Cruising Through the Effects

Greetings, one and all! What to say that hasn’t been said… Well, for starters, Hunter’s starship shots for the first two episodes have been completed. With the process locked in, we turn our attention to the Imperium cruiser, and how to turn a small model into an imposing warship. I turned to the guys at ILM in the 80’s for inspiration on that one.

 

In the middle of the process, the team met, and this time we took on sword and shield. As it places more demands on an individual’s static strength than the longsword does, we’ll doubtless be revisiting this again, until everyone has a firm grasp. (No pun intended.)

 

For all the work that is done, I feel like these blog updates should be longer, but keying and animation eat up the hours faster than one might think. So, for now, enjoy the pictures, and we’ll see you next time.

Until then!

Ships, Stars, and Sky

Greetings, one and all! This week has, again, been ship-focused. We made another pass at picking up the remaining shots, and continued the long and tedious process of integrating them into the episodes. Timing the movements of diverse elements, especially when you lack a motion control rig, is a challenge all its own. To up the fun, the effects software decided to crash every time we pressed a certain key combination. A very common key combination. Thankfully we resolved that in an hour or so.

The screen capture above is one of my favorite shots, due to its elegant simplicity.

Sunday, the team ran through more sword plays, before integrating what they’d learned into their own fight scenes.

So, good progress has been made, despite inconsistent take speeds and crashing effects software.

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

Taking Flight

 Greetings, one and all! As slow as last week was, this one has been the exact opposite. The framework for the crystal tower was finally painted, for starters. More significantly, we’ve managed to shoot 90 percent of the ship shots! Dodging between rainy days, we set up the dolly, and various support mechanisms for the ships.

This was followed by far too many hours of us doing take after take, trying to make the jury-rigged assembly work for the shots we needed. As the less agreeable weather returned, we dodged back inside, and started refining the effects shots, slowly turning them into the final product.

Sunday, the team met, and ran through yet more sword plays, until they were tired enough to start getting sloppy with their technique.

All in all, a very productive week, despite the sunburns.

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

Preparing the Supporting Tech

 Greetings, one and all! Since this blog week began with the Fourth of July weekend, progress was offset a wee bit. Thus, our update will be brief. Sunday saw mostly the newer stunt team members assembling, so we taught them an assortment of longsword plays.

It’s been a while since we’ve just had the newer members, so it was fun to go back to basics in teaching and developing the next generation.

The rest of the week has been dedicated to preparing for the ship shoots. First off, we dug up the old dolly, left unused since Othersight. (When you mostly shoot in the woods, the thought of carrying a heavy piece of equipment a couple miles for a few silky smooth shots loses most of its charm.) We cleaned and repaired it, then tested it, to make sure the bearings weren’t gummed up.
After that, we turned our attention to building armatures for the ships. They are currently undergoing multiple permutations, and we don’t have any pictures of that process, just yet. If all goes well, when you do see them, they will probably be holding ships in front of a green screen.

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