Thursday, October 31, 2013

Deck Destruction!



On the deck of the Defiance ship, the barrel and cannon that falls from above will leave behind some destruction. Our old deck splats were flimsy and the wood very thin. The paint job and over-all quality wasn't so good at second glance. So last week I made to more with thicker wood.

The bases of these are flat and will be glued down to the deck after the barrel falls through in order to give the illusion that the wood splintered up from the center. I may need to trim it all up before shooting, but am happier with the way they turned out.

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Fish Beer

So what's on the drink menu when you're out at sea? What else but a foamy, warm fish beer! In our last home, the heat in the garage caused the Sculpey barrels I made to shrink and crack. The paint job wasn't the greatest, so I repaired the barrels and gave them all a fresh coat of paint.

The next thing was to come up with a design for their labels. Something descriptive, simple and easy to understand. So out came the pencil, ink pen and water colors. Then they were applied with some Pros-Aide liquid to make them stick. I'm pretty happy with them. It's just a matter of adjusting things for the shot and hot gluing them all down.


Friday, October 18, 2013

Captain Lock Jaw

Captain Lock Jaw is the fierce character who was swallowed by a salt water croc. Originally this character was swallowed by a shark, but I changed this and am happy I did. I think the new concept will look much better.

So here is a rough design I made on graph paper, painted with water colors. I can't wait to take this sketch and turn it into a clay maquette. He seems like a good puppet to make using a foam latex head, considering his jaw would be tough to animate if it were clay. The only issue is the colors might be too lively for a zombie, so I may mute them a little on the final design. We'll just have to see.


Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Re-animating Rubles Rope Scene

The shot where Rube is about to grab a rope was re-animated. Why? Find out and how I made an even stronger scene.

New Animation on the High Seas!

The first new shot in almost five years has been completed. Well....unless I decide to re-shoot it later on today. I'm not completely sure I like how it turned out, so we'll see.


Monday, October 7, 2013

Rubles Patched Foam Latex Body

Well, Ruble has seen better days. It was time to fix up his body and get him ready for animation. The good news is he's ready to animate! However there were a lot of steps getting him in tip top shape. Watch the video below to see what was involved and how to avoid the same mistakes we made.


Friday, October 4, 2013

New Logo? Maybe....Maybe Not....



I had a little time over the week to sketch up a Zombie Pirate Tales logo. I'm not sure if I'll use it, but I thought it might be fun to make it in 3-D out of clay and other materials. The only issue is that it might not be easy to read the letters or make out what they might be at first glance.

So should I stick to the old logo made of fonts? Or the hand drawn logo? Time will tell what I end up using. What do you think?