Trailer Technicals and Drop Shuttle Details

Greetings, one and all! Well, now that the Nine Isles movie has been finalized, our focus has pivoted back to releasing it. A lot of research has gone into the different avenues, and people are talking about a premiere, but first comes the trailer! Specifically, me rebuilding the trailer with the newly improved footage.

There were way more technical hurdles to cross than I'd expected, but in the end, we finally locked it off. Well, everything except the end card with the movie release info.

Sadly, this was a week where a lot of team members got sick, so there was no stunt meet, but on the plus side we took the drop shuttle model all the way through detailing, basecoat, and primary paint scheme before the torrential rain of the early weekend.

Next up, all the weathering: grit, grime, and burn marks. Let the games begin...

Well, that's about all for this week. Until next time!

Scripts, Shuttles, and Spears

 Greetings, one and all! This week opened with some very deep contemplation of themes in the current working script, and how best to highlight them. For all the work we've put into it, there's still something that's not quite there, so now we dig deeper into what that may be. Plus side, at least the casting issues of the last couple summers have allowed us to refine the final product.

Next up, we've turned to creating the slightly alien drop shuttle for the mock trailer...

The basic form has been completed, along with the panelization of the bulk of the hull, now we just need to finish the underside and rear, then detail and paint the whole thing. Hopefully we can do that before the temperature drops below safe curing levels.

Lastly, the team met again, and this time focused on training in the primary combat techniques of about five thousand years of human history. Specifically spear/sword and shield. As this is a very technical process, ironically the best way to learn it, after you understand the basics, is lots of full speed sparring.

While even the veterans were challenged by spear and shield, as it has been largely absent from the curriculum of more recent generations, everyone progressed a lot in their capacity over the course of the day. Even those who have something against shields got into the flow by the end. All in all, a very solid training day.

Well, that's about all for this week. Until next time!

Fixes and Fictional Fatalities

Greetings, one and all! Well, this week was... full of emergency fixes. After finalizing the ship model, we checked the hopefully final renders of the Nine Isles movie, only to find some serious artifacting and color banding (where a gently diffused gradient of color instead comes out as multiple hard bands of distinct colors). So a last minute meeting to fix the renders was set up and we turned out new copies of the movie.
Directly after that we tried to paint the first ship before the weather go too wet and cold, but the second coat was put on at the wrong time, turning the whole thing into a goopy mess. Cue us spending the next two days trying to get it cleaned up again, and then repaint it. The basecoat is now on, but I'm a little hesitant to do the next layers after what happened last time, so for now we let it cure.

Next up, the team met on Sunday, and the weather was predictably unpredictable, so we ran a training exercise that could be transplanted into the shop at a moment's notice: rival assassins guilds...

A fun framing device for choreography because it provides some interesting constraints: Don't wake the target, and don't alert the guards. The team was firing on all cylinders, and collaborated really well to make a complex and highly energetic fight scene.

Well, that's about all for this week. Until next time!

Fists, Feet, and Greeblies

Greetings, one and all! This week saw us reach a couple milestones. First off, the final phase of color refinement has been completed. Now all that's left is figuring out how to get the various elements to play nicely together, and make the movie a reasonable download size without creating any grievous compression artifacts. 

Before I get to the next milestone, we'll turn to the stunt team. Sunday saw the team training in the most intrinsic of the martial arts: Unarmed combat. Ranging from teaching the newest recruit, through brushing up technique for the intermediate and veterans, all the way into having our relatively newly minted veteran do some teaching. 

In the process of that, I think we also may have accidentally invented a new training game.

On to our next milestone, this week also marked the first time I have attempted the classic modelmaking techniques called chipping and greebling by the ILM modelmakers. The former being adding even smaller pieces or "chips" of styrene to the model to break of the flat surfaces, and the latter being the use of parts from other model kits in unorthodox ways to add detail and provide some scale. 

It's been a slow but incredibly rewarding process that really makes the design pop. There's still a few more pieces that may need to be added, but after that it's the basecoat that will tie everything together.

Well, that's about all for this week. Until next time!

Ships, Hordes, and Spears

Greetings, one and all! Well, this week certainly didn't let up on the crazy. But, for all that, we still managed to get a fair amount done. For starters, the first starship model is about half done, with the basic shape laid in, and the detail panels added. Here's a quick shot of it pre-panelization. 

Next up, the market research was updated to see what avenues were still viable for getting the Nine Isles project out to the public. After that, still more color correction work on said project.

Last but not least, the team met again on Sunday, and opened with a "Hero versus Horde" choreography exercise, before finishing up with some spear and dagger practice.

This last exercise led to a lot of near-miss strikes that made for a training session that was just about as entertaining as the choreography.

Well, that's about all for this week. Until next time!

Skulls Will Roll

Greetings, one and all! So... life hit hard this week, but for all that we still got a fair bit done. We opened with another day of color touch up, which was quickly followed by life going very crazy for a few days, but we still managed to finish the week with designing and beginning to build the first ship for the mock trailer. It takes a long time to build these things from scratch, but it's really satisfying to see it all come together.

On Sunday the team met again, and worked on a couple different things. The veterans reviewed rolling and diving rolls, our intermediate member learned the diving roll, and our newest member learned the basics of rolling. Of course, this is something you can only do for so long before you become too dizzy to continue, so we then switched up to an exercise where the team paired up, everyone did the same strikes and counters, then swapped partners and repeated the process, going faster each time. 

We did several rounds of this, which was even more tiring than the earlier training, so the team then decompressed by throwing padded swords at each other, which then somehow morphed into a game of toss the duct tape skull...

Which, along with the frequently inverted skulls of our teammates, gives us the title for this week's blog. 

Well, that's about all for this week. Until next time!

Experiments, Improvements, and Flow

Greetings, one and all! After several days of trying to wrap my head around the ship building challenge, I decided to stop trying to do things right, and just try something. The result was turning a large plastic egg into a starship. (Work in progress shot below.) It was a very free-form process, figuring out how to work with the different shapes and materials in real time, along with trying new techniques. The result has a lot of mistakes, but it seems to have broken the initial productivity block on the process. Plus, better to make those mistakes on a test project than on the model you'll be shooting with.

I think it has the look of a freighter or colony ship. What do you think?

Next up, we had a four hour session in a dark room touching up the Nine Isles movie in preparation for release, using the more powerful new tech and the aforementioned friend's greater experience to finalize the color correction on the project. One down, several more to go...

Lastly, the team met again Sunday, and spent the day working on flow...

Working from the foundation of the flourish, we then worked into a strike, then a sequence of strikes, followed up by application via a short choreography exercise.

Well, that's about all for this week. Until next time!