HEV Suit
I finally pulled out the needle and thread. Being that Bernhard (Freeman) and I no longer live in the same city the sizing of the suit is tricky. It has to stretch to fit him but also be tight and stay in place. Nothing beats just being able to have him come over to test things out.
But alas I am making things work with an old mannequin I pulled out of a dumpster was given by a local department store. It’s quite a bit bigger than Bernhard so in comes the elastic, black polyester thread, needles and some of the worse sewing you have ever seen. See left. I was not confident that any type of glue alone would hold the elastic (see image right) in place, so I pulled out the sewing kit and got to work. We’ll see how it holds up. I did apply liberal cyanacrolate as well.
I have basically sliced down the seam of every piece of the suit and sewn in either elastic or some kind of buckle in place. It’s a good thing as the suit was endlessly slipping down in the first episode and a couple times we forgot to move it back into place and that bothered me greatly.
Have blazed forward on several pieces this week. Got to work on the thighs, the biceps and the cod piece/belt. I painted all the edges in silver acrylic then dabbed a bunch of copydex/masking fluid all along the edges. Once that was dry I spray painted the whole thing with a couple of coats of acrylic spray paint. Once that was dry I picked the copydex off which leaves a nice chipped, worn edge look. Every time I do a new piece I discover some way to make it look or work even better. The only problem being that takes 5 time longer to make it and the filming deadline is getting closer not farther away.
Undersuit is still a work in progress. I received the garment and stuffed it with the filling from a polyester pillow I found in the bedroom in the garage. I plastidipped some of the fabric to see how it takes paint and we’ll see how it goes. Out of everything I think the undersuit is still my main worry, it has to fit the actor really closely and that generally involves making patterns and stuff like that. Costume designer shit that makes foam and paint seem like a piece of cake.
The 3D printed parts are delayed (thanks Shapeways), 3D printing is an amazing process if you ever actually get the parts in the mail. Delivery is now due in December so I may just have to start the progress on the chest without it.
Still got an immense amount of work to do but the main thing is that progress is being made. Part of me wishes I had just made some minor modifications to the suit but a bigger part really wants to be as authentic as humanly possible. Even if i do go nuts.
I think I will start dedicating each piece to a backer as it gets complete. Maybe its cool to know that your $150 went to a particular piece of the movie and if the camera was in the right place it would see the name of the backer. Gerry you can let me know if its a good idea or not.
CGI
Rodrigo and his team have been working on some CGI elements. The Vortigaunt has come along a good ways and a test shot for Vortigaunt lighting is part complete. Very exciting to see these things come together. Modeling a realistic Vortigaunt is a very time consuming process, then the texturing, lighting and rigging are all monumental tasks themselves.
We want to have something available for testing but its really a massive project so we will likely be deep into post production before this model is complete. Then there is motion. There maybe a small possibility of mocap. We’ll see.
LOCATIONS
Location scouting c
continues. Location people are not the most responsive, especially not at the budget we are at. No love for the indie film makers these days. There are some other really awesome locations that we want to use. See the pictures below. One of these locations would be fantastic so hopefully we can get the right people to respond. I really, really, really hope we can get these, or locations like them. Really I do, really.
Sick eh?
CASTING
Casting is going to be ramped up soon. The number of actors required for this episode is much bigger. We have revisited the script to see about cutting it down and combining some people to reduce cost. We will likely need some kind of stunt team for this film and that’s a challenge in itself.
So that’s about it for this week.
