I dunno if this is gonna work (shopping in a background. Doesn't look bad small, but I don't think it's workable when you sees it full size. May have to make at least one layer of trees, etc.

Gibbet. Gross. Not quite done. Gotta rusty up the cage and build pole it all hangs from. Gross.

Backgrounds. Without building them. HDR pics of the woods. May combine Woods HDR with built foregrounds. These BGs is no good. Too much direct sunlight. I.E. too many hotspots, which makes for a busy composition.

The rusty guys are the 'hell soldiers'. I really wanted to avoid the fantasy-Warhammer look for em. More like a crude mockery of the real. Or something. Sho' is a lot of stuff in this film. Gee whizz. That's it for the soldiers though.

I think I made seven jackets, seven helmets, assorted belts, bandolier, one pouch, one pike, a halberd, a matchlock, a musket stand, two flags, 6 breastplates, etc. Beaucoup crap considering how little sceen time they get. But it was fun.

Maybe two more tiny flags. Something that isn't orange.

Almost done the soldier business. Which is good, as i'm getting a bit sick of it.

A couple more wee things, then that's it for the soldiers. Should probably make some pants. Gonna make a couple cheap heads, but that process involves alot of waiting. Gonna do that concurrently.

A few flags are the next step.

Helmets

They ain't quite period (1640-1670). Or rather they are, but they of a rare type and not worn by pikemen. But who cares. Their benefit is clear - they hide the face. And if i'm assembling an army out of interchangable parts, sho' is easier if I don't need to build an army of heads. They gots some HDR going on. Most of the soldiers will be non-animated stills, so i'll be able to HDR em' if I want.

This head is a little too big for this armature and the helmets. Gonna make a couple cheap-looking heads that are a bit smaller.

Soldiers

There's a couple scenes where soldiers stand around as extras. And there's an ear;y scene where there's an assload of them. An army - though we won't see but a part of the army. And they'll be almost all just stills (no animation) To get around the impossibility of making an army, i'm making a bunch of accessories, all built for the same armature. So I can mix and match interchangable bits to make 'new' costumes.

Boy, sure is alot of stuff in this movie, I was pretty cavalier when planning this thing. Beaucoup props. This was a fun one though. Only one day. Feels like i'm spoiling myself, getting to see something from start to finish in one day. Might do something tedious tommorrow, or spoil myself more with more quick stuff.

Need some extras; 16th century armour and weapons. Fun.

Now I gotta polish off the interior. Don't want to spend too long on it; i'm already over my time budget for the carriage.

I took one of these pictures and some frames of other characters from other scenes, and put them together in a shot it AE. Very useful to do. I noticed that, of all the surface area in the interior, there's actually only a couple little spots that get alot of screen time. I.E. I should spend my time on these spots. Rather than making a really nice floor, for example.

Some slightly-out of date pictures (a couple days old). The pictures seem to turn out better when they start as full-size jpegs. See the little footstep thing below the door? That's what I was making when I hacked my finger. It just had to have that little compound curve on it.

Gave my finger a bit of a slice on Sunday. Had to get stitches. It happened in some strange sequence of events - blade got stuck in a block of wood, snapped, block of wood slipped. Or something like that. But I can still work. Though my right hand isn't as mobile as before.

Inches away from being done the carriage. Should be able to make the cushions for the inside today. Might add some paint to the inside - a nice naval buff maybe.

Fooling around with what the lighting might be like for the climactic scene.

Getting close to done. Still some details left to do. Haven't attached the cab to the undercarriage yet. Gonna be careful about the wheel placement. Back wheels need to be a bit more forward, and the cab about 1/4" higher. Might add paint to the undercarriage. The brownness is a little suffocating.

Just so everybody knows, I have to moderate all comments on my blog. 19 out of 20 are porn-site spammers trying to increase their Google rating.

Allright. Now I finally have some time/inclination to write a little. Not much of a blogger. Would rather work.

Carriage is getting pretty close to done. The glossiness is creating alot of work. I'm not even sure if it's a good idea. The 'boot' (sticky-outy part at the front of the carriage) was glossy, but I was finding it to hard to get it smooth. Balsa don't varnish very well. So I gave it a final sand and gave it a coat of matte polyurethane. I'm digging the bright orange. It's the official orange of the film. Gonna make multiple appearances - the carriage, Lord William's flag, his footmen, and the dress he gives Anna Maria.

The wheels weren't easy. Took lot of head scratching before I figured out a way to do it. Couldn't cut them out of a large single piece of balsa, as balsa snaps easily along the grain. So I laminated two pieces together, with the grain perpendicular. Then I hacked them out with a blade. The result was crude, but I found that gluing a thin piece of basswood along the inside and outside fixed up the wonkiness.

Getting there. The undercarriage is pretty silly. I like it. Very swoopy.

I'm gonna change the colour scheme a little. Gonna replace the reddish-brown panel (see top photos) with a bright red orange. Also gonna keep wet sanding and painting the orange and black until they're nice and smooth.

Gonna have to build the damn wheels soon.

The assembly (bottom half of top photo) is the fore part of the undercarriage. It's not realistic and doesn't function, but it doesn't matter. Just has to give the impression of a bunch of metal junk down there.

I slapped some stain on the carriage in its 'wood planking' state. It was all wrong. Looked very rustic and earthy. The owner of this carriage is supposed to be aristocracy. I began laboriously filling and sanding, and priming, and filling more, and sanding, and priming. Trying to get an automotive-like finish. Not perfect, but enough to sell it.

How you like my ridiculous viking horn? Gonna put a pair of smaller ones on the front. Not very period, but screw it. Should look scary when it burns.

Trying to be methodical with this thing - taking shots, identifying what needs to be fixed/covered up/emphasized and working my way through the list. It's already turning into one of those things wherein I work on it for 8 hours, and nothing seems to change.

The interior has come out a bit Hobbity.

Plans have changed for the carriage; was originally going to be just one element that we'd see at the climax - now it's going to make multiple appearances throughout. It therefore needed to more of a 'set'; removable walls, of a certain size, functioning wheels and doors etc. Also needs to be quite durable to withstand all the handling. Rather than being something we take three pictures of only and put aside. Also helpful being wooden, so we can char it up for the last scene. Meaning partially burn it. There were two scenes that were going to take place on two unique sets - we've scrapped them and put them in the carriage.

Am I getting anywhere with these character studies? Not sure. They're fun though.

It takes a pretty strong conscious effort to draw differently than I usually do.