Trim Tab Pictures

Complete overhaul

The final character design

Spotlights on…

I hope everyone has had a pleasant start into the autumn. It has been rather busy here as we moved into a nice film studio right on time before the shooting of ‘The Lighthouse’ starts. The set is nearly finished, most of the props too and the studio equipment is complete.

DDA'09 show package production

Beside that, I had the joy to produce the show package for the Dutch Design Awards 2009 together with my old colleagues, Floris and Sacha, from Studio Dumbar. I’m looking forward to show you some of the videos and a few little insights on how they were made!

Rapid Prototyping

Seeing the 3D printer spitting out props is a real treat. The results are utterly stunning. And after months of handcrafting objects, the rapid prototyping machine is a huge help in creating the set I was hoping for.

After getting stuck on creating highly complex metal objects, I had to figure out a way to get them inexpensively done. Just after a couple of prototypes, 3D printing was the obvious way to go.

Finding Its Way Into Stop Motion

This noteworthy process is mostly used in the field of industrial design. But also found its way into stop motion productions within the last years, including Henry Selick’s recent film Coraline.

For more information on rapid prototyping, have a look at Wikipedia. And don’t forget to check out your local Fab Lab. Which is a fantastic workshop program, initiated by the MIT, to enable everyone the possibility to create technology-enabled products.

Tortoise Anecdotes

Imagine crawling a race with a tortoise and suddenly you realise how slow you are by seeing the tail of the tortoise disappear at the horizon, way in front of you. Yeah, you figure...

That’s how it feels when I’m having a closer look at the production planning lately. Producing and financing a short film all by your own isn’t the quickest way to do a project which is known for being done as a team effort.

So what’s the current state?

Dallan Keelin is finally ready to be partially transformed into foam latex. The advantage of foam latex compared to plasticine is the lasting condition of the material while looking rather similar. It can be painted, doesn’t get dusty and is fairly flexible in terms of movement. You see, it’s primarily an advantage behind the camera.

For more information about foam latex puppet making I’d advice you to get the insightful Foam Latex 101 DVD from Kathi Zung (who made, amongst others, the puppets for MTV’s Celebrity Deathmatch).

The lighthouse lamp had to be entirely redesigned after the first couple of mock-ups didn’t feel right. One or two more drafts and the construction will be modelled in 3D to be then 3D-printed. More on that as soon as I’d been to Protospace in Utrecht.

And last but not least, the weblog will be receiving a minor update to integrate a twitter feed and production shots to give you more frequent updates on the production.

Where Did September Go?

I intended to publish a lot more often, especially at the beginning of the production. But the enormous workload keeps me from doing so – which is actually good, at least for the film. Though I’ll try to get more stuff online in the future! Anyway, quite a lot of things happened this September!

After weeks of cutting, sawing, sanding, steaming, bending and painting part of the set is finished. The table, chair and floor are completely done and the stairway and the windows are currently under construction. It took me quite some time to achieve the characteristic of the materials I was looking for. But now they just can get any better with the lighting following up in a couple of weeks.
Until then, a lot of set items and props have to be made. And I can’t wait to show them to you...

What Happened Lately…

Just a couple of hours ago I’ve finished the final animatic for The Lighthouse.

And tomorrow I’ll be heading to London to meet up with some friends and for getting proper clay Note:
Newplast is one of the best plasticines around and some other supplies that I’ll need the following months... the U.K. is great for getting supplies if you do stop motion.

Anyway, as you can see, the character has been refined and it’s armature built. Though, I’m still not completely satisfied with the overall character and especially it’s materials – I never thought about it before, but it’s incredible how many materials you can use to imitate an original 1:1 scale material but just how little are precisely the right ones which create the effect you had in mind. So get ready for the final figure along with the first images of the lighthouse interior.