Vexxarr News

News from the world of the online comic Vexxarr

Thursday, March 15, 2007

As Promised...For Those Of You With Long Memories...

Ok, remember that timeI told you that Vexxarr would be late?

Right.

Let me be more specific.

Remember when Vexxarr was late. And I told you this was because I was building a castle? And remember that I added the fact that said castle would be detonated?

Well here are the photos:

The castle is assembled from cut bricks of green florist's foam - aka GREEN DEATH FOAM (not to be confused with YELLOW DEATH FOAM but that is a matter for a later post).

Here is a view from the back. I'll only be sculpting what the camera will see. Well, to be honest, given that this is a favor and on short notice, I'm actually dictating the camera angle by how much castle I am willing to sculpt. A tactic only advisable when the director is a friend of yours.

This is the finished model armature. I begin sculpting here. The foam is rigid but soft. I use a #2 philips head screw driver to etch the rock details in the foam surface. I'm wearing a resperator and surgical gloves. This stuff is nasty.

Here is the thing sculpted and primered. To be added: individual rock coloring and a door.

Another angle because I love you so dearly.

Here is the castle primered, painted and with it's door. The door is a sculpted piece of foam with two eye hooks used as knockers. Note my photo reference in the lower right. The castle is quite accurate save for some proportion fiddling I did to make the number of foam blocks I had add up to a castle in as few cuts as possible.

Here we are on the moors of Scotland... Well no, it's my front yard facing away from my driveway...

That's me (in green) next to an unsuspecting castle (in gray). This is 247 miles East of my home. To get the castle to this spot, I had to cut it off of its base, cut it into three large sections and lay each section flat in my hatchback. You'd never know it...

Now we add explosives...

And viola'!

Our plucky assistant holding six days of my life.

I hope this is a lesson to all of you who want to get into miniature effects. I recommend instead a life of sex and alcohol. In the end, you'll have more to show for it. This from a guy who draws a webcomic for 'fun'...

Labels: castle, explosion, film, foam, miniature, sculpt