Looking good.

I am hoping to have everything built and ready to go by the 8th Dec. There may be some painting to do but everything should be built. The new Laure is looking super sorry no pics. And a new animatic is on the way.

animatic time

Starting to read a lot better, but it still has a way to go.



ctnx got my design brain going.

was able to make some fun stuff and rule out some looks.

Testing testing 1.2.3..

So I made a test for the whole puppet pipe line and this is how it went this week.

1..Sculpt
2..Cast
3..Paint in latex
4..Armature wire body
5..Foam it up
6..Paint
7..Sleep

Here is how it looks with the test.

Some of the steps worked out nicely. And for the most part I would say I doubled what I know about puppet making with foam and latex. To be done with a hero puppet for the next week it is going to take all I got.

Voice Record

The voice record was a smash. I was running a little late, but when the ball got rolling things came together nicely. Laura and I were able to work with a native French speaker to get her voice were I wanted it, and Jim's voice was on the money the whole time. All and all it was a lot of fun and big step forward on the project.

This week I going to polish the animatic with the new audio and some temp music.

au revoir.

Big big week

So here are the sculpts of the Laure puppet.

The first pass has the right look, human but cartoon in proportions.

This is the new version of Laure, that I made after the loss of the first one.
This puppet will have longer arms, and a replaceable head.

Here is the head sculpt, I want to have the tail of her ponytail to be all done in replacement. The head will be a block with a wire jaw. That will be covered in latex, and then the mouth will be done with replacements.

Here is a 3/4 look. In the final puppet I am going to have more of a curve to her body.

I have to make a trip out to Motion Picture FX again for some HydroCal. The experts have all told me that the plaster was not a good choice for the casting.

ON THE SOUND FRONT.

The final auditions are 10/18 and I have some fantastic actors coming in for HANKS part, and just in time with the VO record Friday afternoon.

I am all so talking with a composer to help with the musical arrangement.

Well on the note I was able the get the script in to the hands of 3 different French speakers. Their notes have been incorporated in to the script, and Laura and I have work-shopped it and everything is reading nicely. One of the biggest changes is that there is almost no line where the characters are talking over each other.

All that said things are moving forward, and I am going to have all my puppets their clothing and sets and props done by the end of this semester.

Half full.

So this week I got my 1st sculpt done for the Laure puppet.

I started the casting but the mix was bad on the plaster and it was DOA the next morning. It spoiled the sculpture in the process. I was feeling pretty crummy about it, but I learned so much in that first run.

I was able to meet with Professor Brooker and ask a lot of questions about:

Schedule, process, where I was maybe fooling myself and where I could push harder, etc. He also reminded me to build in time to experiment on how things will work, not work, and look (e.g. camera movies, waves, puppets). He also reminded me that some stuff may not work out on the first try (like casts!). But all in all, he felt things were in good shape. Granted, I talked with him before the casting drama.

I have already sculpted the puppet again and I am going to try to talk with Justin before moving forward. While that’s going on, it's on to the next puppet HANK.

On the voice over front I am trying to find a way for the potential actors to post voice over sample clips of my script so I can hear what they sound like. And I emailed Bethany Sparks about setting up a record date.

Lots done the week, but lots more to come.

I am still behind on my build but I was finally able to get out to "Burman Industries" and "motion picture fx company" and after throwing in Lowe's, Blick and I looking pretty good for casting and pouring foam latex.

Also spent sometime at Micheal's trying to problem solve my jungle bg woes. And I looks like i am going to build trees out of "Chavant clay" and then paint with a water base add moss and foliage from Micheal's. That how I did the tree "here"

Posted my casting calls on two on line casting site and after there reviewed and okay-ed I will post links here. Things should be falling in to place nicely.

I also have some thing for the actors to read now.

page1
page2
page3
page4
page5


Well hope you like it.

The animatic is the posted in last weeks blog but there is no sound track. So it only really helps with lay and timing issues. Out of the two the one that needs the most mouth to mouth is timing. Just going make part of going through it and asking myself what do I want people to think here, and is that happening or not. Right now things are move so fast that some of the beats are last. So I make them bigger and clearer or i will just slow it down. Right now the run time is under 3 mins.

The script looks long because it has the subtitles written in.