stinky kitty

a buttcat, to be more exact.

action cat

he's a simple cat. an early to bed early to rise sort of guy. never late to work. eats breakfast at the table. keeps his apartment tidy. a real understanding sort of cat. a simple cat that also likes hip hop.

new filmmakers film festival

plumbers tale screened at the new filmmakers film festival at the sunset gower studios last week. that is me on the left looking all glamorous in my sunglasses and flannel shirt channeling my spirit animal, jeff bridges. the other two i am standing with are the directors, ama birch and jasser membreno. ama brought the words, jasser brought the vision, then me and jasser brought it to life.

it is fantastic to see this film starting to go places. i hope it keeps on going!

ewok village

posting stuff i made for the robot chicken star wars episode III special in one big chunk here. i wish i had a camera with a fish eye lens because a lot of these sets were BIG and it would have been nice to get the whole thing in frame. working on this project was a fantastic experience :]

ok, so this set. was my baby. when i found out i was going to make the ewok village i got kindof really excited. i think i filled my life quota for nerdyness during the build for this set. i love ewoks. i want to live in the ewok village and drink ewok juice and yell YUB YUB from my ewok hut and raise my tiny spear. i don't know what ewok juice is but i'll leave it alone. anyway...

BEHOLD! the construction of ewok village.


utilizing some forced perspective on the bridges.


little platform i made to fit around a little tree


the little ewok hut on the platform in the tree was a recycled element from an older r.c.s.w special, but i think that was the only re-used element. that and one of the platforms.


you can see a bit of how i constructed things in this behind shot.


this is where that fish eye lens would have come in handy. you can't even see the other bridge on the right.


i tried to get some good shots on stage but there was never really a good time with this one. i did manage to come away with a few decent pics though.



i made a bunch of those trees in the background, too. me and two other coworkers. we made over 40 trees in total. half of the trees were used here for the ewok village and the other half were swampy trees used for the dagobah swamp. sadly, no pics of those.


i think this is my favorite shot

naboo

this was the largest set element i made. i carved the cliffs of naboo out of two 8x4 foot sheets of styrofoam. i killed two hot wires trying to carve these cliffs (but in all fairness they were already dying).



the scenic artist painted these up and then i wend back in and added some greenage.


each cliff had a crevice for a waterfall carved out. the water was added in digitally later.


after all the buildings were set up i wend back in and added more greenage. a lot of it. (i did not make the buildings. but don't they look fantastic!)


this set was too much fun to photograph. i decided that that i am going to retire to naboo in my older years and this will be my summer abode. it is the most charming, i do think.

odds and ends

tiki torches


graphic that i did some magic voodoo to for the wampa gas station skit


i would like to know where this prop ended up... there was quite a bit of activity going on around me when i was painting it in my computer. i tell ya man, i work with the BIGGEST nerds <3


guitar hero guitars for the seth green and george lucas puppets. made out of that material that is like styrene but is thicker and softer. ack! i can't remember the name. anwyay, both were meticulously carved and sanded to look as identical as possible. YES the whammy bar animates!


got pictures of the paint job only after the shot was animated. only one pictured because the other wandered off to seth's office and didn't make it back, so i was told.

inside the sarlacc pit

this one was a buddy effort between me and teresa. we got skillz and we know how to represent, yo.



the back wall of the pit had soft spots made from stretchy fabric. the set designer made an animateable mechanism that pushed into these spots to give the effect of something moving or being digested behind it. as you can see it was super effective. it actually digested teresa.


you can sort of see the mechanism below. the top is all me and teresa, well what was left of her anyway. lots of chicken wire, fabric, glue and latex made this monstrosity come to life.


i got the BEST photographs of this set.

tatooine set

first set i made for the robot chicken star wars episode III special. this is uncle owen and aunt baroo's house on tatooine. the house started as a salvage from a previous r.c.s.w special. it was just the large dome and square base at first. i added the sections that stick out as well as had to hollow out the inside of the dome which was a solid piece of styrofoam.



the house actually goes below ground so we had to do a few special things to get everything functional such as cutting a hole in the main floor of the set and adding another floor below that for the puppet in the house to stand on. you can't see them in the shot but there are stairs that lead down to the door. that little hole to the right of the door is a control panel of some sort that i made a graphic for.


finished set with a coat of paint from the scenic artist. props (most of them) and side structure are mine as well.


and that concludes the pics of the r.c.s.w III build. i hope you had as much fun looking as i did building :]

the best gift ever

in the spirit of the holiday season! (you'll have to click on it for the larger view)

another diorama. this one was for a friend's birthday. didn't really have a master plan for this one, made a few of the little guys out of extra propoxy i had mixed for things at work and things just organically started to take shape. the case is an old tupperware container :]