Two years and no posts. Awesome.

Dang. Has it really been two years since the last post? The sad truth is that we're not much farther along. Need to make this a priority. I guess it's a good thing that no one reads this blog .

The Scientist-Version 2a (a.k.a-"What? An actual post? No way. I thought they gave up.")

Wow. Was my last post really in June? Are we really only 15 days away from Christmas? Crap, where has the time gone?

Well, I'm already behind schedule and over budget, which should come to no surprise to those who work with me. We scrapped the last armature that we made for our Scientist character, you remember, the one we posted about back in June, and have started over. You may ask why did this happen? (when I say "you may ask" I actually mean the 4 people who are actually reading this. You know who you are Andy, Glenn, Ben and Dad. Thanks guys.) Most of the reason we started over is because of my vain pursuit of perfection, which here is a word meaning "coming as close to what's in my head/Holden's head as possible and not being too embarassed to show it." I had started making the Scientist at 8 inches tall. Sounded about right, no big deal, until I realized that there would be no way on God's Green Earth my huge sausage-eating-fingers would have the ability to make characters at a smaller scale. (Which, unfortuanately will be neccesary.) So now the Scientist is at an 18 inch scale, which I'm also hoping will make prop hunting easier. (Look out Barbie aisle, here I come!)

Any how, here is where the Scientist puppet is as of today.













All in all, I'm pleased with where he is going. There are still a few things to do, but I have to say that I'm pleased with how he's coming together. More importantly, Holden is pleased with how he's coming together.




Things to do to complete the Scientist:
• Make a resin casting of his head. (so it doesn't shatter when we drop it a million times.)
• Figure out how to make the replacement mouths. (should be fun.)
• Add some details to/finish the lab coat (needs a pocket, wear & tear, and straps/buckles on the back.)
• Final paint on the resin head.
• Hair (what we're making that out of I have no idea.)

I'm hoping the two of us can tackle these last few things this weekend. The goal is to have the Scientist done and ready for animation by next weekend. When he's finished we start the King of Death himself. The King of Death starts the story as the innocent, small son of the scientist and, through situations beyond his control, is transformed into the blood-thirsty King of Death. It's this transformed King of Death that is the next puppet in the production line.

I'll get new photos of the Scientist up when he's finished next week. Sorry for the shoddy posting, I'll try and do a better job from here forward.

Later.

The Scientist

Well, just like everything else in life, this project is harder than originally thought. Holden and I have just started the wire armature for the character known as "The Scientist." As you can see in the picture, he's pretty rough at this point. We have created him, or begun to create him, using rolled aluminium wire and plumbers putty. (Hardens like steel in 20 minutes!) We have taped up the joints in what I'm sure will be a vain effort in adding extra strength to the aluminium wire. (My fear is that it will be easily broken from too many bends during the actual animation of the movie.)

He may not look like much, but he's got it where it counts. Over the weekend we will be adding foam to build/form "muscles" and to fill him in a bit. We also hope to give him a head and dress him as well. We're hoping he will have hands soon, I've got to locate some liquid latex first, but wanted to get something up here for the three people who are actually keeping up with the most mediocre blog ever.

Holden is getting really excited. I just wish that there was a way to get this done faster before he loses interest.

Check back next week to see the finished puppet!

Son of the Monster.

I've always been head-over-heels in love with in stop-motion animation and classic monsters. As a kid I'd anxiously scan the TV Guide hoping to find one of the many Rankin & Bass classics or an old Universal Monster movie to watch. (Remember the days before home videos and DVD's? Back when things like "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" were actually on TV and could only be seen once a year.) Every saturday afternoon in good ole' Wisconsin my mom would tell me to go outside and play as I'd flip over to chanel 9 from Chicago and catch whatever crummy movie the local horror host, The Son of Svengoolie, was playing. And every halloween I'd pray that one of the chanels would be playing my favorite Rankin/Bass collaboration, "Mad Monster Party."

Now I'm in my mid-30's, married and have two kids, and work. All the time. My son Holden, who also shares his dad's affinity for the good old fashioned spook show, wrote a story this year (in first grade) called the "King of Death." It's the your typical feel good tale about the young son of a mad scientist, who unwittingly gets into one of his fathers expierements and transforms himself into a flesh eating skeleton/boy/monster. Yeah, I wonder what his teachers think about him too.

I had been trying to think of something creative to do together over his summer break, and after reading his story I asked him if he thought he'd be interested in making it into a stop-motion movie.

"Yeah, that sounds kinda' fun. Let's do that," was his response.

We plan on building our sets and filming this little movie entirely in our garage. My wife has said that our budget better be the smallest budget ever or she's leaving me. (She also said that I had better follow through and actually finish something for a change. Ahhhh...the love of a good woman.) We are currently designing the sets and concepting looks for our characters. As soon as we have something to show I'll get it up here. This thing will probably suck. We're not the wonderkin artist/animators that you can see anywhere else on the internets. Were a father/son team trying to have fun and do something we've never done before. Check back and let us know what you think.