NEW NICKY RASCH MONSTEROUS SCULPT!

It took no time at all for our son Nicky to bust out this POWERFUL!!! diorama sculpt of two of his own characters from the comic book he is working on....

Meet THORN (the big guy) and the book's hero COLE (dangling from Thor's right hand, or at least most of him is......that would be Cole's left arm in Thor's left hand).

Our oven is too small for such a monstrous scuplt so Justin and Nicky, undaunted, improvised a way to cook the sculpy..... (you know the old "cardboard box as oven technique").

And then 2 seconds after Nicky finished this sculpt he started in on his next, a free standing one of COLE......so more pics to follow soon I imagine.

Had to post these cuz we are CRAZY PROUD of Nicky, the kid has mad VISION, SKILL and STICK-TO-ITIVENESS, the world is his!

IM DONE SHOOTING!!!! June/ 10 / 2008

Hey guys!
Thats it right there.......The last Night of me animateing in the Garage on {Geralds Last Day}.

WE did it ......I am finished.........Notice the stressface.... with all principal Photography...Ha!!......... After 2 and 1/2 years of not sleeping and spending the darkest evenings with a bunch of magical little puppets! I have seen them work slowly through the night and would awake to proof of LIFE the next morning. How freaking amazeing!!! In traffic on the way home last night I was just tripping at how every single FRAME of our film I touched physically with my hands. I pushed and pulled and twisted, sculpted molded.......
When I see the finished film I will see shels painted strokes and the peeling paint{MY GRIMEY hands messing up her paint job}....Ill see the amazeing sets shel made for me...her fingerprints.....her acting advice. This is why I chose to do stopmotion instead of CG again. Its all right there and We are responsible for EVERYTHING. Shel input the last shot which happened to be the first shot of the film last night after our date. It looks good and The film is capped{Begining and Ending}. I crawled out of the garage on Tuesday morning at 6:00 am.....and I was finishedno more long nights ....no more hard shots....Im done!!!

Now......into the next phase - I am presently doing my last freelance job for about 2 more weeks.....{another character for a cool new game coming out}then I can focus completely on post. I will be going through the film from begining to end cleaning up every shot and outputting an Uncompressed Quicktime movie for shel to pop into the edit. I sceduled 2 months for this but it will probably take less time.

Part of the post on this film will be adding effects.......removeing wire......deflickering......and adding time here and there for longer shorter pauses where shel cut in the edit. I also will be compositing a few of the 2d thought bubble sequences into the real shots. All of this for the final DVD.......We will give our composer the Locked rough edit to score to while we finish up the cleaning of frames.

By the way --the film is 10 minuets long - much more than I thought it would be.....{originally thought 5 minuets} but I dont think its boreing at all and I hope people are moved by it.

Shel is going to be looking into Film Festivals , she will also be putting together the final edit with Sound effects while thinking about a trailer for our film.....thatll be fun!!!

I was thinking of asking our grandfather who played the {Rich guy-Richard Wealthington} to use his POWERFULL preacher voice to do a cool voice over for the trailer. It could be really awesome.

otherwise Im really really happy! and can believe Im finally here. I am dieing to share the film and cant wait to see it on the bigscreen!! So many cool experiances ahead.

plus I should start catching up on my ZZZZ's very soon!!! YES........

justin

KICK happens!!!!

Soooooo,

the post title says it all. I was about halfway throught the Poodle intro reshoot when I pivoted on my Left foot to take a pic with the mouse... My right heel just clipped the tripod base and it was all over.....NNNNNNOOOOOOO000000oooooooooooooooooo..........Total perspective Shift.

I tried to save it......I came up with a scheme of inserting a poodle point of view shot....."Yeah thatll work " So I finish this MASSIVE 40 SOME SECOND SHOT .....and then we throw it into the edit. KICK IN THE BALLS!!!!! doesnt work.
.......so shel trys about 3 different edit ideas before we decide Its ANOTHER reshoot for me. Ha!!! I have shot some form of this Animation at least 5 times now. I am almost at the end of my energy guys....{Im just Tired}......well almost...... So I use my Incredible Super Human Discipline and schedule in one more go.....Heres the RAW Sucessful shot that FAILED....DAMMMMIIIIT!
Part 1


Part 2


next......Happy Hills shot.{which by the way went EXCELLENTLY!!!!}Sweeet!

I finished that shot and before I awoke the next morning shel had torn down the hills set and rebulit the pound exterior for the last go at the poodle sequence. I got through last night and its looking like Im through the hard part. One more night in the garage {TONIGHT-Monday - June 9th 2008} and I will be officially FINISHED}

Thank GOD!! Stop motion is freaking TAXING!!.....really hard and I need a Break.

In other NEWS-

We have decided on a recording studio with our composer Robert Litton- Capital records....AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Saying Im excited is an UNDERSATEMENT of the Hugenormous PROportions. He also decided on the ammount of musicians{between 10-15} and the instraments needed for the job.

Ill list out all the details as we approach the scoreing. We are scheduleing getting in the studio in July so Its all comeing together so nicely.

another moment of note....My grandmother is comeing out here to visit in a Couple of weeks and I am going to screen the cartoon for her. She is very Old and I really dont know what to expect she will think. The medium of stop motion is a really crazy thing and I doubt shes seen it before. I hope she likes it and I will post the results.

more to Come soon.

jriggity

ANATOMY OF A HAPPY ENDING......

Here's some progress pics of our LAST SET of the film......where Gerald and Edwardo walk off into the sunset together.....
JUSTIN'S ORIGINAL THUMBNAIL

a MOCK UP with old TOBOGGINS and BLANKETS

MARKING the mock ups WITH NUTS ON STRINGS hanging from the ceiling

matching CHICKEN WIRE to the NUT MARKERS

PAPER MACHE-ING THE WIRE with clothes starch and heavy paper strips (as per paper mache master Shelley Nobles' advice)

making the TIE DOWN ACCESS friendlier (less pokey)

more MACHE (3 coats)

a few coats of PLASTER PARIS, some PAINT, and a top layer of POLYESTER FIBER FILL that i picked up at the fabric store (thanks again to Shelley Noble who pointed me to a Nick Hillingoss link over on stopmotionanimation.com describing how he made some great hills).

i glued the fiber fill down WITH A GLUE/PAINT/WATER MIX to make it stick and give it color. (i first tried dying it with fabric dye but polyester doesn't really take dye so good it turns out.)

the front hill looks too smooth here so i roughed up the fiber fill, and glued dirt from the garden down to the path....

made a sun out of a light fixture cover

painted the backdrop pink to put sky in post......

Justin added LIGHTS last night........

.....And soon we walk off into the sunset......

shel