REPERKUSSIONZ

2010-07-01T10:33:00.003-04:00

Paying work continues to steal time that REPERKUSSIONZ demands, but at least, occasionally, the work is fun:

Music by VOLT 9000, design and animation by me.

2009-11-30T16:19:00.010-05:00

The production of REPERKUSSIONZ continues, but it's slowed to a sub-glacial pace, as opposed to the previous drying-paint pace. The economic bumps in the road, described in earlier posts, have become frequent enough to transform the discrete thumps into a megahertz whine.
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Why I am I posting now? I just bumped into Pondo at the drug store, and that reminded me I hadn't updated this blog in forever. I haven't seen him in, like, two years? He lives a half-block away, so travel distance prevents casual contact. It's true. I almost never leave my apartment. It would probably be best if you believe that's a joke.

I see Desiree more often, maybe twice a year, because she is my niece by marriage (as of last December) and even I can't escape every family event.
Remember, GOOGLE's "Desiree Ferrari" is not the same as REPERKUSSIONZ's "Desiree Ferrari". It's a common name, and your confusion is forgiven.

So... REPERKUSSIONZ... to be released by world's end - or sooner!

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Anyway... at the moment, I have no work on my desk. Prospects look dim as the economy collapses. My answering machine insists someone calling himself a "landlord" wants "money", although I'm not sure what those fancy financial terms mean. The bright side? Down time means more time to attend REPERKUSSIONZ duties. Last time I said that, a motion graphics job that lasted four months suddenly materialized. Cross fingers and wish for the most pleasant outcome...

Perhaps REPERKUSSIONZ will be completed on a PC plugged into my Toyota's cigarette lighter.

2009-04-04T17:36:00.003-04:00

Meanwhile...

2009-01-27T22:53:00.004-05:00

Yes, it's still in production. Believe it or don't.

Right now I am working on someone else's movie for cash moneys so I can get my insulin pump out of hock. I may get to keep my feet, unlike a certain dead beauty queen...

2008-03-06T17:19:00.004-05:00

Animation and visual effects for REPERKUSSIONZ have been in progress since 2005. That progress has been painfully slow. It's been gnawing at me like a hungry weasel. I recently took stock of what has been finished so far.

Each fully 3D-animated, photoreal-textured, meticulously rigged and carefully composited shot in REPERKUSSIONZ has required 3-6 months to complete. At this rate, it will be finished in approximately 225 years. It's one of those realizations that jumps up and smacks you. There is no budget to hire additional hands, and CPU horspower has been a real bottleneck during renders. My render farm is slow, and old, each node probably one-quarter as powerful as any PC of recent vintage. Two major things have thrown monkey wretches into the works: I underestimated how long preparation and renders would take, and my routine expenses unexpectedly went way up, requiring that I take on more outside work than I used to.

The thought of ditching the project is intolerable. I have a ton of work and a bit of money invested, and I owe the three live-action stars of REPERKUSSIONZ, at the very least, a finished production for their efforts. They were good sports who delivered efforts above and beyond the squall of doody - wearing odd costumes in public, bouncing off concrete floors, forced to speak endless pages of incomprehensible dialogue wrote by a schizophrenic.

I've spent months messing around with the footage from REPERKUSSIONZ, trying various things, to find a less technically demanding, less time-consuming way of completing the project. I tried an "impressionistic" style, similar to that of best-movie-in-the-world FORBIDDEN ZONE, with the live action only loosely composited, without 3D tracking, into sets made of simple, artsy-fartsy doodads rather than photoreal models. That approach sucked.

Then I thought, hey, REPERKUSSIONZ could be turned into a "cartoon" of sorts, preserving most of the style and narrative I originally intended. Software solutions that didn't exist in such refined forms in 2005 have become available in the last couple of years. Using DeBabelizer to apply new Photoshop plugins, such as SNAP ART, to frame sequences, I can turn the live action plates into rotoscoped animation, without laborious and expensive hand-tracing, and with some qualities that, in my opinion, are superior to the interpolated vector rotoscoping of A SCANNER DARKLY and many current TV commercials.

There are some issues with the process I'll be using. The conversion from live action to 2D is not perfectly "clean", and there's no time or budget for conventional cleanup. By necessity, the swimming line, the shaky, ersatz hatching, the popping highlights will be assimilated as part of REPERKUSSIONZ' new esthetic. Rendering these frames takes a fraction of the time as the 3D shots. Compositing is fast and easy. Shortcuts used in conventional anime can be employed. Live action and 3D can be mixed with 2D fairly seamlessly. Getting textures "just right" with endless iterations and multiple render passes is no longer a problem.

As a bonus, the show can be completed in HD, which has become important for distribution and broadcast. The standard definition DV footage which served as the basis for completed composites was not HD-friendly, despite many upconverting attempts. 2D line art can be more successfully goaded into the HD transition.

Preparing REPERKUSSIONZ shots in 2D can be done at 100 or more times the speed of the underfunded big-budget approach I was using. The tests done so far, using partially completed setups, convince me that this can work, and it's a better alternative than simply quitting.

Keep your eyeballs slit open and squashed against your monitor for news as it develops. Meanwhile, here are a couple of quicky tests that show REPERKUSSIONZ in its new cartoony form.

2007-11-18T13:38:00.000-05:00

Some of the pictures previously presented on this production blog have been posted as higher-resolution images at FLICKR. Go over there and look at them.

2007-09-28T11:03:00.000-04:00

What's on Frank's desk right now?

I wish it was REPERKUSSIONZ.

But, I gots to pay my rent, so it's a tale of a magical rabbit for some pilot thing.

It will not be publicly discussed because I don't have permission. The job will wrap soon, followed by a four-week illustration assignment, then...maybe there will be some time for the sacred task of completing REPERKUSSIONZ.

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2007-07-09T19:41:00.000-04:00

July is a special month! It's the first month in 2007 in which I won't whine about how REPERKUSSIONZ is hard to complete because I have to do too much non-REPERKUSSIONZ stuff. Yes, it's refreshing that I didn't mention that again.

Look at the new space warp, mom!

2007-06-12T22:58:00.000-04:00

Zoomin' through space is fine and dandy, but it's not always possible to pay the bills that way. MADMAN PONDO, who portrays BUCK in REPERKUSSIONZ, savagely vanquishes his opponents in the wrestling ring to make his rent. Frank (me) performs video/audio/illustration duties on a vast array of time-consuming non-space-faring commercials and butt parts catalogs. DESIREE FERRARI, who portrays the enigmatic HENTAI in REPERKUSSIONZ, earns top dolla as a singing bartender. I ain't got no new space monster stuff to show you right now, so here's DESIREE from a recent performance at Quaker Steak and Lube, which I presume is a place at which you can get beef and routine scheduled automotive service. I don't know. I don't get out a lot.

...and as she appears in REPERKUSSIONZ adventure togz:

2007-06-02T16:02:00.000-04:00

The Control Voice speaks. Sometimes it is necessary to step back from a large project. A small project can then be completed to provide a sense of satisfaction before returning to the large project. REPERKUSSIONZ is the large project I'm talkin' about. Here is a short video that took a day and a half to animate, render, and score. It is called NO RUNNING. Stephen Hawking is the unbilled voice of the runner. You believe that because you are a trusting soul. This will ultimately be your downfall.

2007-05-24T13:27:00.001-04:00

Aw jeez, it's been forever since I posted anything. Too many real-world non-science-monster-rocket-fiction jobs eat all the time in the world. I'm forced to do stuff for pay while the infant REPERKUSSIONZ lies neglected in the crib, its diaper filled with tin cans and watermelon rinds. Recently I've scored a short documentary about an exercise program called FreFloDo, but I hear it's tied up in clearance. Some people on video in the gym won't sign releases or some such thing. And I did some animation for these guys. Plus I did some logos. And some illustrations. And I cut my neighbor's grass fo a dolla, but I wasted that on comic books.

Anyway, here's a mostly untextured, 50% complete ship, posted to keep the blog alive:

2007-04-08T11:25:00.000-04:00

REPERKUSSIONZ is a totally self-financed work, with a one-person crew. Thus, its progression is determined by how far I can stretch my time and bank account. As has happened far too often since live-action production wrapped, I recently had a shocking increase in personal expenses. This means I have to expend ever-increasing time and effort to pay the bills, thus REPERKUSSIONZ is painfully neglected. At the end of a typically demanding workday, there's very little energy left for my own project, which at the moment is match-moving REPERKUSSIONZ live action and compositing into it monsters and rocketships and explosions. I'm in the middle of two animation contracts at the moment. I hope I can stretch the payday from these, after their completion, to allow me to tend to REPERKUSSIONZ for a few weeks or months.

Until the happy day when I can present some actual damn completed sequences, here's a stopgap for the two or three of you who are paying attention. This is the intro to the teasers, which I plan to dribble out as they're completed. It establishes the general REPERKUSSIONZ ambience.

2007-02-14T13:23:00.000-05:00

This is some early test footage from the centuries-long production of REPERKUSSIONZ. About a third of what you see here has, in the current edit, been hugely modified or completely eliminated.

2007-01-26T13:11:00.001-05:00

Editing REPERKUSSIONZ reveals that it will have almost no "filmmaking technique". The live-action scenes were shot three or more times each, as identically as possible, from three or more different angles. Cutting between them creates a 3-camera sitcom feel. The action sequences, of which there are quite a few, are cut to the beat of the score, which make them resemble rock videos or theme song intros. For better or worse, REPERKUSSIONZ will be distinctive.

I applied for a grant to help complete REPERKUSSIONZ a year or so ago. A positive response seemed distantly possible. People get money for the damndest "art projects" all the time. The grant form was simple, not the usual three-inch tall stack of papers. After a couple of months, I got a response.

►Reperkussionz◄ was respectfully declined because my project was said to be "a regurgitation of oddly-combined visual concepts from Saturday morning cartoons and lowbrow science fiction movies, with no serious message" and I'm like, "Well, duh". Probably I should have submitted a different written description, detailing the intent to ironically use well-worn pop-culture symbols to cleverly attack, from the viewpoint of an HIV-positive trans-gendered polar bear, the genocidal genital mutilators of East Brunswick. Then, once I got the money, I'd say "Fork off, ya pretentious bastids" and I'd go buy some sweet rilms for my Chevette. I mean, finish REPERKUSSIONZ.

2007-01-16T13:33:00.000-05:00

It's coming to get you, Barbera.

2007-01-13T11:50:00.000-05:00

...and we were talking about the stars of REPERKUSSIONZ. They are MADMAN PONDO and DESIREE FERRARI. Click the names to go to their MySpace pages and become their total BFFs. There is another actor in REPERKUSSIONZ named RAW TALENT, a wrestler who plays the non-speaking TOOL. All his scenes were shot in a couple of hours because he had to get to work the one day he was available. Almost all his screen time is composited over other stuff filmed on other days. Although all three actors have been very nice about it, I am confident that, out of my earshot, they are of the belief REPERKUSSIONZ will never be finished. At least they were nice about it last time I spoke to any of them, which was, like, forever ago. Maybe they read this blog, I dunno.

About the "filming" of REPERKUSSIONZ. I don't think I've said much here about the live-action shoot. The camera was a Panasonic DVX100, and shots were captured at 24PA. That stands for 24 frames per second, Progressive, Advanced. It's a technical thing! The DVX100 is great. Editing is done in Sony's VEGAS, which is simply the best NLE for the PC. It kicks PREMIERE to the curb. Creatures and sets are made in LIGHTWAVE. For character animation, it doesn't quite offer the power of XSI and MAYA, but for the speed with which good-looking scenes can be completed, LIGHTWAVE beats everything else. 3D tracking and compositing is done with a huge boring pile of programs. AFTER EFFECTS is the post-processing workhorse. AE is unpleasant to use, but it's the only affordable option. The shoot was done in two- to four-hour sessions scattered over a period of three weeks. Added up, it came to about 30 hours of work each for Pondo and Desiree, both of whom were patient and gracious as I regularly fell backwards over cords and tables while shooting in the converted garage.

This is the last time I ever shoot greenscreen in standard definition DV. For some shots, the required matte tweaking is so extensive it may as well be 100% hand-roto. I want to grab the DV footage and manually kill it. Ah well, I knew about that going in. There weren't any hi-def cameras sitting around when I grabbed the DVX100 and ran out the back door. On the plus side, I got the original box and intruction manual and everything.

Sound was captured with two Sony UWPS1 UHF wireless lavs, feeding a very cantankerous minidisc recorder, which I will never use again in production. Next time I do something like this I'll lug a PC to the set and record audio straight to hard drive. The majestic REPERKUSSIONZ soundtrack score is being composed with SONAR 2.2. That's a very old version of SONAR. I hated what Cakewalk did to the interface with SONAR 3 and beyond, so I stick with 2.2, which works very well.

Lighting was done with halogen utility lights, safety screen removed to get rid of that nasty shadow. I found a very effective chroma key paint at LOWE'S. It bears the brand. It's called REPTAR GREEN. It's a slimy day-glo green that keys out better than any other paint I tried.

When I decided to do REPERKUSSIONZ way back when, I sought out other projects created similarly on a small budget. I wanted to see how well a cheap epic could be done. The only low-rent virtual set movie I found at the time was DESPISER, which most likely had a much larger budget than REPERKUSSIONZ. It was the proof I needed. Shooting a microbudget greenscreen project was possible, and lots of people were gearing up for that very thing. Since then, many more small-time Lucas/Rodriguezes have appeared, such as the makers of the STAR WARS fan film REVELATIONS. Oddly, that fan project, which is prohibited from turning a profit and is distributed free on the web, had a much higher budget than most profit-seeking microbudget features.

About the aforementioned DES PISE R : I won't do a film review here, but the soul-eating Troll Doll is very entertaining.

Why the odd spelling of REPERKUSSIONZ? I honestly have no idea.

The distribution of REPERKUSSIONZ is a big question mark at the moment. I've spoken with a few distributors. I'm told, to be considered for distribution, I need to have lots of titzengore in the movie. That's not quite what this project is about. The advances offered are insulting. That may change when I have more to show.

The first teezer-trailer from REPERKUSSIONZ will detonate in your midst before you know it!

2007-01-11T19:39:00.000-05:00

This is a flying saucer, one of the thousands of spaceships that clutter the skies of REPERKUSSIONZ.

I don't remember what year it was, 2005 or 2006, but this particular ship from REPERKUSSIONZ was loaned out to another proud work of microbudget cinema. This saucer is never seen up close in REPERKUSSIONZ, .but it stars prominently in two scenes from VAMPIRE WHORES. The producer emailed me and said "why don't you do a spaceship for my movie" and I said "Yeah, what the fudka, I got a bunch already made and stuff" and I animated a couple of sceens in an hour and a half. I have not seen VAMPIRE WHORES because I forgot about it until just now, and I may not get around to watching it, but word in certain critical circles is that it ranks alongside SCHINDLER'S LIST and TITANIC in terms of pure super-excellent majesty. Having seen neither of those films, I cannot judge the accuracy of that claim.

2007-01-11T16:12:00.000-05:00

This playground equipment can hurt you.

2007-01-08T15:57:00.000-05:00

Dave Redl independently produces FAMILY PANTS. The cartoon is funny and well-done, and there's a section of his FAMILY PANTS journal that details the nutzen bolts of banging your head against the wall at home alone in the quest to make entertaining moving imagery.

An article that spoke directly to me is:
Production Notes and Anecdotes 2
"Simplify, Simplify and Simplify!"
I should have approached REPERKUSSIONZ with this philosophy from the beginning, instead of designing impossibly ambitious sequences that need to be streamlined and streamlined, then streamlined again to fit within the capabilities of one guy working in spare time with a modest render farm. It seems I would know better, having produced animation full-time since 1998. REPERKUSSIONZ will be a thing of blinding wonder, of course - just a bit more sub-dood than originally intended. Redl speaks of 2D FLASH, while I work in 3D, but the idea is the same: Don't bury your independent project in massive complexity that would require an expensive crew and/or years to complete. Duh!

Redl's site:
FAMILY PANTS

2006-12-30T18:27:00.000-05:00

Haphazardly assembling REPERKUSSIONZ has belatedly revealed that an early musical introduction dramatically invalidates a later rockin' teen combo production number. Thus, that intro has to go! It's an easy decision to make, because it reduces the screen time of a 2D-animated little alien guy by 30 seconds. Now that this piece of music has been cast off, I'll share it with you, the wildly enthusiastic REPERKUSSIONZ audience.

Download:
TOY MENU
(Composed and produced by Frank Panucci, all rights and wrongs reserved)

2006-12-04T21:10:00.000-05:00

One of way too many composite shots in progress - -

2006-11-22T19:04:00.000-05:00

Hullo. I'm a scientist.

2006-10-15T09:45:00.000-04:00

Crowd scenes.

Stay away from 'em if you're a one-man crew.

I just this morning reluctantly trashed one that, realistically, wouldn't have been finished until 2050.

It's not a total loss. I can sprinkle the background characters and their animation into other shots to fill them out.

2006-09-09T19:19:00.000-04:00

2006-09-01T18:34:00.001-04:00

Rather than continue to store info about REPERKUSSIONZ in two places, I'm moving the old stuff from my website to this blog as I hammer away at the impending preview segments. If you haven't seen these pics at FRANKPANUCCI.COM, you can see them now.

First up, a couple pics of the robotic Architect, a menacing presence who designs things that do stuff.

Here's a robot dumping facility - not the kind where robots take dumps, but the kind where junk robots are dumped.

As you can see, this creature is rather slovenly. He has carelessly left his thing out.

More on the way...

2006-08-10T10:55:00.000-04:00

Ak! It's been forever since my last post.

This is slow going. It's been fifteen months since the completion of live-action shooting for REPERKUSSIONZ. I had expected to finish the whole project in 2005 or early 2006. But, since then, I got nine unexpected months of full-time work - but not all in a row, leaving me a scattered six months of working time on this feature-length thing. Anyway, every time I return to REPERKUSSIONZ, I have to re-familiarize myself with AFTER EFFECTS and many other programs. Basically, this involves opening files containing fairly involved composites and animation setups, and trying to remember what the hell I was doing. This slightly messes up the workflow.

I just finished up three audio jobs for a website and a couple of instructional videos, and it looks like a long dry spell is on the way. What's bad for my bank account is good for REPERKUSSIONZ, and the already one-year-late first teaser will pop up here as soon as humanly possible. Until then, Ben, old friend, you and Johnny were the greatest...And Sue...take care of her...both of you...look after her...always...

2006-06-28T18:37:00.000-04:00

Level 2. Watch your step.

2006-06-19T21:31:00.000-04:00

There's probably one of these in your attic.
It's the base of a Rebirth Tower.

2006-06-17T17:34:00.000-04:00

The bottom parts of Hairy Scary.
His legs, I mean.

2006-05-19T21:06:00.000-04:00

The Big Reveal

...one of them anyway. This is part of the soundtrack score in which our protagonists do some space swoopin' and come from behind a obstacle to see a vast panorama of planets and spaceships and all kinds of other science fiction doodads. Wow!

CLICK to download or listen

2006-04-03T12:03:00.000-04:00

GOING THROUGH CHANGES...

Another background guy.
This one is an ideological
pamphleteer with tasty parasites.

2006-03-17T22:32:00.000-05:00

These little guys have been getting my full attention!
...but as soon as the latest episodes of KSNN are done, I'll be back full-time on REPERKUSSIONZ. KSNN is a science education show for little kids. The characters are modeled by Gabe Ledesmas. I provide the score and sound edits/foley for every show (since 2003), and I animate a few. There's a deadline crunch right now for eight 1-minute shows, but soon they will be finished...

2006-03-02T11:57:00.000-05:00

A pleasant distraction, not directly related to REPERKUSSIONZ:

2006-02-19T21:52:00.000-05:00

PONDO is the sinister BLACKSMITH!

Here are the first stills of REPERKUSSIONZ star MADMAN PONDO from the soon-to-be-released 2001 MANIACS. He ain't a good guy in this one...

2006-02-16T18:53:00.000-05:00

Hot rod escape ship!

2006-02-02T09:03:00.000-05:00

A few miscellaneous pics from the production...

2006-01-30T18:14:00.000-05:00

Why, yes. It's exactly what it looks like.

2006-01-13T10:01:00.000-05:00

It would have been great if REPERKUSSIONZ had featured Kevin (MADMAN PONDO) Cannady's motion picture debut, but another movie bears that honor! A reminder will be posted here in March when the DVD of 2001 MANIACS is released. A remake of Herschel Gordon Lewis' beloved, splattery gore classic 2000 MANIACS, this instant hit features the Madman himself, PONDO, as the enigmatic, menacing Blacksmith. There's a picture below. Look just behind Robert Englund's left ear. It's PONDO!

Meanwhile Pondo has been hob-knobbling with all manner of other genre celebrities. Just lookee! Click the picture below to make it slightly larger.

2006-01-09T19:40:00.000-05:00

Tribute to a "magnetic" ship used by a certain famous detective...

2006-01-05T19:10:00.000-05:00

It's like stacking grains of sand, and it's simultaneously amusing and frustrating.

I knew finishing a feature-length, almost completely animated, epic science fiction project by myself would be, at best, slow going. I was lucky enough recently to land enough paying jobs to continue eating, but they took way more time than I would have preferred. So, my timetable is skewed, and the completion date of the delightfully-named REPERKUSSIONZ is pushed back, and back, and back again. Unfortunately, I don't know anyone good enough and dumb enough to work for free and provide acceptable results in terms of 3D animation and compositing. So, the crew is still just me and the first teaser/trailer - which I had planned for completion by August of 2005 - should drop in January 2006. Keep your eyeballs compulsively peeled...

2005-12-28T17:03:00.000-05:00

PONDO and DESIREE play with the big guns!

2005-12-13T12:13:00.000-05:00

Wayne Stanfield, who wrestles under the name RAW TALENT, played the part of Hentai's companion TOOL. I don't recall posting a pic of him on this blog yet, so here's one. Due to scheduling weirdness, all RAW's work was done in one day, and he'll be composited into almost all his shots.

2005-12-02T09:48:00.000-05:00

Here is a green screen test from early 2005. It proved the practicality of shooting against a temporary green area made from cheap hardware store components.

This may be the last update of 2005, but work on REPERKUSSIONZ continues non-stop. Keep watching for more peeks from the supra-finite space behind space...

2005-11-29T22:18:00.001-05:00

It's a US federal law that, whenever a 3D model is completed, it must, at least once, be textured with a "porcelain" surface and rendered on a white background using global illumination. Don't blame me - blame those who make the laws.

2005-11-05T13:44:00.001-05:00

These little bugs walk around in the background of many scenes.

Click HERE for an animation test of the bug walk.

2005-11-01T19:03:00.000-05:00

This alien is a spud! He has eyes all around.

Mister "Gaze Rights" here ain't textured yet. This is only the geometry.

2005-10-20T06:35:00.000-04:00

Motion test for EYEPOD:
CLICK HERE FOR ANIMATION

2005-10-19T14:51:00.000-04:00

EYEPOD MOUNTAIN!

2005-10-12T22:48:00.000-04:00

Nodablee MK II!

2005-10-12T17:58:00.000-04:00

Look! Nodablee ships!

2005-10-01T10:18:00.000-04:00

You said you wanted to see a creature that probably won't make it to the screen because it looks way dumb from every angle? Okay, here...

2005-09-21T11:43:00.000-04:00

A totally original science-fiction weapon:

2005-09-15T14:38:00.000-04:00

This is my brother RUDY PANUCCI in his star turn as "the guy with bug legs and an eye patch". See his blog HERE.

Click the pic for a bigger version. This is the foreground composite, minus the ground and buildings and even more gratuitous fuzzy haze.

2005-09-09T10:27:00.000-04:00

Look. It's another mechanical trundling creature that bedevils our hero, Buck. I have put a jaunty "word balloon" into the picture to make it more appealing.

Congrats to REPERKUSSIONZ star, MADMAN PONDO, for his maniac performance last Tuesday in IWA EAST COAST's PROPERTY DAMAGE GUARANTEED match. After Pondo's victorious Tai Pei deathmatch against RUDE BOY, a surprise guest appeared and got into the action: Violent J from INSANE CLOWN POSSE. As usual, there were many open wounds and lots of flying blood and broken glass. That's always a special treat for the small children in the front row!

2005-09-02T19:06:00.000-04:00

This is a mechanical background thing. It
trundles around blindly, providing "atmosphere". It has
rotating metal inner gut parts. You can see them do their
business through the translucent candy outer shell.

2005-08-29T13:48:00.000-04:00

In the late 1990s, I was involved in a documentary about a rural US "UFO alien" sighting. It was called the BRAXTON COUNTY MONSTER. It was intended to have several dramatic animated re-en-act-lints of the incident. That particular project collapsed in a maze of recrimination and pastry, but the design of the titular robot guy, based on "eyewitness accounts", stuck with me. I've incorporated that overall look into a major robot character in REPERKUSSIONZ. In the years since the original BRAXTON animation was done, my 3D modeling/animation abilities and software have been upgraded considerably.

2005-08-25T23:19:00.000-04:00

Every day I work with this footage, and it reminds me of the good humor and patience Desiree and Pondo brought to this humble, weird production. I hadn't typed up the script before production began, so it was all in sloppy handwritten form. Every night, I'd type and print out just enough to cover the next day's shooting. The actors never saw their lines until just before they had to deliver them, and they frequently had to say long strings of multi-syllabic nonsense words. They also saw none of the script in sequence, so I'm not sure even now they have any idea what exactly this thing is about. Many pivotal scenes are completely animated, so there was no need to print out scripts for those. There were rewrites done as the script was being typed, and some changes were improvised on the set, inspired by suggestions from Des and Pondo. I get tentative calls from them sometimes, asking what completed footage there is to see. Very soon the first teaser will be done.

2005-08-22T12:46:00.000-04:00

Pushim stacks his toys precariously. Click the pic to see it in 800 X 600 resolution.

2005-08-21T09:52:00.000-04:00

Desiree composited over a temp background.
There's still some green to matte-choke from the right arm. I must have been crazy to make the jacket shiny. There's spill everywhere! I am getting "crap-all tunnel sin drum" from lots of extemporaneous hand-roto.

Here's lookin' at you.

2005-08-20T01:35:00.000-04:00

I bought this mask on ebay to use for a gaggle of background alien creatures shown for a few seconds. It served with honour, but it has become a storage problem. It's huge! It currently nestles snugly in its three-foot cardboard shipping cube. There's no room to put it in my apartment, so this latex monstrousity sits in the back seat of the Corolla. Parallel parking has become a bitch. On a hot day, my car has that "freshly-baked condom smell". I suppose I'll sell the mask on ebay eventually. Circle of life and all that.

2005-08-20T00:31:00.000-04:00

This is the robot deployment nozzle. The sight of its protuberant frenzy causes Buck to remember repressed psychosexual trauma, with hilarious results.

2005-08-19T10:19:00.000-04:00

This is one of the rotating promo pics that appear on my website.

2005-08-18T01:08:00.000-04:00

Here's a tiny doctor. He and other tiny doctors attempt to heal a thraller with a damaged klanger:

This is a thraller:

2005-08-17T15:01:00.000-04:00

The live action has been "in the can" for a short while, needing only a couple minutes of pickups to fill in some sloppy holes. The three main non-animated characters are played by famed wrestler Madman Pondo Cannady as Buck, Desiree Ferrari as Hentai, and Wayne "Raw Talent" Stanfield as Tool. It was challenging shooting a planet-hopping extragalactical epic in a 13X13 foot temporarily-converted garage with a low ceiling. There wasn't a lot of elbow room for all the crazy wild adventure. Thanks to DESTINY IMAGES for the use of its garage.

This blog will be updated as frequently as showy new parts of REPERKUSSIONZ are finished. That won't be every day. The completion date of this movie has been pushed back with every time-consuming outside animation job I get. Now it looks like REPERKUSSIONZ will be done mid-2006 instead of early in 2006 as I had hoped.

You can hear part of the musical score to REPERKUSSIONZ here.

A few stills from the shoot:

An early composite from the PUSHIM UPPATONI sequence: