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Archives for November 2018

, Filed Under: Horned King, SFX 2018

You Can’t be a Horned King Without Horns

It’s probably safe to say that the most distinctive feature of the Horned King are the massive horns sprouting out of the top of his head. Without them he’s really just another ghoul. We knew that in order for our version of this iconic character to be unique and eye catching we would have to really create something distinctive. Maddie drew up some concept art for me to work from which I really loved the look of.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was already working on several projects involving manipulating 3d scans of animal skulls, so I decided that it would be best to transfer that experience to this project and try and make a pair of 3d printed horns. I wanted the horns to draw inspiration from nature but be distinctly unnatural and demonic. To achieve this effect I decided to take a 3d scan of a pair of mountain goat horns and then transform them into a pair of demon horns. Here is the original goat horn I used, and here is the final product.

 

 

I made a video of my process of creating the horns.

https://youtu.be/Oq7-YoZq2GM

First I imported the base horn by entering mesh mode. Then I copied it twice, creating 2 more identical horns. I scaled two of them down to 75% and 60%. After moving them into position I merged all three of them together into a single horn structure. In the actual design process I took much more time to make sure that my placement was exactly how I wanted it, but for this short demo I just moved them into roughly the correct position. Next I wanted to cut off the base to get a flat surface for 3d printing so I used a plane cut to slice off a chunk of the structure. Unfortunately since I was cutting a mesh this left a hollow shell, so I went ahead and used the Make Closed Mesh function to create a flat base for the structure. I wanted to make the demonic horns less perfect and smooth so I went ahead and designed a couple smaller horns from scratch. In this video I imported one of them and then merged into into the structure the same way I fused the larger horns together. For the Left horn I repeated the process, just with a left goat horn to begin with.

 

I also posted my results to the 3D file sharing site Thingiverse. Now anyone in the world can download and print these horns.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3209917

The next step will be to print and paint these horns!

 

, Filed Under: progress report, SFX 2018, Warbringer

Some ARRRtistic Liberties

Boy howdy so much has changed since we last spoke dear blog readers!

As we approach our filming date, we have had to reexamine what it is we want to accomplish with this project. We see our project as having two primary goals:

  1. Make a beautifully accurate ship that tells a story in the details.
  2. Make the ship practical for real-life use.

After much discussion, we have decided that what is most important to have prepared for shooting on Monday is all of the small and intricate details of the ship. With this being said, we are not completely benching the practical-ness of our end product. Instead, we will simply focus on making the shots look amazing, and THEN continue the process of engineering our systems for our final artifact presentation on December 10th.

In light of this, we have done a LOT of painting. Kaan and I have spent many an hour in the scene shop working to bring life to our creations. Kaan and I are not painters. Painting is hard. Luckily, we have the BEST resources in the world and have the wonderful Karen Maness and Ashton Bennett Murphy, the scenic charge artist and assistant respectively, helping us along the way.

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Look! An engineer with a paint brush! how does he do it?

While working on the details, we have noticed some weird things with our source video. The primary one being that it is HEAVILY stylized; this means that colors that look good in the cinematic do not look as good as in real life. There is also some architecture and material that we just can pin down. In light of this, we have had to make some opinionated calls and educated guesses on how we think certain this should look.

 

One example of this has been our captains quarters. In our source, it is unclear what materials the roof and pillars are made out of. As you can see in the image, it just seems to be some form of vague… canvas-y.. thing? We decided to take some liberties and make it a copper roof! Of course this also implied that that roof must have oxidized somewhat in the 11 years this ship has spent underwater, so we learned how to layer on copper and rust! Woo!

Close up on captains quarters. What is half of this stuff??? Fix your cinematics Blizzard.

 

Profile of completed quarters

As far as the pillars, our video only has one long distance shot of them and while staring at it I noticed that it looked oddly… Elvish. (Please forgive me as the rest of this paragraph will be WoW lore and theory nonsense). From a distance, the pillars resemble the stonework pylons of the Quel’Dorei of northern Lordaeron. I decided to lean into that as, though not officially canon, it would make sense, assuming that this ship was built before the beginning of the Third War (before the Humans ruined their alliance with the Quel’Dorei) that they would help construct this prestigious ship and, in the process, incorporate their own unique style of stonework and mana infused architecture into the vessel. (Lore theorizing is now over)

High Elven (Quel’Dorei) pylons. Fun fact: these elves now go by the Blood Elves (Sin’Dorei) in honor of those elves who lost their lives when the Scourge ravaged their homeland.
Front view of quarters

 

 

But, I digress.

To wrap up, what we’ve learned this week is:

  • L A Y E R   Y O U R   P A I N T
  • Prioritize what matters!
  • Don’t let the source limit you. Infer! Extrapolate! Succeed!

 

, Filed Under: SFX 2018

Skullduggery Skull Rigging

The most iconic part of the Space Kook is his hair raising cackle, and in order to augment that audio, we really wanted to have his head and jaw move in proportion. Thus, I set forth on a mission, and in coming back from my long and arduous journey, I bring new knowledge of bike breaks, jewelry loops, and a variety of bits and bobbles found around the shop!

Materials:

  • Skull (Most easily obtained in the plastic variety)
  • Bike Break Handles (2)
  • Bike Break Wire (2)
  • Jewelry Loops
  • PVC Pipe
  • Flexible Foam Tube (FFT for short)
  • Less Flexible Long Foam Cylinder (LFLFC)
    • The PVC, FFT, and LFLFC will need to fit snuggly inside one another
  • Super Glue
  • Hot Glue
  • Sturdy Dowel Rod
  • Springs (2)
  • A needle / punch
  • Patience

Now that you’ve gathered all you’ll need, let’s start with:

The Jaw

  1. With the mandible in the closed position, measure from the roof of the mouth to the base of the jaw.
  2. Double check your measurement
  3. Cut that length of your spring
  4. Take your punch / needle and make two small holes on the roof of the mouth of your skull equidistant from the center.
  5. Lightly uncoil a couple loops at the top of your springs and feed them into the small holes.
  6. Measure the width of your jawbone from molar to molar and cut a dowel to that size
  7. Using two jewelry loops on the dowel rod, attach the springs to either side of the dowel and glue into place.
  8. Glue the dowel into the skull.

Your jaw should now remain shut unless force is applied to open it, and also snap shut when that force is removed.

Next,

The Neck

  1. Figure out how long your neck needs to be, and cut the LFLFC to that length plus an inch
    Less Flexible Long Foam Cylinder
  2. Cut your FFT to about that length minus an inch
    Flexible Foam Tube
  3. Cut your PVC pipe to the length of the neck minus 2 inches
    PVC Pipe
  4. Cut that PVC pipe in half
  5. Fit your LFLFC inside of your FFT allowing the extra to stick out the top
    LFLFC in FFT
  6. Fit the base of your new foam cylinder, the side without the extra, into one of the PVC pieces
  7. Glue that into place
  8. Slide the other PVC piece over the top and leave about a 1 inch gap of foam exposed in between the two PVC pieces
  9. Glue that into place
    Neck Piece Assembled and Mounted
  10. Drill a hole into the base of your skull just the width of the extra LFLFC
  11. Fit the extra through the base of the skull
  12. Glue

Head Bangin’ Skull

Finally,

Bike Break Magic

  1. Punch a small hole in the back of the skull close to the top
  2. Thread the bike break wire through that hole and secure it with glue
  3. Attach the cable to the handle in whatever mounted position will give the wire the most resistance.
  4. Punch a hole, or attach the second cable to the back of the front teeth on the mandible.
  5. Repeats 2-3 with second cable.

 

If all is well, you should now have a skull with tilt and cackle capabilities!

A Skull In Motion

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