Illustration: Super 8 Movie camera

This is based on my Super 8 Bell and Howell movie camera from the 80s. Might be the 70s to be honest! I LOVED that camera. It could do 18 and 24 frames a second, record sound and do single frame. So it was what I first started film work and animation with. 

It only took about 6 hours to finish and I left out some details, mostly the text and numbers on it but it still came out much more photo real than I was aiming for. It was black but I added a brown tint to the plastic body when I realized by looking at reference photos that the plastic often had a brown tinge to it. The Xray view that shows the vectors always make these things look much simpler than they seem when you are making them! 

Poster project: War of the Worlds (1953) (finished)

 

I decided on a look I thought fit the film and it's style. The stars are a photo I took in Colorado years ago with my brother and the earth is a 3D render I made in Cinema 4D years ago. I had the planet mars and the martian probe ready for the poster but that was way too crowded and counter to my ideas on what I wanted it to look like. The title is remade from the original poster and I used Paramount logo from the 50s. 

Illustration: Loretta

 

My nephew has an every growing number of dogs these days. I was at his farm for his wedding and sure enough, a new one! She was so cute! She was also really active and getting clear shots to work from was a little challenging. I think this has some life to it and movement. 

Poster project: War of the Worlds (1953)

 

Another poster project caught my interest. I love the martian designs in this movie and the film is really good despite it's departures from the book, maybe because of some of them. The Martian probe and war machine are pretty slick looking. I remade the original poster logo and I would like to draw the arm and three fingered hand of a martian. Not sure how I will fit it all into a poster. My plan is to draw elements I find cool basically and then see what i come up with.  All drawn with Affinity Designer like the last poster. So far anyway. 

UPDATE: Martian arm

Illustration: 1915 rue de la Visitation

 Finished another building I see on my walk to the gym. I will do the one next door as well soon, it's more interesting building. As usual, I HATED this until I was almost done. Then I was fine with it. maybe it says something about not giving up or maybe I'm just not looking at the process of doing these in a positive way. I like the end results and I guess that is what matters. 

Poster Project: The Day the Earth Stood Still (finished!)

 

After about 35 hours of work this poster is done. I thought I was done earlier but I rewatched the film and noticed some robot details I missed. After drawing the elements in Affinity Designer I moved them to Affinity Publisher and composed the poster, added the title and other information. I made a 1940's- 50's style earth that was to go under the hand of Klaatu but it didn't look right and didn't really add to poster for me. Gort, the robot, was a bigger challenge than I thought as he is smooth, reflective the costume lacks some details, his superman undies always look a little goofy to me but I knw why they are there from a practical costume making viewpoint. 

I would like to make a "war of the Worlds" poster from the George Pal movie but I have come up with a decent way to pull it off. I might have to make a 3D model of the spaceship, the creature, the martian probe... maybe all of that and work out my composition when I see what looks good or not. 

Poster Project: The Day the Earth Stood Still

 I have been drawing a local house recently and, as always, until I reach I certain point I HATE it. Every single house drawing has been like this. To give myself a break I became obsessed with doing a poster for The Day the Earth Stood Still. I am drawing the elements separately and will arrange them in Affinity Publisher when they are drawn. I am using only vectors in Affinity Designer. I would like to maybe try a realistic portrait in Designer and all or mostly vectors and this Michael Rene shows me... I'm not there yet. I do see my getting there though so it's a good step in that direction. 

Below is an "Xray" view of the drawing that shows the lines some light greyscale but not the shading and tones. some invisible elements like the mesh show the entire mesh of that before I distorted it. This took 15 hours to drawn and the Xray image makes it look WAY too easy! 

I would like the poster to have an art deco feel to it and I had a composition in mind but after an online search I saw someone else had done something very close to what I was thinking so I will have to come up with something else. 

Gort the robot will be next. The saucer is already done. I still have to decide on the logo design and how much information like cast, studio etc I want on the poster. 

Animation project_ The Paranomral Challenge

 Lots of issues came up over the last week on this project. Rendering any animation crashed Blender or worse, the entire OS. I planned to use the less precise but much faster Eevee render engine but it looked pretty bad. This was a disappointment after all the new improvements to it and having found it excellent on my last animated short. Cycles, the more precise engine was going to take 14 minutes a frame over the 30 seconds for Eevee but I managed to find ways to cut that down to 1.5 minutes a frame and they look pretty good I think. 

Before I can go too much further I have to record the voices. I hope to do at least my part this week and set up a date with Mike to do his. I think the delivery box is a too smooth so I might rework that and I have written what will be a VERY complicated site gag that will involve going from 3D to 2D and I have only the slightest idea how to do that. 

Festival win: The Hound at the Dunwich horror festival.

My film, The Hound, won an award at the Dunwich Horror fest for September! 

Animation project: The Paranormal Challenge

 

Working on my second Blender film. I hope to make a few funny shorts about a skeptic offering 200 000$ to anyone who can prove they have supernatural powers. Of course they are all crazy and try his patience. The first I have the somnambulist for the silent classic "Cabinet of Dr Calligari" predicting the skeptic will die before dawn and they have to sit there all night to see if he is right or not. 

I have spent a good month on the street and interior set. It has taught me more about using Blender and I hope will get me farther along in using the program.