Zombie Pirates: A Stop Motion Film by Marc Spess

Foam Bodied Ruble and New Plans

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 23:24:06 -0400

These past few days I've been sneaking in the garage when my wife and son are fast asleep. I cast a new Ruble head and made a special armature part that will allow the cast head to lock onto the foam latex body. I melted it directly into the center of the head to get the wax flowing and hardening over the head armature and it seems nice and secure. I also plopped in a pair of new eyes. I drilled them out and painted the dark areas, but need to make the light color next. When it's done it will appear exactly the same as Ruble and his all-clay body. After I finish this I'll need to make a pair of long arms that will be mounted in front of the camera, and I might have to find an old rig I built to animate the camera as well. I'll post more info on that when the time comes. But I'm starting to make progress again!

New Ruble Cast Head

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 04:21:48 -0400

Yes - I was going to make a video, but time has been short for me lately. Tonight I managed to make a new clay cast head of Ruble. I was going to just use the single head on the clay body as well as for the foam body. But the problem I realized was the armatured part of the head is different for each. Instead I'll make a new duplicate head and cut that up specifically for the foam body. One thing I'll need to do is hollow out where the foam neck extends up into the clay head. I might have to trim the foam as well. I don't want to fit the new clay head onto it until right before I decide to animate those shots because oils destroy latex. So for now I'm waiting for the cast clay head to cool in the freezer after melting the clay and pouring it into Rubles silicone head mold.

Hmmmm, do I Wanna do that Shot?

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:28:58 -0400

It popped in my mind tonight if I want to animate a specific shot next or not. I opened up Sony Vegas and checked the story boards to see exactly how I wanted to pose Ruble on the set. The shot is long and a little complex, mostly pantomime and no dialogue. Ruble gets up, bumps the barrels with the mug of rum and picks it up. Not too tough, but timing will be everything. Then I realized I have two Ruble bodies. One is clay and one will be foam latex "cast by Mike Strain" for full body scenes where he requires a lot of movement. Well I've only got one Ruble head made and it's on the clay body. So the question is - do I want to animate the full body shot next, or use the clay body for the close-ups? I decided that I want to animate the rest of the close-ups with the current clay body because I will have to tear apart the current head to insert it on the foam body. Since I am unsure how well that will turn out, I might do the close-up full face views next and not the full body scene. I will work on refining the story board shots and inserting a few new drawings tonight before I move on. Then we'll decide where to take things.

All good news!

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 00:45:17 -0400

The garage has been cleaned up quite a bit, enough to start setting up the next shot. I didn't check to see if I needed to clean the set surfaces, most likely when I re-arrange things I will need to take a 2 inch brush and just give it a once over. Today was also a good day for my wife. She passed her drivers license driving exam. Why does this have anything to do with Zombie Pirates? Well it means now that my wife is more independent, I no longer have to drive her to work or pick her up at night. This knocks off about 80 minutes a day of driving around. 80 minutes that can be used on the film. Her driving skills are a little rough around the edges since she learned how to drive "wild west style" in the Philippines. I tried to un-teach her the bad stuff and drive more defensively.....hopefully it pays off. If you want to know what it's like driving in the Philippines, just watch this video. Yes, that is an ox powered vehicle on a 5 lane highway at the 2:50 mark haha. One more thing I did after she passed her exam today was to stop in a pawn shop in Republic Missouri. It's a little ways out of Springfield where her exam was held. For the film I need one more tripod that is sturdy because Mike Strain took his tripod back for a film he was working on, leaving me short. The new tripod is about as sturdy as my previous tripod and the shop owner sold it to me for 9.99. A real steal! Now we have one tripod that will be attached to the special rig to move up and down, and one to keep the camera on. After this weekend my plan is to make a new film and show what's next. The last major thing to get out of the way is my wifes birthday on Sunday...and a second birthday we plan to attend at her friends home.

Slowly but Surely

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 09:35:25 -0400

The garage has turned into a spider web haven, with bits of saw dust, cobwebs, the odd screw that fell from the table and a maze of paint cans. As I get the chance I've been fixing up, cleaning and organizing. Something I didn't mention was that we put down an entire wood floor, spanning 20 by 14 feet in the down stairs part of the house. My sons sleeping schedule is also whacky lately - but he's back to sleeping around the time the sun comes up until noon to 2. With the floor out of the way and AJ on a kind-of predictable schedule it should be easier for me to get back in the garage more often. I inspected the ship while cleaning up for the next shot. It looks pretty clean considering the amount of time that has passed since the birth of AJ. Everything is as it was with Rubles mouth replacements, the exposure sheets and the lighting setup all in it's place - where it all was as if time stood still. Once I get to the set-up stage I'll start posting more pictures and videos. For now it seems kind of useless to take video of the mess and put it up on YouTube.

Major Projects Out of the Way

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 04:13:14 -0400

In the last post I talked about finishing up the Freddy mask for my friend Mike as pay-back for his help on Zombie Pirates. Well tonight I completed it! I will probably upload pictures and some video later, it was a lot of fun - but something I wanted to complete so I could get back to work once again. Secrets of Clay Animation 3 is also done and can be cound on Lulu.com, Amazon.com and in the shop at Animateclay.com. If you really want to know how these kinds of films are done, most of what I know is in that book - and it's also out of the way! So the next phase is definitely to clean up the garage. There are some renovations going on at the house and people kept piling stuff in there, so it's hard to get around. It's alsogoing to cause me to be very un-productive once I get started on Zombies again because it has been in such dis-array for so long that I won't be able to find tools when I want them.

What Next?

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:06:22 -0400

One thing is certain, I need to figure out what shots will be animated next. Actually I have a shot in mind already - it's a shot where Ruble has landed on the left side stairs after being blown there by a falling cannon. It will involve him landing, standing up and then gripping a cup of rum on top of the rum barrel. I may do it in two shots, actually that part which I already story boarded has to be re-storyboarded because the transfer from the XP operating system to Vista caused me to lose that "and a few others" section of storyboards. Luckily I have it all in my head how I want it done, but I need to test the timing in Sony Vegas before I go ahead with the animation. So the next thing I'll have to do is get the set cleaned up and possibly do some puppet work with Ruble. He will be in a very crazy pose and on his back. Hopefully later this week I can get started. There's still some work to be done on a few other projects that I'll be trying to finish soon. One being the mask for my friend Mike which is 85% done and just needs some detailing on the neck and back of the head. The other - uploading Secrets of Clay Animation 3 to Createspace for inclusion to Amazon.com.

Clouds, Real or Image?

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 11:56:42 -0400

This week was busy with the Animateclay.com upgrade, but we managed to pull it off without too many problems. One of the tedious tasks I had was deleting memberships from Russian spammers that had hacked into our site about two years ago. There were 5000 members I had to delete by hand in the server database. Talk about boring! But it needed to finally get done.....and it is. While I didn't get to do any hands on work in the garage, I did do one thing. I have yet to test it, but I filmed some nice cloud formations in our back yard. One morning when I was feeding my son his rice cereal/formula/bannana oatmeal mix for his breakfast, I noticed the clouds outside had that cartoony puffy look to them. They were scattered so they looked nice. There was actually one problem I had in my mind about the close-up shots with Ruble in that if I use the same still image for the backgrounds where the camera angle changes - everyone will notice that something is not right. The main thing being that the sun will be missing - or at least the brightness in the clouds should be different. If you notice in the previous pictures I put up on here where you see the sky, every shot has the sun to the viewers back. You would expect the sun to be visible on shots where the camera is opposite. That's where the videos of the clouds will come in handy "hopefully" when I insert them into the close-ups of Ruble as he faces the ropes behind him. Since the video is in HD I don't know yet how editing them will work. The 16:9 may be an issue with the current SD format. I'm hoping I can zoom into the clouds to remove the black bars - some experimenting is definitely in order before I can move forward. UPDATE: After transferring all the files, it looks like I won't have any problems using the new cloud footage for the shots!

All Shots Re-Composited

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 00:20:58 -0400

All animated shots are now re-composited within Vegas. I can't believe how well it looks. Each shot looks twice as sharp and has no more jagged areas around the outlines of the ship or the puppets. Even tiny details, like the lamp on the rear of the ship look as though green screen wasn't even used at all. Another amazing thing is that the two shots I originally animated using solid pink screen were saved! What I did after realizing After Effects couldn't handle the chroma keying of those shots without major problems was to animate each layer of water and the ships as separate elements. It never looked good. In fact in my mind, the chroma key was the weakest link visually in the entire film. Now I'm super happy with the way things look, and I know the audience will think it looks nice as well. There simply isn't any issue now with chroma key in any shot. So what's next? I talked with my mom about the film and she offered to watch my son once a week so that I can get back into animating the shots. Of course I still need to take care of business and family matters first, but it opens up the chances for me to get back on track once and for all.

All Set Up!

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 22:25:52 -0400

I purchased Sony Vegas through Amazon.com yesterday and it should arrive in about a week. Since I'm always trying to save money I used the free shipping method which takes a bit longer, but that's ok. I'm able to edit Zombie Pirates on the demo version of the program, and all I need to do is put in the serial code to make it unlimited. A nice thing about buying Sony Vegas is it comes with Sound Forge, a very nice audio editing program. It's just an added bonus, but since I was using Audacity which is free and very limited - it gives me that many more possibilities. There's another good thing about Sony Vegas. It's chroma key green screen capabilities are way better than After Effects as far as I can tell. Once you plop your raw AVI into the timeline and add the effect it sets things up where you really don't have to tweak it much at all. In my last setup I would create AVI files from after effects to be edited in premiere. Now I can plop all the shots direct into Vegas which means there is less loss of quality to the final product. I can also animate the background layer in Vegas, so there's no need to use AE any more, except for titles. Another area that I had to work on was getting Stop Motion Pro to work on Vista 64. After sending an e-mail to Paul, the owner - he said maybe I tried installing an older version. He was right, I tried to install version 6 instead of 6.5 from an old .exe file I transferred over to the new machine. Once I installed the correct version, everything started up without any errors. On other words, I am all set up and can get back to work - and the final product will be even nicer than with my old machine!

Sony Vegas Demo Testing

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 01:06:11 -0400

Great news, I found a demo version of Sony Vegas Studio Platinum 9.0 and installed it on my Vista 64 Business computer. So far it is working great. It opened all the old files that I edited with Premiere on Windows XP 32 bit. It's definitely an impressive program with features that are similar to Premiere. It's not exactly the most intuitive program, but easy enough for me to get around with just a day of playing with it. You can see in the image I posted that it works perfect with a two-monitor setup. I have my old monitor set up as the preview window and the wide screen HD monitor set up as the editing screen. It's great that my friend Andy made such a great offer on the new computer so that this is possible. So far I've edited a lot, but need to drop in a lot of Photoshop images into the storyboarded parts that haven't been animated. Amazingly you can just drop .PSD files into the track, but sadly you can't drop After Effects documents into it. Not that it matters too much, but in the end the opening titles won't be as nice once it's rendered. So what's next? Well since Geoff Clark donated money towards the program and I've tested it, I'll be buying it soon. I will be watching Amazon.com to see if the price drops before the demo runs out within 30 days. This could save me 10-20 bucks if someone makes an offer for either a used copy or a lower new package.

Re-Doing All Editing?

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:07:50 -0400

Vista 64 bit is a nice operating system, but when it comes to getting editing programs to work it's definitely not something I recommend. I've tried to see if my work flow could be matched to the previous computer setup I had. Mainly that I would use Stop Motion Pro to compile my still images into a raw .AVI file for editing. I told Paul at Stop Motion Pro that I switched computers and would need a new key. A discussion broke out between us through e-mails about the HD version of their program, and Paul gave me a license key to unlock the HD features. This is great! But there is one problem, I can't get a computer ID to unlock the program. I've sent them an e-mail but unfortunately their mailbox was full and so I can't get this fixed just yet. However if I do, I can re-edit most of the film to create an even higher quality image. A simple green screen test of the opening shot by outputting to Windows Media 9 for editing in Pinnacle Studio Ultimate was much better than what I could do in Adobe After Effects.....at least until I play with AE later on. I'm not sure AE can edit Windows Media 9 files yet. But the results are very promising so far. I just need to get Stop Motion Pro to unlock to get rid of the time limit and water mark. So with Stop Motion Pro out of commission and Adobe Premier as well, everything is at a stand still with regards to editing. But if I can get Stop Motion Pro working, there's a chance I can re-edit most of the film in Pinnacle Studio Ultimate.

Video Editing Nightmare?

Thu, 28 May 2009 22:57:58 -0400

It looks like I hit a snag in video editing of Zombie Pirates. Thanks to Andy, our server guru - he built an excellent computer system for me. Since my computer was approaching near 6 years old, it just couldn't keep up with the newer technology. Specifically HD video editing. It was impossible on my last Pentium 4 machine. Even after upgrading the memory to 4 gigs, the operating system could only utilize 3.5 because it was a 32 bit XP operating system. I was cheated! I thought about buying a new computer from Dell, but couldn't afford it. Then I thought I could build one which is cheaper to do. When I told Andy to help me find various parts, like the mother board, chipset, memory and power supply - the total came out to over 1000 bucks. Still out of range of my budget. Andy had another solution. He offered me a system that he owned and that he would upgrade for me - as well aslet me make monthly payments to him. It was a compromise between buying the latest and fastest for the most, for getting something pretty darn fast for less. I agreed and now have a quad core 6 gig system with a 1 terabyte hard drive. I tried editing the HD files from the Canon Vixia HD camcorder and it works great. While transferring all my past programs so I could give editing Zombie Pirates a try I hit a snag. Adobe Premiere simply does not work on the new 64 Vista operating system. Pinnacle Studio 12 Ultimate which does work for editing doesn't edit the old raw AVI files that Zombie Pirates is made of. I've set out on a search and Don Carlson told me about Sony Vegas 9 Platinum. It's one of the only programs able to edit on the new 64 Vista systems for the best price. It runs about $74.99 USD. I don't have the cash for it, but will definitely need this to get Zombie Pirates back on track. Since I can work on editing and take care of AJ at the same time - now is the best time to complete the editing of what I completed so far. If you are able to make a donation, now is the time we need it. You can check out Sony Vegas on Amazon here for the latest price here. Anyone who is nice enough to give us a hand will get your name in the credits and a free DVD copy of the film once it's completed. Any help is highly appreciated! UPDATE: As one of our visitors mentioned, we might be able to convert the avi files to HD files - but are looking for the proper software that can work on Vista. So far no luck, but that will be my next job on Zombie Pirates before we decide to go with Vegas! UPDATE #2: Thank you Geoff Clark for your very generous donation towards Sony Vegas! We most likely will end up buying it because I still haven't found a way to convert the AVI's for editing.

2009 and Beyond!

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 21:50:45 -0500

Well it's been a very productive year for Zombie Pirates. The 90 day challenge was a success in every way. The only issue was that Aaron was born on the 7th of November, a few days before his due date. So is the 90 day challenge over for Zombie Pirates? Absolutely not! But I did prioritize Aaron, and I never would have guessed it would be so much work to keep him happy. He's gone through bouts of crying from colic - so we suspect. But is gradually getting better now that he's about 2 months old. Now that my wife will return to work in a couple of days, it means I'll be a full time dad. My prediction is that it will be some time before I make a new video for ZP. I'm simply going to be a dad for a while since this is a critical time for my wife and I as we shape our new sons life as opposed to puppets. Once I do pick up where I left off, it will be the start of the last day I stopped, so make sure to bookmark the site for new updates when they happen!

Ruble Comes to Life

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 07:14:12 -0400

I've been making some great progress with Zombie Pirates. I think I'm up to 7 completed shots now since the start of the 90 day challenge. After Effects is really saving the day and allowing for lots of tweaks due to the limits of my Olympus C-5050 zoom cameras depth of field. Also it is fun to record long videos and compress the time so you can watch them in fast-motion. The only problem is the battery dies after an hour, so I'll need to hook the AC adaptor up to it in future behind the scenes videos. To watch the daily progress videos just follow the links below. Day 10 Click Here Day 11 Click Here Day 12 Click Here Day 13 - 14 Click Here Day 15 Click Here Day 16 Click Here Day 17 Click Here Day 18 - 19 Click Here Day 20 Click Here Day 21 Click Here Day 22 Click Here Day 23 Click Here Day 24 Click Here Day 25 Click Here

Day 9 of the 90 Day Zombie Pirate Challenge!

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 05:40:26 -0400

Well it's already day 9 and I just finished uploading the 9th video blog on YouTube. If you missed all the fun, make sure to check out each daily episode to catch up. Here are the links to each day: Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 7 Day 8 Day 9

The 90 Day Challenge to Complete Zombie Pirates

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 21:17:30 -0400

Alright everyone, I've decided to re-evaluate Zombie Pirates. I recently finished shooting the How to Build Sets DVD footage, and completed editing it. Each night I need to just compile the DVD data before it goes on sale on my other site. It takes a long time, especially with the NTSC and PAL versions, and each tutorial is on 2 DVD's each. That means the three big projects I wanted to complete are done, and I can focus on Zombie Pirates. There was the creation of Stop Motion Magic, the Stikfas contest commercial, and the new tutorial DVD. Alright so what's going on with Zombies? First off I follow a lot of internet marketing trends in order to keep up to date with how people are marketing themselves. This translates into getting the word out if your a filmmaker, something that is super important. Especially in the case of our film. There is a guy who calls himself DK and he started a 90 day challenge for anyone who wants to better themselves. I highly suggest that if you want to promote your films, learn some marketing techniques by watching his YouTube videos here. Being a fan of his I decided to join his 90 day challenge to really work on where I'm failing with the film. Definitely the problem I'm having is in managing my time, and that's a problem I solved already.If your interested, join the 90 day challenge with me and lets support each other by visiting this page. I'm focusing on completing Zombie Pirates in 90 days, and I'll be posting new videos here each week now until it happens on the top of this news page. I'm already on day 3 and I'm just now uploading the 2nd video on YouTube now, so you'll see it shop up soon. Then possibly a third later tonight or tomorrow. So definitely visit this page often to keep up to date!

Ocean Wave Lighting: LED's

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 23:39:55 -0400

Leave it up to the Japanese to come up with a cool and new way of creating ocean wave lighting. While searching for a way to create water for Zombie Pirates, I came across a video showing a new gadget. The gadget is called Bath Palette My Ocean. Yes the English isn't proper, so it is probably the closest English translation. What it is, is two layers of rippled acrylic plastic that moves by a motor over a group of LED lights. I might try to create something similar by heating and then draping a melted acrylic sheet over some steel balls and then try moving it over a light. This would work well for shots where we have the lower part of the ship in view, and light would be reflecting off of the ocean. Check out the lighting LED light kits sold online here. Watch a YouTube video of one of the devices in action here. Is it worth 50 dollars, or should I make my own? Time to experiment.... UPDATE: Well I gave my experiment a try, and indeed it does work to make a water-like effect. Except what I found is that you need to reflect light off the top of rippled acrylic plexi glass as opposed to lighting it from under it. I just used a propane torch to heat up some pieces and then pressed them down over a bunch of nuts and bolts laying on the floor with the end of a paint brush. Also spinning two sheets in opposing directions that are layered works to give the illusion of motion. That will be perfect for making it appear that the ship is moving forward. I'll need to construct a full sized disk to spin before I can do it properly. My experiment only used two six inch pieces of acrylic.

Set Building DVD

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 14:22:32 -0400

Last night was the start of a new DVD that I'm creating for Animateclay.com. It is on how to build sets for stop motion animation. I'll be using the ship set in a lot of the DVD as an example of what to do when building your own sets. This project should take about a week to film, and then there will be some editing the next week. So if you have a request of any kind for the DVD on any specifiic set building technique you want to know, e-mail me as soon as you can so that I can add it to the DVD.

New Video Update

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:07:02 -0400

Last weekend Mike Strain, Weldon and I got a lot of work done again. Ruble's foam body is painted, the ship details are nearly done and we're working on a water rig for the opening and closing shots. Check it out by clicking here. You will need Windows Media Player to view it.

Video Update

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 02:39:29 -0400

It's official. I did the first video update to the blog to show what's been going on lately here in the garage. I filmed this past midnight and I'm really tired, so I didn't go into too many details. Check it out by clicking here. You will need Windows Media Player to view it.

Ropes and Ruble

Mon, 26 May 2008 01:05:00 -0400

Today was productive. Mike Strain worked on seaming the foam latex body for Ruble the Russian, while I painted the remaining ropes brown. Then I dry brushed the ropes so the detail will stick out a bit and match the rope sections I created before. I also painted the shelf that will hold the ropes where the action takes place. Mike and I also talked a little about what the direction might be for the film. We agreed that we should try to sell it to places like the Cartoon Network or other TV channels. It's worth a shot, and could lead to a feature film being done. We'll just have to see. But we're hopeful that the film will be good enough to get lots of interest.

Rope detailing, Rope Rigs and Shelf

Mon, 05 May 2008 01:01:07 -0400

Mike Strain, Mike Weldon and I got together for a few hours of some ship building fun today. I managed to cobble together a simple rope rig which we'll attach to the ceiling of the garage. The rig will allow the wire ropes to slide up and down and be animated. The tip of the tubes which are made out of tent posts "thanks Mike" have rubber tips that came from the little plastic vials of flower holders. If you ever bought a flower for someone you would know what that is. It keeps the water in the vial while the end of the flower goes into it. Mike Weldon helped with that rig and touched up some of the ropes while Mike Strain spray painted more aluminum wire ropes flat black for other areas of the ship. He also made a little shelf with pegs to hold ropes on the side of the ship where the animation takes place. All in all it was a productive day. We are starting to see a silver lining at the end of the sea.

Zombie Pirates - Sailing Much Faster

Thu, 01 May 2008 07:56:53 -0400

Zombie Pirates, along with our other sites are now on a much faster server. You should see things moving much quicker around here, with thanks to Andy who has done a lot of technical work. Go ahead - click around and see for yourself! As for the progress on Zombie Pirates the film, Mike Weldon, Mike Strain and I should be meeting this Sunday to get more work done on seveveral aspects of the ship. Each of us were too busy this past weekend to get together. Especially with this site being transferred around.

More Accomplishments

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 21:52:58 -0400

Today was productive with both Mike's stopping by for a few hours. It wasn't productive as far as building the rest of the ship or making puppets - but we did accomplish a lot of planning. We worked out what we need for the contract between us. Basically outilining what is fair, such as we each get a percent of the film if it should make money based on the percent of work we put into it. Mike Weldon made some plans to machine some aluminum parts for the rig to hold two puppets above the set. Mike is an expert machinist and really eats up any information about various armatures made by the masters. He can pretty much explain how any joint is constructed and out of what materials. Mike Strain made notes so we could have a rough schedule to work by. He has been around the block when it comes to taking charge of special effects work and pyro jobs. He is also a positive guy who doesn't let the fact that we live in the middle of nowhere and noplace here in Missouri. Check out his MySpace page here to read more about him.