Well, been a while, sorry, I have been snowed deeply under of late, this Summer has been spent doing many things-building a costume for our local Council, deep into transferring my CGI skills from Lightwave over to Maya- where all the serious work is at- and also sorting out the studio for a stop motion shoot that is still under wraps, but which I will reveal in forthcoming posts- we are quite excited about this next shoot, as it will mean striding bravely forward into lip-sync, an area we have been studiously avoiding so far...
But this blog is actually going to be about the control panels we have built for the "Robots' project- we have always seen the aesthetic design for this piece as being majorly inspired by the Ridley Scott 'Alien' film, which along with Blade Runner had one of the most believable worlds technically- at least to my eyes...so we knew the controls would have to be practical, with loads of lights and moving features.
During the course of building these bits and pieces I have had several useful strokes of luck which hopefully will interest someone else...
Here we see Spark at the controls of the 'main' control panel- so far-with some comedy led flashing spectacles flickering away in the background...
This panel was built structurally using interesting shaped plastics i had collected, and foamcore for thr main frame- the detail ha been harvested from many different places, such as the innards of Playstation controllers, novelty items, trim from dead tape decks and a lot more- this was the first panel built, so it used LED lights wired into it at about 10m different locations, and in a variety of colours- all can be wired to my home made LED lighting board and controlled to give different rates of blinking- something i feel is crucial to a pleasing space interior- from the Millenium Falcon to the Nostromo... it's all about the blink!
This is a panel for the background of the room- a set wall, if you will- I am now trying to build sets with removavable walls just so I can create any shot i choose without being limited by the walls themselves- this section was built onto a sheet of A2 foamcore for lightness, and is mostly built out of old 2HD floppy discs, Black CD inlay trays, and the lid of a dead scanner/printer...simple, but effective.
This one I am calling the 'Engine' Panel - it's foundation was a box for holding old floppy discs, which I took apart- then added flight case corners, shaving blade containers, and part of an old video game racing wheels pedal system- as well as detailing a very old printer ribbon, and practical switches from an old radio...You can also see a hole drilled in the middle to accomodate a LED torch for practical lighting.
Fitting the LED through the hole.
The Led's lit up...This was an early build, and I learned a lot from it...
These two were both built from the foundation of 'washing tablet' container boxes, sprayed black and then detailed with various bits of small detail collected over the last year- my favourite bit of detail are the real tiny electronic switches I have removed from circuit boards- again there are also sliders that are practical, removed from old radios and tape decks... I chose to use these containers because I quite liked their generic design, and more importantly, we had lots of them!
Another angle on the generic control panels...
Overheads on both the first generic panels- you csan see the mini electronic switches much clearer from here...
And again- everything from lego switches to buttons employed on this particular one- it is probably worth adding that these panels will not be 'significant' panels on the ship- most likely background set details- with bigger and better panels created for the 'hero' sections of the control panels.
I couldn't resist this- a big old mainframe computer with spinning tape wheels and everything- built from an old tape deck, obviously- this is a work in progress, yes, I know you can spot the steel rulers in the side of the glass display, they will be concealed- but I love the idea of a spinning mainframe in the background- There is an obvious technological contradiction here- really retro computing combined with hi-tech robots- but I want to reference the technology that excited me when I was young- in many ways the Robots will be slightly 'retro' in this sort of way- I want to honour and reference the stuff I loved as a child.
The grisly and time consuming task of soldering LED's in place for the early control panels- MAPLIN here in the UK stock bargain loose packets of vearious LED's that cost about £3 for approx 40 LED's- some of which are colour changing, various sizes etc- but it is a lot of work soldering them individually- lately I have discovered something else;
These are LED colour changing fibre optic lamps i discovered IN my local pound shops- they have MANY different colour options- 6 different states- and even pulse and flash over time- they are powere by 3 AA batteries and are absolutely brilliant-
My current design is now shifting away from multiple LED's and towards these lamps powering fibre optic cables, thus allowing me to go for the real 'Millenium Falcon' look of many, many blinking Led's with different speeds and colours- not bad for £1!! The fibre optic cable was ordered from a model railway supplier in Wales, and cost approx £20 for 10 metres- it is surprising still how quickly you will go through it...
So I hope that helps someone with their ideas and projects, I leave you only with the announcement that having missed recently the chance to see Willis O'Brien's King Kong on a big screen in London due to going to the wrong place(D'oh!), I decided to track down King himself, and discuss this disappointing turn of events in person- we had a smoke, and sorted it all out. He is actually thoroughly civilised! But a terrible Bogart.
Tune in next week (or month) when we will be revealing some of the secrets of our Lip sync project, provisionally titled 'R-Age'...
Adios Amigo's!