can be (there's holes in the boots for screws). That means they won't have to support their own weight in dramatic over-balanced poses. The joints can't be quite tightened enough to lock them down and make them immovable. Though i've got other Mgyver ways to do that (taping brass rods under clothing). It's possible they could have been lock-down-able with a much harder wood, like maple, but hardwood ain't workable with hand tools. And they're more than good enough for what we intend to do with them.

On the bright side, they're very fast to make, are super cheap, are endlessly correctable, and weigh nothing. They're so fast to make, they're almost disposable.

In the remote chance anyone reading this wants to make one, here's some technical particulars:

Scale is 1:3 (i.e. a 6' person would be 2' high in this scale).
Wood is mahogany plywood, about 1/4" thick.
Balls are generic wooden balls available at hobby shops. They come with the holes in them. No idea what they're actually for.
Connecting rods are 5/32" brass or aluminum (lower legs are brass). They fit perfectly into said wooden balls.
Connecting rods are glues into wooden balls with 2 part 5 minute epoxy glue.
Hardware:

#6 - 1" metal bolts
#6 metal nuts
#6 washers
#6 Nylon insert lock nuts

Body mass is 1" thick insulating foam.
Foam is glued to itself and wood with 5 minute epoxy putty.

That's about it.

This here is Johannes. He's quite a bit shorter than Cornelisz, and skinnier than anybody. He doesn't do squat in the movie. Just stands around looking worried, and getting attacked by birds.

Found a still easier way to make the body mass - start with one big-ass piece. It's also alot easier to see what i'm doing, body-shape wise.

That's it - Lord William's body is done. Going to start either his or Johannes' costume tommorrow. Maybe both. Here's some sexy poses.

He can't bend all that much - can't do anything super dramatic. After consulting my storyboards, I determined that he barely moves at all in the film. Very stiff snobby posture, and lots of sitting around in chairs. So I was able to preserve alot of his body-mass shape, without having to cut away too much (to allow movement).

Lord William came out pretty huge once I put the foam body mass on. Wasn't expecting him to be so Sumo-ish. But he's slimming down once I have at the contours with a utility knife. The styrofoam is a bit annoying - lots of little staticy bits flying around sticking to things. But it's dirt cheap, weighs nothing, and is easy to carve & add on to. Though I wish I had a fast-acting glue for it. Two-part five minute epoxy is the only thing i've found that works. Everything else eats the foam, or is vastly too slow drying.

His height is just right - a bit shorter than Cornelisz.

Wee armature joints, and my scaled body mass reference for Lord William.

Things are happening pretty fast. Finished two wooden armatures today; took about 4 or 5hours each. Only one minor screw-up to slow me down. I've got my design routine pretty down; I scaled him down (this is Lord William, slightly shorter and pretty hefty), built my armature components, drew them to scale in photoshop, and then figured out the foam body contours. Which I then print out and use for reference. His top chest-area is going to be a bit thicker, neck will be thicker, as will the arms. But this is enough to start carving.

The clay head is an earlier version of Lord William, but you get the idea. He's since become a little less 'The Penguin'-esque. But i've got the jowly over-fed big-gut baroque thing going, I think.

Probably won't be be posting as much junk in the next while; alot of what i'm doing is a repetition of old stuff - not breaking much new ground. Like armatures, body mass, etc.

Day 3 of my 9-day work binge. Last two days weren't very productive at all, really. I forgot that i'm never productive when i'm poor. It's hard making a huge film and making a living on the side.

But i'm working on puppets Henry Ford style - assembly line fashion. The armatures sure are easy to make - not much more left on the two i'm working on. The body mass will take longer, but the process is pretty nailed down now. So should go fast. The robot heads take the longest - they involve alot of small tasks, and waiting in between (for various things to dry). The plan is to go back to the costumes/armatures during those down times. For the previous puppet, I did jack during the down time, as it weren't fun at all and I was happy to stop.

Finally plucked off the old screwy eyebrow, and put on two new ones. Was pretty awkward business. But I got it done. There's just a few tedious chores left to do - no fun.

Just a couple more pictures.

About to start my 9-day work marathon. Let's see how much I can get done.

Turned out it was the shoulder flares that were screwing up my junk. That, combined with the lens foreshortening of the photography I was doing. I took em off, and he looks way more natural now. He's going to need a little flare, to cover up the shoulder joint. But they're going to be more restrained. He doesn't look as cool in the wide shot, but screw it. This angle is more important.

I finally got around to fixing the eyes - it was a bit nerve wracking. It would have been a disaster if I had made a mess of it. It didn't go smoothly, but there's a bit improvement (see top, unfixed, photo, compared to bottom two). I'm glad I did it. This medium shot you see is going to be the most-seen shot of the whole film. Now it looks like something I can get behind. I've been avoiding side-angle shots, as the eye area wasn't seated properly onto the eye balls. So you'd see little holes around the eyes which looked fake-ass. But now he's good to go.

It the top shot, he looks like a dumb mule. In the bottom two, he looks like Mr. Evil, ready to cook up some evil stew.

But it's still fun anyways. Wouldn't be nearly as rewarding if there weren't hard problems to solve. Got nine days off in a row coming up - gonna try and make huge progress. I'm already thinking of many ways I can cut corners. There's a character in the first scene - a guy with his arms tied back - who doesn't do squat, and he's only in about 4-5 shots. He's going to have a similiar build to the Lord William - so I'm going to build that armature, and just make a different (very simple) costume, and a non-animatable head.

There's something bugging me with the thing - he looks fine in the full body shot, and he looks fine to the naked eye (as opposed to the camera). But when I take a picture of just the upper torso, something feels wrong. It's not bad, but this is the angle and puppet that's going to get the most screen time in the whole film. So it's going to bug the crap out of me every time I see it. So I have to fix it. Luckily, it's just a matter of altering bodymass, which is fast and easy to do. I'm having a hard time pining down what the trouble is (see second from top photo with all the photoshopping going on). It seems that his chest isn't wide enough. But when I fix it in photoshop, it doesn't feel like the problem is solved. One of my earlier pictures (top photo, left hand side) feels just right. Hard to figure out why - nothing has changed. It might be because you can't see the outline of his chest. But I think it's more than that. The goofy shoulder flares might be making the shoulders too straight-across-looking.

Started on the hat today - fun. There's thin brass strips inside the brim so's I can bend it how I like.

Otherwise, almost done. It was pretty fun and didn't take too long - been about 2 1/2 weeks for the costume, working part-time, and with quite a few redos. There's still a few things bugging me - the body mass ain't quite right. Gonna make his butt bigger. And maybe widen the chest a little.

Made the boots. It was a bloody awkward business; it's impossible to get leather to bend smoothly at that scale. I ended up by just covering up the glitches with leather strips. There are tightening bolts for the armature ball in there - the leather strap and buckle covers up the access flaps. Didn't turn out super great, but more than good enough for their purpose.

Did a pretty important thing today; I have taken next to no sideview pictures of the thing. That's cause it looked wrong-ass. I added a large amount of bulk to the waist, to fatten him up. It immediately felt more real, and correct.

In other news, exciting stuff is happening. We've got a workspace - an office/studio in Chinatown. The power there sucks, but Mike Addison (post guy/editor, etc.) is having it fixed. And Dave Sikma (DOP) is going out and buying all sorts of nifty lighting gear. And everybody's getting pretty pumped to start filming. It's nice to have the old crew back together, and excited for a film.

There's been all sorts of talk about how we're going to do the filming. It's going to be pretty fancy pants. A typical set up will have: the character suspended in mid-air with a rod coming out the back (a' la 'Nightmare Before Christmas', a great way to animate without having the character actually support its own weight all the time), a greenscreen, all sorts of wacky rods and lights, me with a Mac laptop (coming in the mail) running 'Dragon' stop motion software, Dave running around with a lightmetre, and Mike A. on his huge mega-powered giant-screen Mac cranking the shit through AE. Should be fun.

I'm at that stage with this thing where i'm working alot, but nothing much seems to be changing. Getting lots done, but alot of it is just little chores that aren't apparent. Made some pants and underpants. I wanted them pretty tight, but I was having issues with the knee bend- there had to be alot of extra fabric to allow them to flex. So I figured out a way to do it; elastic clothing hem material. When the leg is straightened, the elastic pulls em back up, nice and tight.

It's nice to have an idea, and have it work the first time.

The costume stuff has turned out to be pretty fun. I was a bit worried, as i'm not much of a seamstress, or seamer, or whatever. But things are going pretty gravy.

Almost done. The sleeves were a real pain; i've got quite the pile of half-done failed versions. They still aren't as good as my initial accidental mockup (I used a failed poofy pant leg). Oh well. They'll have to remain a golden dream of poofy sleeves that never were.

Been going on a bit of a tangent with the costume. I like it better than my initial design, though. That's the neat thing about doing pretty much everything - you can go off and go wherever your fancy takes you. If I had people working under me, they'd have to follow set plans/designs, regardless of their capacity to improvise. Or maybe not.

I still suck at sewing. It's been pretty much all glue.

Here's another look at that nifty 'high dynamic range' photography. Photo on the left is the middle of three exposures, photo on the right is resulting HDR photo. Much more greasy and gnarly.

Gonna redo the sleeves. They're too poofy and pirate-y. I don't mind them, but I made an earlier mock-up (left photo) that had a real sweet 'bloom' to it. Gets poofy, but only in the middle. Observe the superiority of poofiness of left hand photo to right hand photo.

With the magic of obsessive-compulsiveness, I can make it happen!

Almost there. Got some staining to do, sleeves to fix, pants, darkening, and padding to add. But almost there.

Cornelisz is looking a bit haute couture.

The costume is coming along pretty quickly; it hasn't been easy, but there haven't been any major stumbling blocks or issues. Which is nice for a change. Might even finish it in the next few days. Which means i'll have a whole puppet done, whoopee. I'm backing off on the period-osity with the costume. I tried a few real specific embellishments, and they turned me off.

Should be able to start staining and mucking up his coat pretty soon. That'll be fun. Going to be pretty dark overall - lots of dirt, grease, and earthtones. To match his habitation.

In progress. I'm gluing fabric on to a leather backing - makes it nice and stiff. This is still pretty unfinished, uncoloured. But it;s coming along fairly quickly. Almost got a puppet! His outfit is going to be a real dirty old patched relic. Like it used to be aniced coat, but now its decayed. Also going to put lots of gold lace on it, but stained dark and threadbare.

Its a visual metaphor, kids!

Its not easy, but its working. A pic from earlier today; my rough colour plan.

I've got loads of reference pictures from all my research. Coming in very handy. Even had a pattern for the type of coat that I want. In this picture, i'm photoshopping it to scale.

Loads and loads of HDR fabric tests. Different combinations, different staining, etc.

I photoshopped me up a final costume design. It's crude, but it's my favorite way. Separate all the parts into layers, and adjust the colours.

Turns out I may be able to use leather after all. It does have it's advantages. The stiffness is actually going to be helpful.

Learned lots today; HDR and fabric doesn't get along very well. Natural fibers are the worst - the weave becomes emphasized to a huge degree, and really wrecks the illusion of scale. My initial idea was kind of a greasy leather thing - that's out. Leather doesn't make sharp enough folds, and it's obvious it's leather. Which wrecks the illusion.

Suprisingly, it's synthetic fibers which work best. Fibers with an extremely tiny weave, but not shiny.

I'm off to the fabric store tommorrow morning, armed with dozens of HDR fabric test shots.

The eyebrow is sucking somewhat - gotta fix it. Other than that, that's pretty much it. No more head stuff. The hair was easier than I thought. I did a bit of a botch job, but it looks alright in the pictures. Now it's on to the costume.

So close to being able to shoot, i'm drooling.

I'm attaching hair/beard to the Cornelisz head. It's a bit awkward and nerve-wracking, as I know that every little hair is going to get more screen time than anything else. Hopefully it won't suck too hard.

Almost there - almost ready to make some actual shots. Been dicking around with various After Effects tricks - simulated camera movement, motion blur, parallax movement, etc. I'd like to be pretty well versed with that stuff before we start. Everytime you discover a new technique, there seems to be a brief 'honeymoon' period with it, where you want to really emphasize it and use it on everything. Then later on, you calm down and use it more objectively. That's where we want to be when we're actually shooting.

couple quick track tests, at different exposure times. A bit hard to see the results at such low res. But its something fun to look at.

We've been doing more photography test of the set. Some of this shit is pretty dry, but i'll try to lay out some of the technical stuff in case somebody ever reads this and it's beneficial.

We think we're going to be able to do HDR tracks (high dynamic range). That is to say, we'll be able to move the camera itself incrementally (taking a frame each time) to create the illusion of camera movement. This would let us make much more interesting shots. As well, the HDR shots have a graphic, 'storybook' look to them. When you see them with a still shot, they don't look real. But when the camera starts to move, something interesting happens - the objects register as 'real', but strange (good) looking.

The problem has been an extreme flicker that shows up when we do the HDR processing on a camera track. We thought it was just inherent with HDR, but maybe not. What it seems to do is emphasize any flicker dramatically. We also think that our lights are flickering in very subtle ways that don't show up until we process them in HDR.

So, the answer seems to be very long exposures, that average out the flicker. As well, we'll most likely be getting one of them 'power supply' boxes that give you an even, regulated supply.

I like this one. Most of them havent been too hot.

Couple more HDR pics. Still not right. Need to make the back wall lighter than the rest, with a nice gradient. Doesn't work compositionally otherwise.

Mr. Head, in HDR. With a bit of hair taped on. Though, if Dave can't solve the HDR flicker, we can't do it this way. Bummer. Head is pretty much done. Now it's beard and costume time.

Here's a quick track test with the current set, after strong HDR processing. This ain't supposed to be a good shot, or good HDR, or good lighting, but it tells us what we need to know. The original flics have a tiny bit of flicker, but the HDR processed shots flicker like a bastard. Dave thinks it's due to the basic nature of HDR. There's been other tests before and since; Dave thinks the problem might be solvable, somehow. I'll try to include technical details if we do solve the problem, for the benefit of others. If it's not fixable, that means no tracking with the sets. we can do imitations of pans via wide stiches and AE, which will let me do what needs to be done. But it'll be a bummer if we can't track.

Things are moving along now. Dave the Photographer is back, and helping out. Which is good, as i'm no pro with the lighting and whatnot. We gots a camera, software, and a place to shoot the big-ass greenscreened armatures.

We've been doing tests with tracking shots with the set. Multiple exposure HDR shots. It ain't working - the HDR processing is erratic, and flickers. It's looking like we're not going to be able to do camera movements with the set. Oh well. We're going to do some AE parallax shit instead with layers.

We gots a new camera and software. We're doing some HDR tests; HDR batch processing, in particular. Or, whether or not it's possible to take multiple HDR frames, same shot or otherwise, and make them all look the same without any weird HDR rendering glitches or flickering. Seems to be working so far.

A few knock-off HDR pics. They're a little over the top.

You can see how this works.

It's a bit awkward to use, but in retrospect, i'm pretty lucky to have made anything that actually works at all in any sense. It was a bit overambitious to attempt this kind of animatable head. So i'm going to count my blessings and move on.

Drilled all the peg holes, slapped the mask on. and did a quick test. A little crude, but not bad. The eyebrows didn't work - I omitted to hollow out the resin shell behind the attachments - i.e. they bulge out & get stuck. But it works.