Say Hello to my Little Friend!

This is the GEOmetric Cyclops vinyl model kit, produced some time in the 90's I believe and long unavailable. Man I love eBay!! A vinyl kit is hollow and kind of squishy/ flexible, and the way the parts pop together it can be re-posed like an action figure. Some people keep that articulation, but I'm going to pose it the way I want and putty the seams and paint it up, after filling with resin to make it heavy and solid like a sculpture rather than a toy.

There have been several Cyclops kits made, both resin and vinyl, but most of them didn't really look much like the real deal. This one is spot on! It comes with two right hands... one for holding the club and one for... um... NOT holding the club, and there are two heads. The other head is the two-horned Cyclops. Pretty cool, but that one was just a bit player in 7th Voyage... I wanted to build the REAL Cyclops!

After moving into my new house, one of the first things I got was the amazing book Ray Harryhausen: Master of the Majicks vol 3, which has been incredibly inspiring. That chance purchase has seriously influenced my decorating choices! I'm setting my animation studio up in the basement in this cool big room that has a narrow shelf running all the way around it.

Aw geeze... now I guess I need to get some pictures... much easier than trying to explain it. I'll post those soon, but let me finish my story...

Anywho, I have groupings of DVDs and VHS tapes displayed on the shelf in places, and I've bought a lot of posters to hang beneath the shelf. I decided since this is my animation studio I wanted the entire room to be a shrine to movie images from the films I love, so the posters are all from classic monster movies and stopmotion flicks, plus I've been going crazy buying up 8 x 10 photos and lobby cards from King Kong and several Harryhausen films.

And I decided the spaces in between groupings of DVDs/ tapes needed statues and models.

I also have an Ymir and Gwangi on the way. More pics when they arrive!

Let there be (more) Light!!!

This, my friends, is what I call the Lightcannon.


It's a further refinement/ modification to the Solux Framing Art Light. I detailed my first round of mods to it in these posts. It worked, but with some issues - namely, due to its rather rickety construction and pressure-fit components, it had a tendency to sag and droop like a Dr. Seuss Spyglass, making it very hard to get precise accuracy, plus once you did get it aimed where you wanted, it could slowly droop... impercieptibe except when played back in your animation, when it becomes VERY noticeable. In fact, I have an example posted. Check out the background lighting in One Good Yank. This is unacceptable... in stopmotion everything must stay exactly where you put it until you move it yourself. 


I partially solved the problems with this makeshift brace made from a turkey skewer:

It did snug up the assembly nicely, countering all that cartoonish sagging, but it's bulky and dangerous -- those chromed points sticking out right at eye level. Also, the yoke attaching it to my lighting grid was weak and couldn't be secured very well. I tried using a piece of folded-up paper jammed behind it, which helped somewhat but not enough. 

So today I set about to improve it. 

I started with one of my tinkered-together Blackbirds:

... based on the discovery that the snout/ yoke assembly from a cheap PAR16 (known as a Birdie) pressure-fits perfectly onto an ordinary track lighting unit. As so:

Here's one of my Blackbirds, with the Framing Optic Assembly of a Solux Framing Art Light laying next to it: 

I tried fitting the Adapter Ring into the snout:

Success!! It fits, nice and tight!! 

So I fitted the rest of the Solux assembly in place...

So far, so good... but when I plugged it in to test it, a problem:

A LOT of light leaks out as you can see. All this spill light sprays out onto the set where you don't want it. Wish I would have got a picture of that. But then, this tut is already ridiculously long and filled with too many pictures. Anyway, my first attempted solution was to jam some Blackwrap in there:

It's designed for use with lights to block out unwanted spill. But it was impossible to arrange it right in there, too many compound curves to deal with. I could have just wrapped it around the outside of the fixure, but I wanted a clean permanent solution, not an ugly blob of black foil hanging from my grid! 

It didn't get rid of all the spill:

So I decided to try some Epoxy Putty:

... And Voila!! No more spill!! And not only is it fully functional now, but it looks a heck of a lot like a high-tech Ellipsoidal fixture...

... Which is exactly what it is really. 

I've also ordered another 3-unit Tracklight kit from Lamps Plus, a couple pairs of the cheap PAR 16's from Musician's Friend,  and another Solux Framing Optic Assembly. I'm glad I detailed out exactly how I did all that modding, because I'll need to go back and check my notes for specifics. But when I'm done, I'll have two more Blackbirdies (for a total of 4) and another Lightcannon (to make a pair) to add to my lighting grid... that should be enough for just about any lighting situation. 

*** EDIT***

I came up with a better name than Lightcannon. I'm calling it the Ellipsis. An ellipsis is those three little dots that represent missing text... 


Yeah. THOSE three little dots. Essentially it's an edit used to shorten something. It's also used in filmmaking, with the same meaning. It's an edit used to cut out unnecessary action or time... example you see someone go to bed, then cut to them waking up in the morning. It edits out the 8 hours of them sleeping.  So, an Ellipsis is an abbreviation. In this case, MY ellipsis is an abbreviation of an Ellipsoidal spotlight! 


Heh... I tried a lot of names for it... Mini Ellipsoidal, Micro-Ellipsoidal etc... too much of a mouthful!! But now that I've ABBREVIATED it, it works! so...


ellipsis it is!! 

t(h)INKeRING....

Well, as you probably already guessed, I'm in the process of tinkering around with my blog... thinking out loud as it were. Changes will be coming fast and furious for a while as I zone it in (yes, I finally broke down and decided to switch over to the new blogger templates... which aren't all that new anymore!) The reason I waited so long to do this... it means adding back in all the links in my sidebar one by one. A massive chore, that I was dreading. But I'll do it little by little, mercilessly pruning out old ones that don't belong anymore, until it's back up to snuff.

Recent clips - because the YouTube versions SUCK!!!

I just went in and watched some of my clips on YouTube. Ouch!!! The Tube uniformly destroyed all of them!!! Smooth animation looks extremely jerky, the clips look dark and grainy. Geeze!!

Let me apologize in advance for the size of these clips... and also for the way they'll automatically open and start playing full-screen and looping over and over. I had them set up to do that on my computer and forgot they'd do the same for anyone who downloads them. But all you have to do is hit the ESCAPE key on your keyboard to stop them.

So, since I have nothing actually NEW to post, here are a few clips you may have already seen crappy versions of:

One Good Yank

Processed Yet Again

Shrug Tests + fast run

Don't just click on the links... for some reason they'll show in bad aspect ratio. You need to download them - that's right click on a PC, control click on a Mac, then select the Download option (might be called something else, but you know what I mean...).

Finally, you get to see these clips the way I see them!

* Restoring the clips to normal:

To shut off the looping and "open in fullscreen" options -

First, if the clip is still playing fullscreen, tap the ESC key to reduce it to normal size. Now, while it's still playing or at least selected, go to the Quicktime menu bar that's showing across the top of your monitor and click on the Edit pulldown menu. Where it says LOOP there should be a little checkmark, meaning it's currently activated. Click on it and the checkmark should disappear. You've now disabled looping. You can re-enable it at any time by again clicking LOOP.

To disable "open in fullscreen" and "automatically play when opened", keep the clip playing and go to the WINDOW pulldown menu of Quicktime. Click on "Show Movie Properties". This opens the Properties window. Across the center of it is a row of buttons: Annotations, Resources, Audio Settings, and Presentation. Click on Presentation. The check boxes for "Automatically play movie when opened" and "Enter fullscreen mode when opened" should be checked. Uncheck them and close the box by clicking on the red button in the upper far left corner. Now when you close the movie itself a dialogue box will open asking if you want to save the changes you made. If so, click SAVE, or if you want it to open fullscreen and start playing next time, click DON'T SAVE.

Armed with this info, you can now set any of your own clips to play fullscreen when opened, and to loop automatically if you want. I do that for clips I want to study, or ones I just want to watch a lot.

Where I've been

OK...

*Takes deep breath, lets it out slowly*

Here's how it happened. It was May 13 - 2 days till tax deadline. I decided to go online and do my taxes as soon as I got home from work, but when I tried to log on, nothing. The internet was GONE!! :o :o

My modem was broken.

I went to my sister's house and used her internet to order a replacement modem, and had no trouble hooking it up, but it wouldn't let me get online... it needed to know my modem password. I tried every password I had ever used for anything, but none of them worked... I suspect my password was some string of random numbers and letters generated by a computer and I had never changed it or written it down anywhere.

I can't tell you how hard it was to do anything about it... normally when I have a problem I go online and find a way to fix it... but I couldn't go online!! I tried calling AT&T (my ISP), but could never get ahold of anything but a machine. I called dozens of times, and stayed on as long as 45 minutes a few times, but was utterly unable to talk to a human being... just got shunted around to different departments inside the vast machine. Skynet was in control.

Finally I decided it must be time for me to be offline for a while. I have a very Zen attitude - when my life takes a sudden turn like that I go with the flow and try to find the bright side. And I was feeling like I spent way too much time online, and needed a break. So I settled in and gritted my teeth. But still I kept thinking "soon I'll be back... another week or so".

Around this same time my mom started suffering from really poor health. She had already been on oxygen for 4 years and could hardly walk, so I was helping take care of her and her house. She went to the hospital several times in a few days, and it became clear her time was drawing near. Her passing was quick and painless... Hospice had her on a morphine patch, and honestly I think she was feeling better than she had in many years. She felt she had lived a long and fulfilled life, and had always felt that death was a natural part of the life process... she died a very exemplary death. I hope I'm as brave when my time comes.

Anyway, I inherited some money from her, as well as her car and a duplex she had been the landlady of, where my sister had been living. We had decided some years ago that I would move into the duplex and my sister would get Mom's house, so here I am. I got cable, internet and phone hooked up, and this time no problem getting online... I just booted up after the cable guy left, opened Safari, and here I was!

The White Gazelle

Some of you may know the legend of the long lost film The White Gazelle, made by Tony Laudati in I believe 1981 (?). It was featured in Cinemagic magazine long long ago, but until now the movie itself was unavailable for viewing to anyone who didn't know Tony personally. Well, thanks to today's digital culture, it's now available - for 99 cents no less (!!) on a site called Filmginder.

White Gazelle on Filmgrinder

This is an amateur production... shot in 16mm, but featuring some incredible sculpting and in-camera compositing effects. The compositing isn't as flawless as it would be if shot on 35mm film with a pin-registered camera... the 16mm models are known to suffer from what's called "film weave", making compositing effects tricky.

All that said, as soon as I found out the film was available I went ahead and downloaded it. I was able to pay through my PayPal account, simple as pie, and no problems whatsoever with joining the site or getting the download.

I really love the atmosphere of this movie. There's something primal about it... watching this caveman and his woman I get a real sense of how tough life was in paleolithic times, and what's more I get a strong sense of shamanism. Magic and mojo... the basis of all art and performance, leading right up to and including of course stopmotion itself.

Needless to say, I highly recommend this... ESPECIALLY for the price!!

Life begins to stir...

Yes!!! Life stirs once again in the Darkstudio!!! My winter vacation is over and Im back to work on the film!!!

... And what's more, I'm just about ready to start shooting. Hopefully in a few days.

For today's update, I got the bar stools all painted up looking nice and grungy.