Cabin raising

Things are moving along nicely and we are almost ready for our first camera test.


As you can see, the louse and a couple of fleas are in production and will be ready soon, but more impressive is the progress made on the cabin. Thanks to George, Phil and Jon for their hard work on this little set.


Naturally the following pictures are not properly lit nor staged, but they give a you an idea of what the set will look like. Note the intrusion of the louse's chair in the final shot!






Cheers, Neil.

Where we at?

Greetings all,

Time for a quick update regarding the film.

Due to scheduling conflicts and other work issues, progress has limped along - but finally there is light at the end of the tunnel.

The camera has been rebuilt and Jon and I had a comprehensive chat with Tim Taylor about the running of said beast. If nothing else, this film is going to look amazing.

The puppet building is progressing despite a couple of hiccups along the way - hopefully we will have a whole team of these bugs before too long.



If we were making the whole film out of paper and card we would be laughing right now...


As it is, we are making headway with the props for George's marvellous cabin, sculpting everything from high density styrofoam and then sealing them before the paint jobs to come.



I recently did a complete timing of the film as it stands (on paper) and the running time comes to 5 mins 5 secs without credits.
I'll be sending you all a breakdown of the script and timing very soon.

Thanks, y'all.

Quick Flea Test

Jon and I shot a quick test to see if we could animate using a still camera, capturing JPEGs at a high resolution. We actually shot this as a 2K test which is rather extreme, but fun. The result was sharp and lovely, but obviously impractical for compositing (loads of memory needed).



This video is the compressed version, so the quality isn't as shiny. The puppet looks nice under the camera, but I don't like the range of movement in this 'proto-flea', so he will become the flea that ends up bridging the crevice. I'm working on giving the others more mobility.

Neil

Designing the cabin

Using Phil's initial concept art as a guideline, George stepped up and offered to build the cabin for a series of key scenes in the middle of the film.

He began by building a basic model of the dimesions using CG, and then after my approval, he put together a more finished version. This is instrumental in helping figure out how the actual cabin is going to look on set. The following video is made up from a series of his images.



The next stage is a cardboard mock-up. This will help me place it on the set, and figure out the best angles to shoot it at and how well the dimensions will work with the puppets - once all this is finalized, George will go ahead and build the final, wooden version.

Progress

Hello all,

Things slowed down briefly while I tried to complete some other projects - but now we can ramp up again.

I have placed an album over on FaceBook showing the progression of the mountain and fleas - figured that was a good way to get some immediate feedback.



George is making headway with the cabin, and Jon and I are about to run some tests with the camera - come and join us if you are free.

More updates as they happen,

cheers, Neil.

ruff fog pass test

Hey every one
thought id post an environmental fog pass that i was working on today, if you have any comments, ideas, and/or a way you think the fog should look please do share.

More marvellous mountain.

Here are some shots of the mountain set in its semi-finished state. Just needs a coat of titanium white to get it looking crispy.

Jon diligently adds snow as a flea begins an impromptu ascent.



The final peak.



We had a great session with Tim Taylor (motion control guru from 'Coraline') on Saturday who taught us all we needed to know to get the camera up and running. We are going to shoot some test footage soon which I may actually cut into a rough version for timing purposes. We are also looking into replacing the current camera with a Nikon D90 with an 18-200 mm lens for a beautiful HD picture.

My next priority is to get the proto-fleas finished so that we can test them - and then I'll be calling for prop-makers once we have their scale nailed down.

Thanks everyone!