Posts Tagged “Creature effects”

Quick update – I’ve been painting the cast.   It’s nice to finally see something of what this will finally look like.  Still need to add hair, teeth and some mechanisms to allow the face to move.

I’ve done the first cast from the werewolf mould. I’ve previously only made pour and injection moulds, this time round I’m pasting the silicon into the mould as the silicon I’m using (Tinsil) has a thixotropic agent which you can use to thicken it up enough to make it brushable. This was then backed up with a layer of fibre glass to support it.

Brushing in the silicon has led to more air bubbles than usual, but that’s not too difficult to fix – as this is a tin based silicon I can use silicon bathroom sealant to fill in the gaps as it’ll bond to it.

I may do another cast and be a little more careful this time round though. I’ve also found you can make the silicon really stretchy by adding an equal amount of ‘deadener’ so that might be worth a go.

Couple of bits.  I’ve actually taken a slight break from doing the werwolves as I’ve been ebaying a load of stuff so I could buy a new camera to shoot the final vid on.

That’s all done now and I’m the proud owner of a Nikon D90 which (for all you cameraphiles out there) is a digital SLR which also shoots 720p vid. The advantage of this over a regular camcorder is you can use your SLR lenses to get some excellent video effects. Here’s some test vid using an f1.8/35mm lens.

I’m also starting to make the molds now- partly because I’ve run out of clay halfway through building the old man so I need the clay from the werewolf sculpt.

Here’re some pics of the old man:

And here’re some pics of the molds:

I’m laminating the plaster with glass fibre to give it some structural strength.

I’ve finished my Oldroid video.  Came out quite well, abit longer than anticipated, but no bad thing I guess.  Already thinking about the next one, which will feature werewolves ;0)

Been filming my ’short’ Oldroid video.  I had only intended it to be a minute or so long, it’s getting on for about five minutes now!  I’ve done an arm for the Oldroid which he’s been lacking up to now.  This was sculpted in chavant and I decided to do a quick mold with plaster as I didn’t want to spend too much time screwing around with it, however as it turns out using plaster worked out really well as chavant doesn’t stick to plaster.  Having spent ages recently cleaning chavant out of fibre glass molds this is abit of a revelation.  Even better, platsil also doesn’t stick to plaster either.  Awesome.

I was worrying that I’d made the hand abit too big after all that, however I’ve found that if you have the camera above the model it looks OK (phew).

Also had abit of a problem painting the platsil – as it’s platinum based rubber rather than tin based my bathroom sealant / oil paint/ white spirit method won;t adhere to it.  I’ll have  to have abit more of an experiment with that one.

Anyway, just doing the sound effects then the video should be done, wahoo!

Just making a hand and arm for the Oldroid, which he’s been lacking up to now.  Should be able to start filming this next week hopefully :0)

Another pic of the old man mask and also a video.

Here’re some pics of my old man mask which I’ve been painting.  I’m quite pleased with the way this one has come out, looks quite realistic.  Slowly getting the hang of painting silicon!

Slowly getting close to filming my 0.LDroid.  As well as building the background character 5.L.Droid (or something) I’ve also been giving some thought to a set of sorts.  Rather than building a complete set I’m going to be filming this against a black background with some minimal set details in the background.  I can then fill in the surrounding  black edges of the image with some details, perhaps warehouse walls or similar.  It should be relatively straightforward to do this by overlaying .pngs with some transparency over the image.  I don’t want to do anything too detailed, but rather give the impression of the surrounding environment.  I want it to be quite dark and ominous.

To this end I’m going to be purchasing a black background.  You can get a 6m x 3m backdrop for about £40 off ebay.  I already have the stand so that should be more than enough.  I can trim it to size (6m x 3m is way too big).  I’m also going to be getting some gels (transparent coloured sheets to change the colour of the lights).

The horror film I did recently really showed me the value of good lighting.  I didn’t really consider the effects I did for that project my best work (I didn’t think they were bad, but they’re not amongst my favourites) however having them lit and shot by a professional crew really elevated them to look much better than they otherwise would.  Check out this still by the DOP Stephen Murphy.  Looks fantastic.

Something that also really demonstrated this to me was a video by a very nice chap I met working on the film named Dominic Hailstone.  The video’s called The Eel and is absolutely incredible, especially considering this was all done with puppets and animation with no CGI involved.  Dominic is doing a short piece for the horror film  so I’m very much looking forward to seeing what he comes up with.

All this has made me realise the problems with my previous projects; the lighting and camera work has never been very good.  In my defence, the FX are my focus and I’ve never really learnt much in the way of lighting or camera work, only what I’ve had to out of necessity, however done properly they really do add so much to a project, so I’m determined to try. I usually just stick a light on it, make sure I can see it and crack on.  Bit more thought on this aspect of the video this time round I think!

The pictures dotted about this article are my initial attempts.  They were done with a simple red cloth chucked over the spot light I was using.  I also used a blue LED torch to highlight the puppets face to make it stand out.  I’m hoping for some slightly better shots once I’ve actually got hold of some less improvised kit!

For the ’set’ I decided to incorporate the mold that I used to make the puppets into the film.  The idea is that it’s a machine that produced copies of the droid.  In a very real way, it is.

I have another motive for taking these pics; my brother (coincidentally as it happens) has almost finished writing his steampunk inspired album ‘Spinning the Compass‘.   He’s nicked a pic for the cover of the album so I figured I’d do some slightly better ones he can use (these aren’t them though, so don’t nick these just yet Tom!).  I’ll also likely be using some of his music for the vid.

I had intended to post some casting pics when I was doing the zombie mask but didn’t quite get round to it, so I thought I’d do it here.  The sculpture was done over the same head as the zombie mask:

The two halves of the mold are placed over the ‘core’.

Silicon will flow through the mold within the cavity between the core and the outer pieces of the mold.

The two halves of the mold are then bolted together and ‘bleed holes’ are drilled.  These will allow air to escape the mold as the silicon is injected so that air bubble do not form.

The molds then turned upside down and a large syringe which I made out of drain pipe is inserted into a cavity within the core.  The silicon flows into the mold through the top of the head and up through the interior.  The bleed holes are blocked off with blobs of clay as the silicon reaches them.

Once the silicon’s set the mold is cracked open.  Here’re some pics of the silicon cast fresh out of the mold and also with a coat of flesh coloured paint.  It doesn’t look quite so orange in real life, think it’s the flash that’s done that!

The painting’s not finished but I’m quite pleased with how this has turned out so far.  Painting silicon is abit of a pain and it’s only recently that I figured out how to do it – there’s very little info out there detailing this.  The only thing that sticks to silicon is silicon, nothing else will adhere, so if you use any type of regular paint it will either not dry or flake off once it has.  You therefore need to actually paint the silicon with silicon.  You can’t actually buy silicon paint (well that’s not technically true – there is one company that I know of that does it, but it’s quite expensive) so what you need to do is mix a pigment with silicon and use that as your paint.

I’ve found the best way to do this is to use silicon bathroom sealant mixed with oil paints and thinned with white spirit.  As the bathroom sealant cures it will chemically bond with the rubber making your pigment part of the piece.

This works well with the silicon I’m using as they’re both tin based silicons.  Some silicons such as Platsil, which is used extensively in the FX industry, are platinum based so I’ll need to experiment to see if this method will work with those.