Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Hittin the bottle - plus possible Prometheus prerelease????!!!!

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Wow, did you ever notice how everybody uses the most worn out cliches for their blog titles? And also (allegedly) alliteration. Oh well... whatever you can come up with in about 12 seconds I suppose. Anywho, like I mentioned last post, I've been busy making bottles lately. Here you can see the first few castings, alongside the original sculpts. I've improved my technology along the way.... the first few bottles came out pretty rough-surfaced, covered with fingerprints that I couldn't see in the sculpts, so I started sanding them down and gloss-coating. They came out much better, though I wish I had caught it before baking the sculpts so's I could have brushed them down a lot smoother (beats the hell out of all that sanding, which doesn't get everything anyway). And don't ask about the colors.... they're crazy I know. Only the dark green wine bottle looks right to me. I'll get some glass paint and try to fix them.

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Here are the molds, cobbled together from whatever I could find that looked the right size (some of them had to be extended slightly with epoxy putty - the containers weren't quite tall enough). I'm using EasyCast clear casting epoxy, made by Castin' Craft. I originally went in search of their more familiar polyester resin, which stinks to high heaven (it's the same stuff used in fiberglass) and discovered this odor-free 1:1 ratio epoxy, which sounds a lot better to me (I always hated trying to figure out how many drops of catalyst to add to that polyester crap!). I got their mold release, used it on most of these, and tried one without.... turns out you don't need it in a silicone mold. Good, because it's a pain to apply!

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Here's the biggest problem.... tiny bubbles. Thousands of them! The instructions said this can be caused by using the epoxy cold and to warm it in hot tap water for 10 minutes to avoid it. It doesn't work! At least for me it didn't. But I guess I can live with it. Heck, bubbles almost look right in beer or champagne bottles (only they shouldn't be frozen in place!)

Here's a nice little trick I discovered too.... after they set up completely (which takes three full days, during which time they're like soft, pliable and very sticky gummybears!) and you've cleaned up the castings, hit em with a coat or two of clear gloss spray. It takes off any dullness and makes them shine like nobody's business. Next up, making labels and painting the caps.

In related news (sort of) I just found this on the Bright Eye Pictures website:

"I hope to have the DVD (Prometheus' Garden) ready for sale on the Bright Eye Pictures site..... by December 1, 2007. "

Posted the 1st of September, but as yet there's no mention of it on the site, or on Bickford's site. Getting excited though (and I also just found out there's a lot of cool stuff on the Bright Eye site.... goin to check it out as soon as I hit Post).

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

ph my god. man you have been working hard. it all looks totally fantastic!
i am so excited to see what you come up with. wish i could watch you work.
Scott Radke

UbaTuber said...

Gummi apothecary? :)

Nice work, I can't wait to see the set all dressed and ready. I actually kind of like the craziness of the bottles' colors!

Darkmatters said...

Hey Scott, great to hear from you! And thanks.

This is the part I dreaded about making this film.... all these tiny little bottles. I'm not entirely happy with the way they look, but they'll do. Labels whould cover most of the bubbles and flaws.

I just wish I could achieve a more unified look for everything.... my bodies aren't half as cool as the heads, the set is all straight lines, and now the bottles are all twisted and tilted almost like something from Nightmare Before Christmas! I do want to learn how to mkae more twisted setpieces.... one day I'll make that a priority. But there's no going back now, it's all getting mashed together into one film.

And Uba - sitting by themselves the colors do look kind of cool, but they really don't look like liquor bottles! I think they'd work for a more colorful film with toylike puppets, but they don't really go with Scott's darker, more gritty look. I hope to fix that with some paint.

Anonymous said...

i think they look perfect. i think they ad color to the heads. maybe dirty them up but other than that i think they're great!
Scott

Darkmatters said...

Ok, you got it!!!