Rubles July 4th Fish Beer Shot

How else would Ruble celebrate July 4th? By being animated grabbing a mug full of Fish Beer of course! Here's a video that I put together to show what was involved in this simple shot.

Site and YouTube Channel Update

It's been a long time since I did any major updates to our YouTube channel. Some of our oldest Zombie Pirate Tales videos were well....severely lacking in excitement. So I scratched off a few which I don't think anyone will miss.

Each video also has a nice graphic (as seen above) revealing what the video covers. Anyone looking at the videos in the YouTube channel playlist will know roughly what they contain at a glance. After so many years of making videos, it was a much needed addition! What, you haven't subscribed yet? Well, you better do it now, or you'll be walkin' the plank! Here's our main YouTube channel.

We also bought back our Zombie Pirate Tales forums. Previously when we added them, we got spammed by a TON of gnarly scum sucking vermin from the depths of the deepest gorges. Luckily our new Captcha boom stick scared them off and it seems they are too scared to come back.

The forums may not become a bustling city of scruffy bearded (and eye patch wearing) fans, but that's ok. They are safe to use for the time being.

Rubles Crash

Ruble turned out to be tough to animate for this shot. It was take two, the first take revealed that the aging armature under his body isn't strong enough to do what I wanted. So a compromise was done and you can watch the result below. One of the issues I had was figuring out how to transition from his stunned state of mind back into reality before he looks over to the Fish Beer. I thought of adding a pause before he looked over but made him look almost immediately. It comes across as if he is surprised at what he bumps. So in a way it still fits in. I might re-shoot the scene the next chance I get, but will see if it works when I edit this shot into the rest of the film first.

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.

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.

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.

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.