Greg Aronowitz

2012 IAWTV Awards in Vegas (alt. title: Winner! Winner! Chicken Dinner! )

2012-01-14T12:41:00.000-08:00

If you have read any of my Dragon Age: Redemption blogs, you know that the show was a challenge, and getting to the finish line was very trying. I am so honored to be able to write this entry now knowing that the effort was worth while, and people embraced and enjoyed the work we did.

At the end of last year, I was nominated for two International Academy of Web Television Awards: Best Production Design, and Best Make-up FX for Dragon Age: Redemption. I was invited to the ceremony in Las Vegas last week, along with friends, co-workers, and fellow nominees from DA:R and The Guild.

The awards were being held during CES, the largest consumer electronics show of the year. People were traveling into Vegas from all over the world for the event, which made it even that more exciting.

Photo 1: As usual, I am in the middle of a heavy work load, so I could only afford to spend a single day in Vegas. It was unfortunate, because so many of my friends were there for the awards AND the trade show, and there were parties and events happening all week. But all was not lost, as the 24 hours I spent there were WELL packed with adventure and excitement. I know that what happens in Vegas is supposed to stay in Vegas, but I don't think any mobsters will take me out if I share the experience with you...

Photo 2: I hitched a ride with Knights of Good associate Lindsey Koens. The awards didn't start until evening, but people got Lindsey paranoid that we would get stuck in massive traffic and miss the fun if we left too late, so she convinced me that we needed to leave by 6:30am! I talked her into 7:30, since I knew that it was going to be the longest day ever! Needless to say, the hour difference was irrelevant, as we arrived in Vegas around 11:30am, hours earlier than we needed to be! It was about this time we realized that our hotels wouldn't even let us check in until 2pm, so it was off to lunch!

We ate in the Venetian, at a restaurant that overlooked the canals. If you have never been to Vegas, it is both cheesy and miraculous at the same time. The above photo was taken inside the hotel. Like, literally INDOORS! Everything is a fake replica of Venice, including the sky!

Photo 3: I don't drink or gamble, so I am not drawn to the obvious appeals of Vegas. But I have to say, every time I arrive there, I am in awe of the scope and grandeur that the city provides. I know it pales in comparison to all of the real structures they are emulating, but the effort is astounding. If you want to see hints of all the wonders of the world in a single weekend, Vegas is worth the trip. Plus, they have all you can eat prime rib for $15.99!

Photo 4: I guess some of the casino bosses started to finally take note of the rising geek culture! I was surprised to see the huge quantity of genre themed slot machines as I walked across the floor to get to my room. It was like Golden Apple Comics opened a casino! I saw Star Wars, BatMan, Terminator, James Bond, everywhere I looked was one of my favorite franchises begging me to drop quarters. I might have done it, too, if the jackpot yielded Micromachines or Legos! But I needed to get dressed for the show, so I only paused long enough to take this photo for my best friend, Sheri Bryant. She is a huge Godzilla fan, and someday she needs to have this one-armed bandit in her collection!

Photo 5: Believe it or not, even with 2 nominations looming that night, the most nerve wrecking part of the whole event was getting dressed! The invitation asked for "cocktail attire", which I assumed meant a suit. I am not a suit person, but I felt the occasion commanded it. I wore a tie, which was highly uncomfortable to someone who spends every day in a Star Wars tshirt! I figured I didn't want to be too far out of character, so I accented with this T.I.E. clip. Get it!?! Cause it's a twin ion engine fighter clipped on my.... alllrighty, then.

Photo 6: Award ceremonies are funny things. When you get nominated, you're like, "That's cool." The day gets closer, and people ask you about it, and you tend to not think about it much more than that. At least I try not to. Then you arrive, and with each passing moment, as you see stars on the red carpet, and tons of news reporters and photographers, it starts to sink in. And your stomach twists into knots. The possibility of winning becomes as terrifying as the more likely reality of losing. I definitely started getting nervous.

Luckily, my wardrobe fears were put to rest when IAWTV award nominated Guild costume designer Kristen Ingram was impressed with my jacket. This photo may be the very moment she was saying it! Kristen is the best, and the costumes she created for The Guild season 5 blew me away!

Photo 7: Another comforting factor was that so many friends were there. I got to hang out and catch up with everyone as we waited in line to be interviewed on the red carpet. Technically, it was a BLUE carpet, so if I start calling it that, you will know what I mean!

Vu Bui and I reminisced about how it had only been a few short months since our last Vegas adventure, putting MineCon together. We were excited to both be wide awake this time around! Actually, Vu took all of the pictures with me in them that I am posting in this blog. Except of course, for this one, since he's in it!

Photo 8: His brother, Lan Bui, took that one! But now Vu is taking this picture since Lan is in it. And so am I. Get how this is working?

Photo 9: After the Blue carpet run, we all went inside the theater to be seated. I sat next to Felicia Day and Jeff Lewis, which was a highlight of the evening. Jeff asked me if I had an acceptance speech prepared, and, honestly, I didn't! I'm always afraid that the more I focus on winning, the more it will hurt if I lose. It's not like sports, where winning or losing is based on your performance in that moment. I put all my effort into the show back when we were filming, and what's written in that envelope is based on peoples reaction to what I did at that time, and nothing I do at this current moment can change that. Oh, I think I'm gonna puke.

Sorry, that was a tangent on what was running through my head after Jeff asked that question. Thanks, Jeff!

Photo 10: The IAWTV Awards are new, and this was the inaugural ceremony. The Chairman of the Academy took the stage to present the brand new, never before seen award. He warned us that it was extremely heavy, and should only be held by the bottom. The relevance of this was not understood until you actually attempted to hold one! Even with the warning, recipients were shocked at the weight all night as they pulled it from the podium.

He also informed us that the award currently had no name. In hopes that the IAWTV awards some day join the ranks of the Oscars, the Emmys, the Tonys, the Golden Globes, and so many other prestigious statues, he encouraged us to tweet suggestions. I'm not sure if this is still open, but if you have a good idea, send it there way!

Photo 11: The awards ceremony went very smoothly, and they kept things moving at a very fast pace. The live audience was shown an introduction video that asked winners to keep their acceptance speech as brief as possible. No one is as much of a pro as Felicia as she accepted her first award for Best Writing. She makes it look so effortless!

Photo 12: Of course, she gets a lot of practice! Here, Felicia accepts her second award, this one for best Female Performance in a Comedy Series.

Photo 13: And...her third acceptance speech. This time it was for the Guild's web design. At one point, Felicia actually got played off mid-speech! The show technicians raised the music as a cue for her to wrap it up as she thanked everyone involved, and she joked about it. She also joked that everyone was probably sick of her by the third award, but apparently, the Internet cannot get enough Felicia Day!

I am very lucky to be involved in the work of such an amazing and talented person as Felicia. I'm sure many feel that she has won so often based on popularity, but I cannot stress enough how authentic Felicia is. Her ideas have transformed the industry, her scripts are the rock solid basis for the show loved by millions, her work ethic is uncompromising, and the team she has assembled is made of the most talented, most kind hearted people I have ever worked with. When I see Felicia accepting awards, I don't view it as accolades for a single accomplishment, but rather for what she is doing for entertainment as a whole. All my life, I have dreamed of "a better way", and I feel like she is paving the road towards it.

Photo 14: Finally, the block of categories came up that included Best Production design. As they showed clips from all the nominated shows, the butterflies in my stomach got more and more chaotic. It was like the battle around the second Death Star in there. I just kept reminding myself that, win or lose, all that matters is that I was there. But then they announced Dragon Age: Redemption as the winner, and my head spun. Jeff Lewis gave me a hearty pat on the back, and Felicia gave me a big hug. As I approached the stage, the realization that I had NOT prepared any kind of a speech really hit home.

Photo 15: It's amazing how many thoughts can run through your mind in a few short seconds. it felt like I was standing in front of that podium for an eternity before I could even speak. My biggest fear was rambling and getting played off, so I made the conscious decision to keep it short. But what to say in my "short" speech!?! I had to pick through all the topics in my head, and try to link them together in a way that made sense. As I was speaking, it didn't sound very coherent to me, but I must have been on autopilot, because I was later assured that it made perfect sense!

There were so many things that I wanted to talk about. Things that made winning the awards so important to me. I wanted to talk about the hardships of trying to create what we created for the little time and money we had. I wanted to give examples of the intense commitment my crew gave to the project. I wanted to site all the times people said that what we were trying to do was "impossible", and how I felt that this award proved that wrong. But it all seemed like too many words, and things that every nominee in the theater had also experienced.

I wish I could have said something profound, but, I choked! The single most focused thought I had was how grateful I was to have this opportunity, and it made perfect sense to thank the people who gave it to me. I thanked Felicia and Kim Evey for letting me helm the project, and even more so for letting me do what pretty much freaked everyone else out: take control of multiple departments, and be responsible for almost all of the show's physical visual aspects. In essence, Kim and Felicia took the risk of putting all of their eggs into MY basket! It was a task I waited a lifetime to achieve, and I am forever in their debt for allowing me to go for it.

I thanked BioWare for giving me such amazing source material. I wanted to talk about the concept of being a designer for a project based on an franchise like Dragon Age. I've mentioned this before, that as Production Designer, my goal was more to honor the existing designs than to reinvent them. The challenge, in my mind, was that there was no flexibility. A Templar sword in the show had to look exactly like a Templar sword in the game, with no exceptions. The work they did at BioWare was so perfect, we needed to bring it to life in its perfect form. So the term design is very interpretive in this instance.

I also thanked my crew. I started naming them, but realized that the list was way too long. I also realized that thinking about all the tireless hours they put into the project to get me up on that stage was about to make me cry. I accepted the award, but the reality of it is THEY are all the winners. Be sure to see the Dragon Age: Redemption blog posts to see how much work everyone did. I wish I had taken the chance to thank Brian Kameoka, who created a network to find all the volunteers who made up the DA:R art department. So many of them had never worked on a film project before, but their passion and dedication broke all limitations of experience and helped form a team that could accomplish anything.

Photo 16: After I recieved the award (which was REALLY very heavy!!!) I exited the stage, and was taken back to the blue carpet for photos and an interview. I have to say, it felt very different to be on the carpet this time. After that, I was brought back into the theater. It was a total relief to sit down, and Felicia was smiling ear to ear, which made me very happy. But then I remembered that I had another nomination, and this time, the pressure doubled. What were the chances that I would win again? And what did that say about my skills if I didn't? Would losing validate everyone that said I shouldn't helm multiple departments? Why I'm telling you all this is beyond me, I'm just being honest. I assure you it wasn't ego whispering in my ear, it was shear terror!

Another factor that made me nervous was the other nominees, of course! There was so much talent represented at the show, and ironically, my Make-up FX nomination for DA:R was shared by one of the competeing nominees! Kim Graczyk was nominated twice in the same category: for DA:R MUFX with me, and her own nomination for The Guild Make-up. If you haven't seen the Guild season 5, check it out and pay close attention to Kim's work. Zaboo's butterfly make-up alone had me nervous that I could lose the award to my own teammate. It plays tricks on the mind!

Thankfully, Kim and I both won for DA:R, and it was very exciting to get to go back on stage. I will admit that I felt a little more relaxed this time, with anticipation removed from the equation. It also helped that my friends, Team Unicorn's Michelle Boyd and Clare Grant, looking gorgeous as ever, presented us with the award. I was still worried about the speech time allowed, so I thought it was only fair to give the stage to Kim. It was moving to see her fight back tears as she thanked everyone. I was so glad that we won together. In all honesty, I thought Kim hated me by the time we were done with DA:R! Like I said, it was a very ambitious, stressful show. But being on that stage together put everything in perspective, and made it all worth it!

I did take a moment to thank actor Doug Jones. His portrayal of the Qunari mage Saaribas really brought my make-up to life. When working on projects like DA:R, it's important to keep in mind that the FX we are creating are merely a tool, and it will always be the story and the characters that the audience connects with. The best make-up FX ever made will still not be convincing if the actor wearing it does not deliver a believable performance. I was honored and privileged to have Doug as my canvas, and I truly believe that when the Academy was voting for this make-up, it was Doug they were awarding! Thank you again, Doug Jones! You are the BEST!!!

Photo 17: The rest of the night was very exciting, now that I was on cloud 9! I was the academy's first repeat winner (Felicia's multi-wins were after, but I blogged out of order for dramatic effect. Oh, Hollywood!!!) and so many of the other winners were my dearest, closest friends. It made the night very special. And entertaining. Felicia and I noticed that Jeff Lewis had been missing from his seat since he accepted his award for Best Male Comedy Performance. He was gone way longer than everyone else had been. But then he appeared on stage to present with Taryn Southern, and hilarity ensued.

Photo 18: For me, the most moving acceptance speech of the night was by Sean Becker, for his Best Director win. Sean had been nominated twice in the same category: Best Directory for a comedy series, for both The Guild and The Jeff Lewis 5 Minute Comedy Hour. He snagged the award for The Guild, and in addition to thanking everyone involved with the project, he appealed to members of the audience, and home viewers via the live stream, to support his fellow nominees in their goal of making the internet the next evolution of entertainment. He stated that pursuing this career meant that there were endless hours, unscheduled work flow, and often little or no pay that usually put strains on relationships, family, friends, and loved ones alike. He asked for everyone's patience and understanding as we all work our way through the uncharted labyrinth that is web television, and he thanked everyone for helping him, and all of us, get this far.

Photo 19: The ceremony ended with the final block of awards, Best Drama and Best Comedy series on the web. It was not a surprise to me that The Guild won, but it WAS very surprising that my hand was grabbed and I was whisked up on the stage to join in on accepting the award. Kim and Felicia thanked as many people as possible for their help in keeping The Guild going, and there are SOOOOO many of them. Felicia always says that internet entertainment is like a family, and we need to stick together and support each other. Standing up on that stage, it did indeed feel like family.

Photo 20: Another big win for The Knights of Good was Shawna Trpcic's Best Costume Design for Dragon Age: Redemption. Shawna is awesome, and I can't wait to work with her again!

Photo 21: The best part of the night was getting to celebrate with my favorite people in the whole world. There is no greater reward that having friends believe in you, and I am glad that their trust in me paid off!

Photo 22: I cannot express the awe and respect I have for these guys. I hope they know that I will always be willing to help out with anything they do, as their vision and style make very thing we do together a joy. There was no doubt that they deserve these awards, and the fact that they BOTH were nominated twice in their respective categories says a lot about their influence on the internet.

Photo 23: Think of any names for the award yet? Here's a closer look at mine and Shawna's design awards. Collectively, Team Knights of Good won 8 out of 13 category nominations, and Jeff Lewis's adds a 9th. Sean Becker joked that we should connect all our awards to build a Fortress of Solitude!

Photo 24: After the ceremony, there was a cocktail party in the adjacent ball room. We all socialized and networked for a while, but then people split up into multiple dinner parties. I went to a fancy dinner with Vu and Lan Bui at some restaurant that had Ferraris and Lamborghinis in it! Then I met up with Kim, Felicia, Brian, and the gang at Wolfgang Pucks in the Venetian Hotel. Later, a smaller group of us broke off to go to the club Tao. I joined Sean, Becca, Lan, Kristin, and pictured, Michelle, Clare, and yes, that is super agent George Ruiz photo bombing in the background. George represents the winners of 12 IAWTV awards!

Photo 25: The club was packed! Even for a Thursday night! It was huge and glamorous, like all things Las Vegas. They told me I couldn't wear my Knights of Good baseball cap. But apparently you could wear a fedora. The reason? Baseball caps are gang related! But smooth criminals are ok?

Photo 26: We made our way to the dance floor, which was shoulder to shoulder. It was fun for a while, but keep in mind that I had my 20 pound award with me the entire time!!! I wasn't trying to be a show-off, I just really had no place to put it! After toting it around for 6 hours, I could barely feel my arms!!!

Photo 27: Sean tweeted this photo with the caption, "Tonite on OUT OF OUR ELEMENT!" No truer words, my friend! And yes, that is again super agent George Ruiz photo bombing.

Photo 28: After a few hours of elbows to the spine, we decided to call it a night. Apparently we closed the place down, as the hotel was pretty empty on the walk out. With the amazing architecture uncrowded, it was much more obvious that Michelle was almost as tall as the columns! All in all, it was the perfect night. The biggest downside was everyone who WASN"T there! Sandeep Parikh, Amy Okuda, Robin Thorsen, Vince Caso, Rileah Vanderbilt, and Milynn Sarley were seriously missed throughout the event.

Photo 29: I woke up in the morning, and would have thought the whole thing was a dream if it wasn't for the award sitting on my nightstand. It felt good to put on a Marvel tshirt and just be my normal self again as I packed everything up to head back to LA. The celebration was over, and it was time to get back to work. I was sad to have to say goodbye so soon...

Photo 30: But I think we left off on a pretty good note. Congratulations to all of my fellow Knights of Good, The Guild, Dragon Age: Redemption and IAWTV award winners and nominees. And thank you for an amazing night.

The first thing I did when I got back to LA was make space for my awards on the mantle of the fireplace in my display room. Standing back to view them, it became strikingly clear that said mantle was packed to the hilt with props and mementos from ONLY internet shows I have worked on. This shrine includes The Guild, Legend of Neil, Dragon Age: Redemption, and other web based trophies. Traditionally, the house mantle is home to the most treasured of showpieces. It was interesting to me that these props have found their way there over ones I have created for such Hollywood staples as Terminator 2 or Jurassic Park: Lost World. I think it is because, as hugely successful as the blockbuster movies are, I have found my participation in these interweb shows, to me, the most satisfying experiences of my career. I think this is because the web offers a direct conduit from us to you. It is pure. And it is ours.

Duh. I probably should have said that while I was at the podium!

2011: A Year in Review

2012-01-01T20:44:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had fun and exciting holidays. I can't believe how quickly 2011 went by! I've run into so many people I haven't seen in a while over the past few weeks, and everyone asks, "So, what have you been up to?" Well, here is a quick review of exactly what went down at the BarnYard last year...

Photo 1: A year ago, everybody here was working 7 days a week, pulling an inhuman number of all-nighters getting ready for our upcoming productions. We needed a break. Marissa Cuevas's 18th birthday was the perfect excuse to have the party of the century! You only get to turn 18 once, so I tried to make it a party worth remembering. And, trust me, no one will soon forget! We had rollerskating, laser tag, Disney princess. We also had broken bones and concussions! It was legendary. Ginny McQueen made these pterodactyl PJs for Marissa though, so birthday wishes were a success.

Photo 2: Since neither Marissa nor I actually broke any bones at the party, we spent Christmas in London.
Photo 3: And New Years in Paris!

Photo 4: It was a great holiday, but I had to get back to work straight away! Dragon Age: Redemption, filmed under the code name "DAGGERS", was only a week from shooting, and there was still lots to be done.

Photo 5: Felicia Day came to me with a bare bones outline of the project when she first began writing so I could start figuring out how to bring BioWare's fantasy world to reality. It was a dream project, and I begged her to let me helm all of the physical visual aspects. I designed the sets, props, make-up effects, and Felicia's Tallis costume. I am honored to have been nominated for two IAWTV Awards for DA:R, Best Production Design, and Best Make-up Effects.

Photo 6: I worked with Sandeep Parikh on a Super Bowl commercial. I built this dinosaur puppet, and he directed the sequence. If you watched the game, you saw the commercial, but not the dino! The additional sequence was ultimately cut from the spot.

Photo 7: I made a bunch of random small hand props last year, too. For some reason I always get the snow globe jobs, like this prop for an episode of Happy Endings.

Photo 8: And because no year is complete without an 8-bit project, I painted the Tempest Free Running Academy to look like Mario World.

Photo 9: The thing I love the most about my job is the diversity. One minute I'm painting a gym for real life Spider-men, and the next I building a full size tree for a permanent installation in a Melrose store window.

Photo 10: I LOVED Voltron - Defender of the Universe as a kid. Apparently, so did Alex Albrecht. I designed Alex's directing debut in 2010, and I was ecstatic when he asked me to realize the interior cockpit of the Red Lion for his second film.

Photo 11: After we filmed the live action interior, I created a miniature of the exterior Red Lion with Kevin "Amish" Ivers. I'm ready to build the other four lions any time you are, Alex!

Photo 12: There was only about two weeks time between wrapping DA:R and going into full prep on Rock Jocks, a sci-fi comedy I produced with my Dog & Rooster Productions partner, Sheri Bryant. I did the production design and make-up effects on this one, too. Yeah, I'm a glutton for punishment. As is my friend Felicia Day! She came along for the ride, joining cast members Jason Mewes, Andrew Bowen, Jerry Bedknob, Justin Chon, and KevJumba.

Photo 13: Random Rock Jocks prop: Space Shuttle bong! If it makes you laugh now, wait till you see the movie!

Photo 14: This is kind of a secret, but Doug Jones joined the cast, making this the second project we worked on together for 2011. And it was only March!

Photo 15: I don't get a lot of time to paint for fun, but when things are stressful, painting sooths me. I had just finished the first milestone of a HUGE project, as lead designer on a Michael Jackson MMO, and I needed a break. It was director Sean Becker's birthday, so I decided to paint him a Boba Fett jacket. The gift was a big hit. The MJ MMO ultimately shut down, and sadly I cannot show any of the great stuff we created. Maybe next time!

Photo 16: I am an artist. This statement might not surprise you, but it is something I used to be uncomfortable saying! Maybe it was my Jersey upbringing, were I was always told I that if I wanted to "be an artist", I needed a "serious back-up plan" so I could actually have a career. It's safe to say, now, that I don't really have any other place in society but to be an artist. But in my mind there were still certain landmarks I need to achieve to be a "real" artist. 2011 brought me to achieve one of those goals with my very first museum exhibition.

Photo 17: The exhibit is called, "They Can't Protect Themselves." It's a collection of pieces I designed and created to support the SurfRider Foundation. I made suits of armor for endangered marine animals. The idea is that, for every environmental hazard that man creates, we devise a way to protect ourselves from it. Imagine a world where animals could do the same.

The collection is travelling around the country to help raise awareness for the need to protect our ocean environments. They printed these giant posters of each of my sculptures to post around the cities on the tour, and seeing those was the first time I actually felt, well, like an artist!

The show is prepping for a full run, and you can find out were it is going at oceanarmor.org if you would like to see them in person!

Photo 18: It took months to create all of the armored animals, but not every project has the luxury of time! My team had to finish this giant football in 2 days for the "Hall of Game" awards show on Cartoon Network. Red 5 swore that she never wanted to see Bondo again!

Photo 19: Felicia is always on the move, and I'm so glad that I got to join in The Guild: Season Five. Honestly, I think it's her best work yet! For the whole team, actually. The script was amazing, the directing and cinematography were on par with ANY network television show, the acting was at an all time high, and the sheer volume of what we created was astounding. You completely forget that The Guild is a web show...

Photo 20: And the Season 5 cameos! Nathan Fillion, Grant Imahara, Bonnie Burton, Dichen Lachman, Erin Gray, Doug Jones (of course! Project #3), too many favorites to mention them all. It was a thrill to work with each of them, but without a doubt, the highlight for me was filming Stan Lee's cameo AT the BarnYard. My art career started by studying the drawings in How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way before I could even read, so to have the man himself standing in my studio was beyond words. Stan even signed my original sculpture for the Legends in 3D Spiderman, which he had once called his "favorite sculpture of the web-crawler!"

Photo 21: Other iconic personalities I worked with last year included Fabio for his Old Spice commercial series. I carved the mountain that he climbs out of!

Photo 22: You barely see it in the commercial, but the art director had requested a ten foot tall mountain! 41 Sets built a steel frame and covered it in rigid foam. I was brought in to carve it into a realistic rock. The scale changed a few times in the process, from being a whole mountain that Fabio would pop out of like a giant, to merely being an actual sized rock he was hiding in. The rigid foam ended up being TOO rigid, and I had to recruit the use of a chainsaw in order to carve in enough texture fast enough to get the finished product to set.

Photo 23: I'm kind of going in order of the year, so this brings us to about May. Happy Cinco de Mayo! Greg Benson of Mediocre Films made a few movie parody commecials to celebrate the holiday, and asked me to help out. We put together this New York alley set at the BarnYard, and I got to make this awesome Stay Puft Marshmellow Man pinata, which ranks up there as one of my favorite props ever!

Photo 24: The other spot was inspired by Back to the Future, where Marty gets the Delorean up to 88MPH to send a pinata, well, back to the future! Naturally, it was a perfect excuse for me to drive my car as fast as possible. Unfortunately, I had to act, too. Put it this way: if you had to chose between having me act or making a pinata, you would want the pinata!

Photo 25: Of course, there are certain occasions where bad acting is acceptable, like my portrayal of the cheesy 50's alien for Team Unicorn's "Alien Beach Crashers!" I made this mask as a tribute to all the crazy creatures I love from the silver age of Hollywood Sci-Fi.

Photo 26: The Unicorns mashed up the 50s and 60s for ABC. The sci-fi factor was very The Day the Earth Stood Still , and the summer aspect was very "Beach Blanket Bingo". The first order of business, of course, was to find a filmable beach! We were self-funded, so the state and private beaches were way too pricey. I proposed building a beach!

What you see in this video is actually Clare Grant's under-construction house in the Hollywood hills that I painted and decorated to look like a beach house. We got a few tons of construction grade sand dumped onto the driveway, and after a day of weeding and raking, we had a beach!

Photo 27: This piece only took a few hours, so I don't really consider it a "project". But as I went through my photos, it jumped out at me, so I thought I would share. My buddy Zack Ward made his directing debut last year, and he needed an oversized chicken embryo for the opening titles. I had no choice but to do it in fear of Zack sticking my tongue to a frozen metal pole!

Photo 28: On a much more pleasant note, things were much more cheery on the set of HUSBANDS. This wonderful web series was created by Cheeks and Jane Espenson, who is one of my writing idols. It was great to be on set and watch her process. It was also a refreshing to dress existing places with surreal items, but not have to really build anything crazy! If you haven't seen this show, go watch it now. It's really just perfect.

Photo 29: I wanted the steampunk booth in The Guild Season 5 to be spectacular, but, as usual, we were extreamely short on time AND funds. Luckily, Shawn Stryder and the gang from Labrynth of Jareth costume ball had plenty of incredible steampunk fixtures to loan me as a favor. In return, I repaid them with my sculpting services and created this rather large dragon head for one of the stage shows during the annual ball. Hopefully they will let me elaborate on the creature this year!

Photo 30: The most amazing costumes at LOJ were those of Team Unicorn! Rileah Vanderbilt, Milynn Sarley, Michelle Boyd, and Clare Grant are cosplay aficionados. I helped them out with a few projects last year, including their appearance as the Night Sisters for the Lucasfilm Clone Wars panel at San Diego Comicon. I made the laser bows and blades based off of top secret drawings from Skywalker Ranch. It kind of made my comicon!

Photo 31: That wasn't the only Star Wars cosplay I helped with for that con. I made Brian Kameoka's Nien Nunb head. It's a fiberglass shell with a foam latex lower lip, and tinted eyes. Bryan loved it so much he never broke character for the entire weekend. Give the man respect, he DID blow up a Death Star, after all!

Photo 32: The cosplay list was long for San Diego last year. I ordinarily never have time to help people with costumes, but so many of my friends had great ideas last summer, and they all do so much for me, I was happy to squeeze the projects in. Kenny Mittleider is a perfect example. This blog wouldn't exist without him! Making him Hobbit feet for his dream cosplay was the least I could do!

Photo 33: Combining the multiple projects I had going for work with all the side projects for comicon had me pretty worn out by the time I got to San Diego. But once I got there, the party mode kicked in! I went crazy with Justin and Kev. We drank caffeinated colas and stayed out till like 10:30pm!

Photo 34: After comicon, things got serious. I was finally back in the director's chair, which is my favorite place to be. I helmed the experimental pilot, WHITE ROOM: 02B3 for Roddenberry Entertainment.

Photo 35: What made the project so unique was that we shot it in 360. This crazy Probe Droid looking device is actually an array of nine 4K cameras that shoot in sync to create a full wrap around image. One version of the film has no edits, my all star cast, including Breckin Meyer, Tamlyn Tomita, David Blue, Rachel True, Tony Janning, and Milynn Sarley, had to perform as if they were on a live stage! The project also stars...you guessed it...Mr. Doug Jones! That's number 4!

Photo 36: Last year almost had the sense of working in an office, in that every project somehow included people from all of the other projects I did during the year. It made things very fun, and very easy, since everyone knew each other and how to get the most out of every day. The Geek of the Week trading card kick starter video was one of those projects. I loaned them my Jabba the Hutt, and made the shocker collars out of velcro and spray painted water bottle twist spouts! I couldn't stay for filming, but they sent me this photo. If I was going to be locked up in a house, that would be the group I'd want to be trapped with! The "original trilogy vs. prequels" argument could go on so long we would never even know we were prisoners!

Photo 37: Grant may be the robot master, but I bet he never built a lady magnet like this one! I pulled an all-nighter to create this tin parody of a robot for my friend Ilya's Blue cigarette commercial. It was a love story. Pro tip: DO NOT stay up all night and then wear a metal suit all day in mid summer.

Photo 38: I got to get some more Guild street cred by painting the cover for the Dark Horse Clara one-shot. I chose to show Clara's Frost Mage skills with a collection of her guildies sculpted in ice.

Photo 39: There is a long list of personal projects that I attempt to chip away at in my spare time, and there is usually never any of that! But in the wee hours of the night, or while I'm on conference calls, I whittle away at little things that make my inner geek smile. Always at the top of the list: Star Wars! I am helplessly addicted. I could be working on an original prop for a Spielberg movie, but completely daydreaming about recreating ANY prop from Star Wars. I try to at least make original pieces of art that are SW influenced. I have been dreaming about a full collection of Star Wars Smurfs since I was a kid, and this year I finally started started showing pictures of what I've created. There will be many more to come, plus a few other Star Wars inspired projects in 2012. If I can find the time...

Photo 40: I didn't get to travel too much mid year, but the few trips I made were very entertaining. I went to Wizard World Chicago, were Felicia and I premiered the trailer for Rock Jocks during a panel. I was happily surprised that people actually had a few questions for me during the Q&A. Felicia could be on a panel with the President of the United States, and people would still address all their questions to her!

Photo 41: Of course, you don't need to travel much when you have friends like James Kyson Lee. He brings a world of excitement right to your home. He asked if he could film a "quick video" at the BarnYard, and the next thing I knew I had a houseful of burlesque dancers and muscle cars. James loves my Delorean, so it still got center stage. Note Team Unicorn's life guard stand. Everything gets recycled around here!

Photo 42: Like Star Wars, there were several movies that triggered my imagination as a child and helped define who I am today. Even with a Delorean, it's impossible to go back in time to be involved with them, and it is very rare that you ever get an opportunity to re-create your favorite elements from them as part of your job. Last year, I got to bring one of my favorites back to life from scratch. I created a full size, fully articulated E.T. for a new project that comes out this year. I can't say what it is yet, but I got permission to show my favorite extra-terrestrial.

Photo 43: This was not a project, but definitely a major highlight of my year! I got to have dinner at the infamous Club 33 at Disneyland. It's a members only club hidden in the middle of New Orleans Square, and all of the furnishings were personally hand picked by Walt Disney and his wife. Kim Evey, Greg Benson, Sean Becker, and myself were all guest for this once in a lifetime meal.

Photo 44: Always the curse of blogging, so many projects I did last year are still in production, so I can't actually disclose any information about them. I can, however, mention that I did three pilots with one of my comedy heroes, Bob Odenkirk. What does Bob think is funny? My dog, Art!

Photo 45: I'll tell you what's not funny: working on a crime reenactment show. My friend needed some help on set, and I had a few light days. Usually I can separate script from reality, but knowing that all of these scenes were 100% accurate representations of actual crimes made for a really depressing week. At one point, as the actress was screaming for help as an actor was fake stabbing her, even the director had to yell, "Please, stop. We have enough."

Photo 46: On the completely opposite side of the spectrum, I took over Production Design duties for the second round of Brent Spiner's Fresh Hell. Again, I can't talk about what we did, but I can say that we made some pretty cool sets and props, and there are some amazing cameos. We shot about a third of the season at the BarnYard, so the pups got lots of celebrity attention.

Photo 47: We did a few trade shows along the way, too. I got to work with famed photographers, the Bui Brothers, to create the .TV booth for BlogWorld. We made it like a talk show set, and the Buis filmed a live stream of the booth activity all weekend.

Photo 48: Vu Bui and I put our heads together a few weeks later to create a real world version of MineCraft for Mojang's Las Vegas convention to officially launch the game. We created over 40 pieces in 12 days, including a 40' EnderDragon and a photo op cave complete with a Creeper and cave spider!

Photo 49: I'm not really in jail, but I AM at the scene of a crime! Charlie Murphy was filming a pilot for his new comedy show, and the production was having some art department trouble. A good friend of mine recommended me to take over and get everything back on track. I brought my crew and a truck load of sets and props. We worked around the clock to get everything on schedule for the first day of filming, building a warehouse full of sets, including this jail cell. Unfortunately, the production had to shut down after the first week of filming, and before I was even notified, someone swept in and took all of my property!

Photo 50: I lost tens of thousands of dollars worth of stuff, but what hurt the most is this painting of my dog, Print. Guild fans might recognize it: I painted this overnite during the season 5 shoot, after Sean Becker asked my to bring the most random painting I could think of to hang in the hotel room set. People seemed to love the painting, and I decided to make it a thing to see how many sets I could hang it in. You may catch a glimpse of it in a few others, including Husbands. Charlie loved the idea of having the painting featured in an office set, so I loaned it out. Now it is gone with the rest of my stuff. I usually don't "dish dirt" like this on my blog, but I am desperate to get this original piece of art back If anyone has any information on its whereabouts, it would mean the world to me!

Photo 51: One pilot I designed that turned to a full series was The Tommy Wi-Show. With Brock LaBorde producing, Payman Benz directing, and Chris Darnell shooting, I knew this show was destined to be special. We shot the first half of the season on my soundstage, but I had another production in there for the second round, so we recreated the set at the BarnYard to shoot.

Photo 52: As the year started coming to a close, hockey season started up. The LA Kings had some new people in charge, and they wanted to change things up a bit. They asked me to repaint the King's Castle I made a few seasons ago to match the new jerseys. Huh, I said New Jersey.

Photo 53: And finally, I closed the year with the official launch of my new collectible company, Floppets. Tiny PVC characters clasped onto velcro tethers so you can attach them anywhere you want! I started the venture with two dear friends, Rich and Ilyse, and we have our sights set on making our collectible pets the next big thing! Help us out and grab some for you and your friends at floppets.com!

Photo 53: So that is a brief paddle through my 2011 workflow! Of course, there were several other major projects that I couldn't even hint at, but at least I will have something to blog about this year once those things go public! Although, the next few months are already booked up, so I'm not worried about new things to show you. As you can see from the above photo, we have a few "big" things in the works here at the BarnYard!

Make sure to follow me on twitter @gregaronowitz and become a member of this blog to get more posts about future projects. Or past projects! There were a bunch of things in this review that I didn't get to blog about over the course of the year. Anything you would like to see an expanded post about? Let me know in the comments below, and please tell your friends to come check out my blog!

And so we begin 2012...

Some Holiday Cheer!

2011-12-25T13:40:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas! Hope you are having a great day with family and friends! The last thing anybody wants to do today is surf the web, but somehow I have the feeling you will end up here anyway... So I put together a collection of some festive videos I worked on so you have an excuse to pull out the iPad during the family dinner!

In 2009, I was telling Felicia Day about an idea I had for a scene in a show I was developing, and that it might play well for the Guild. She thought it could be a stand alone bit, and I ran with the idea, morphing it into that year's Guild Christmas special. The XBox Live deal was in full effect, and the internet was abuzz with comments about Felicia and the Guild "selling out". So a line of insane merchandise was spawned...

I wrote, designed, and directed all seven videos. This series was shot at the BarnYard. Felicia and Kim Evey decorated the tree. Pretty much the best geek Christmas ever! The only thing that could top it is if R2 and 3PO were to drop by to decorate. Aw, who am I kidding! It can't get better than Codex and Kiko!

This is my driveway! All of the kids were from a play that America Young had just directed in the fall. America is does the voice over for this spot. And the hands at the end are Kim Evey's!

Kevin Thompson and I worked together on one of my first film projects, over 20 years ago! He has acted in countless shows since then for me, but my favorite credits of his are Return of the Jedi and Blade Runner!

Alley Bagget is PlayBoy's Lingerie Model of the Millennium!!! We did a comic book together, AlleyCat, in the late 90s. It was a pleasure to have her in this video.

I posted this one cause, well, er...wouldn't you!?!

One of my favorite props ever. I have copies of the Vork Unbreakable bank all over my house! You can see how I made it here.

I thought it would be even funnier as "sell-out" videos if there were lots of cameos. I asked my buddy James Kyson Lee if he would stop by to get filmed. He asked. "Can I drive your Delorean!?!"

And you guessed it: That's Greg Benson from Mediocre Films doing the closing announcement!

This is my favorite of the series. Amy Okuda was such a good sport. This was also the only video NOT shot at the BarnYard. We filmed at my favorite hobby store, Kit Kraft. David Blue and Brea Grant were hilarious. And pay close attention to the line waiting to buy life-sized Tink dolls. As always, Kenny is first in line! And Guild director Sean Becker scopes out the competition.

I had the idea for this Clara cookie jar that also had a keg tap, but it was Sean Becker who dubbed it the "Mommy and Me" cookie jar! Yellow SPD Power Ranger Monica May dropped in to play the hot mom. She also is a crazy talented make-up artist. She stuck around all day to do everyone's make-up and hair, including Amy's prosthetic elf ears!

Everyone says this is the funniest video.

Although Sean was traumatized by the beheading of the bear!

Also shot in my driveway, all of the snow is fake! Alex Albrecht killed it as the dad. this was the first time we worked together, but we did some amazing projects together over the next few years...

My friends America and Teal Sherer made this video for Christmas this year. I put together the prop weapons for them. Nothing brings holiday cheer like women battling with lightsabers!

And we end with the Zombie Apocalypse! I only helped peripherally on this one, loaning some props and printing some graphics. But I want you to see it because Sean Becker directed this perfect Team Unicorn video, and anything Milynn Sarley, Clare Grant, Michelle Boyd, and Rileah Vanderbilt do is golden!

Hope that made you holiday a little merrier!

See you in the new year. Best wishes,

Greg

Floppets!

2011-12-21T16:09:00.000-08:00

If you follow me on Twitter (if not, please follow me on Twitter! @gregaronowitz! Thnx!) you may have noticed a barrage of tweets about Floppets. Your first thought was probably "Why is he cluttering my timeline with toy endorsements!?!?!" I apologize, I usually refrain from multiple plugs, but I'm going to explain why I did it this time within this blog. Hopefully I will also answer the question that was most likely your second thought, "What IS a Floppet!?!"

Photo 1: A FLOPPET is a collectible, wearable "pet". Each character is a small PVC shape with a patented post on the back, which hooks into a velcro tether. The tether can wrap around anything you can think to attach it to!

Photo 2: Originally conceived by Ilyse Brainin, a teacher well known for her work with reading impaired children, Floppets were intended for kids to use as decoration on their flip-flops at the beach. Once they ended up in children's hands, it didn't take long to find tons of other uses for them: rings, hair-ties, pencil toppers, locker markers, book bag tags, and as you see here, I am using them as holiday ornaments! Obviously, any adult with the collecting bug will love them, too.

Photo 3: Why am I promoting them so much? Ilyse has been a friend of mine for a long time, and we have worked together on multiple amazing projects. She took her inspiration for Floptopia and the Petlets and formed the Zydeco company with another great friend, Rich Goodman. He handles all of the operations, and keeps the company functioning! They asked me to partner with them on this new adventure, and help create characters and concepts that would take the company in new directions. The second I saw what they were doing, I knew I had to be involved.

Photo 4: I think all the designs are amazing, but I particularly love using the skunk to tie my power cable, and ward would-be borrowers away...

Photo 5: No matter how many project companies I start, I always forget how much work goes into them. It's not a bad thing, it's actually my favorite part. It is really just A LOT of work. Once the physical Floppets were done, they needed tags. An outside needed to be designed...

Photo 6: And then an inside! There are so many details to keep the product functional. If Rich never has to see another barcode again, he would be thrilled. Unfortunately, that will not be the case, as there are going to be hundreds, if not THOUSANDS, more Floppets to come!

Photo 7: The response to the original Floppet designs was overwhelming, and I felt there was a huge potential for the brand to grow even larger. I wanted to move the company into licensed properties, but my partners agreed that we also wanted to keep the company "grass-roots" for a while longer, so we could have a stronger grasp on operating the business before branching out too far.

I thought a good test would be to make some characters from some of my other projects, so we could show other franchise owners what the product could do, while still keeping it close to home. We started with one of my favorites, Labou.

Photo 8: We were all very happy with the end results. This mythical creature seems to make everyone smile, including other mythical creatures such as Team Unicorn's Milynn Sarley!

Photo 9: The trick with designing marketing support for licensing is finding the balance between promoting the Floppets brand, and featuring the franchise. Labou allowed me to test options without upsetting the licensed property owner. You know, cause, that's me!

Above is the layout for the Labou Floppets double sided tag. The blue lines are guides for the die-cutting, and aren't printed on the final tag. Lesson learned here: Any art between the tether scores will be covered by the product. Poor Marissa Cuevas!

Photo 10: Taking another step forward, Floppets is thrilled to announce series one of The Guild collection!

Photo 11: I introduced Felicia Day to Rich while we where at Wizard World in Chicago, and he gave her a kitten Floppet. Of course, she loved it! A collaboration seemed obvious, and I started laying out the plan straight away. It is so exciting to have Codex, Vork, Zaboo, Tink, Clara, and Bladezz join our line-up.

Photo 12: All of our Guild Floppets are personally approved by the actors...

Photo 13: Their pets...

Photo 14: And their director! Guild helmer Sean Becker models the choker version...

Photo 15: The main challenge The Guild offered was the level of detail that needed to be achieved. This series has really helped set the bar as far as the quality you will get with the Floppets brand. Series one is based on the animated avatars from the show's opening titles, and I really didn't want to do it unless we could recreate the look exactly. It took a little bit of work, but I am very happy with the end result. I hope you are, too!

Photo 16: The art of PVC inlay is not new, but it is the level of detail we are pushing to achieve that makes our product special. Especially since most Floppets are no bigger than 1 1/2 inches! Above is an example of an average mass produced PVC inlay product.

Photo 17: When you buy a PVC key chain or charm, they are made by hand layering liquid plastic into metal gang molds. The shapes are usually broad and simple, to help speed up production. This is an example of a typical character mold.

Photo 18: Here is one of our molds for the Zaboo Floppet. You can see the elevated amount of detail. All of those lines will be hand painted in the various colors...

Photo 19: Then the rest of the cavity is filled solid with the main color. The material dries, the individual pieces are pulled and trimmed, and then the post is adhered to the back with a special glue that makes it almost impossible to remove!

Photo 20: The Codex Floppets in process. This is why I love doing projects like this. I love making stuff, and I love seeing stuff I've made being duplicated so everyone can have some! The production process is as fascinating to me as the actual act of designing the original.

Photo 21: The finished Codex. There were several versions of Codex in the design stage. I originally thought she might have more of a presence with a black outline, but filling her with solid black dulled down the other colors. Ultimately, we went with a white border, which helps give her a unique identity when lined up with the rest of the gang.

Photo 22: And... more tags! We got all the Guild Floppets shipped in time for the holidays, but the tags were delayed. In order to make sure that fans could get them in time, I hand cut a bunch of tags to keep the orders flowing. I don't know, would that be considered a collectible variant!?!

Hopefully that answered some questions about Floppets. I am really excited about this new project. I love my partners and I adore what we are creating. Check back here often, as I will blog about all of the new exciting products we are going to be adding to the line. We have so many amazing things to announce in 2012, it's hard not to blurt it all out right now! Leave a comment below if there is anything you would like to see as a Floppet, and go to Floppets.com to buy some! Thanks!

Dragon Age: Redemption Episode 6 Part 2

2011-12-11T12:14:00.000-08:00

At long last we come to the final blog for Dragon Age: Redemption. If you've been following along, you've seen the magnitude of the project we set out to do, and the uphill battle we fought along the way to do it! The BarnYard took on the lion's share of the visual aspects of prepping the film, including the sets, props, and make-up effects. Any one of those departments should have had the budget of the entire project, and my crew should have been 10 times the size. but it wasn't, and the people involved worked that much harder to make everything amazing. You may wonder how many unseen dozens of craftsman helped in bringing the DA:R art department's task to fruition, but the truth is everyone involved has been mentioned and/or pictured in these blogs. We were a rag tag team of believers in what Felicia Day had planned, and despite the odds that were against us, I think things turned out pretty well.

Every episode has it's own behind the scenes story, and I hope I covered most of them on these pages. The final episode brought us to a place of magic and mayhem, Sundermount, the ancient burial shrine of Elves.

Photo 1: When we last left Sundermount, it was being ravaged by the incredible winds ripping through the mountains above the San Fernando Valley. I got a crew up there as early as possible in the morning so we could get the set back together and in perfect shape before filming began.

Photo 2: We were going to be on the location for several more days, so the trick was not only to get the set standing again, but to make sure it stayed that way for the rest of filming! We quadrupled the number of stakes, sandbags, and ropes we used to secure the walls down on the backside, and we fortified them with jack stands on the front side when the set wasn't being filmed.

Photo 3: Sundermount stands again! Very little of the set can actually be seen in the show, which is disappointing, since I think it is the only real setting that directly connects our world to Bioware's virtual world.

Photo 4: The Sundermount shoot spanned over a few "splits". This is when the 10 to 12 hour work day is pushed later in the day, or way early in the morning, to split the time between the dark of night and the light of day. We needed daylight for the travel shots to Sundermount, and for the morning after the main battle. Of course, that battle all took place in the dead of night.

There was a lot to shoot, so even though most of episode 6 all took place in one location, it was heavy divided up over those several nights. Many things needed to be reset, including the blood ritual. Here, the maze of runes is being redressed for a second night of sacrifice!

Photo 5: Moviestar drinking Rockstar! (I gave Marissa Cuevas the nickname "Moviestar" on Labou, our first project together, a long, long time ago! Her birthday is this week, so send her well wishes!) The hardest part about working splits or night shoots is staying awake! No matter how many nights of a shoot I work, I never seem to fully adjust and find myself still waking up during the day to do stuff, which makes it more difficult to jump into a 12 hour work shift. Marissa had a very emotional scene during the Sundermount night shoots, so energy drinks became her best friend. Felicia and Kim gave their love to the crew in the form of a coffee truck, which kept us warm and awake on those long. cold nights!

Photo 6: One thing Marissa learned is that it is hard to keep warm when you are spending long hours playing dead! The saddest part of Dragon Age: Redemption for me was the fact that Marissa's character, Fina, dies in the end. (Sorry if that was a spoiler!!! But I hope everyone has seen DA:R by now!!!) The only bright side was that I got to participate in the dramatic scene by crafting the jawbone sacrificial dagger that does the deed. I know I showed this to you before, but I couldn't reveal all the versions of it to avoid the above mentioned spoiler!

Here is the final hero dagger, the bloody stunt dagger, and the half dagger rig that attached to a harness under Marissa's costume for the initial stabbing.

Photo 7: In the make-up trailer, make up artist John Wrightson begins Doug Jones's transformation into the corrupt mage Saarebas.

Photo 8: Originally, I planned on sculpting hand appliances for Doug, but his movement and physique are so perfect already, a paint job and some custom-made creepy finger nails were all that was necessary. This helped out the budget immensely, as hand appliances would have needed to be remade for every day of filming and added expense to our already taxed budget!

Photo 9: Our first round of zombies didn't get shot due to time restrictions, so I hobbled together a few more for the next night of shooting.

Photo 10: We have a saying around the BarnYard make-up effects shop that has never been proven wrong, and it goes a little something like this: "It takes a while to apply our creature make-up, but when we're done, it's time for lunch!" No matter how much we try to work with the A.D. department, it is inevitable that they will schedule the lead creature actor to have his make-up applied BEFORE lunch, and then go on to set with a monster face covered in spaghetti or pizza grease. Luckily, Doug is the consummate professional, and has mastered the art of preserving his rubber face no matter how restrictive it is. Unfortunately, the finger nails prevented him from enjoying the corn on the cob!

Photo 11: After lunch, I did a quick retouching, and Saarebas was good to go. Looking at this shot mostly makes me think of how awesome the costumes were that Shawna Trpcic put together.

Photo 12: The same winds that plagued the Sundermount set wreaked havoc on the cast and crew during filming. FX make-up supervisor Erika Ladd had to keep Saarebas's hair tied up between takes to prevent the wind from destroying the wig. Note Marissa playing dead in the background, bundled up for rehearsals.

Photo 13: No one had it so bad on those nights as Felicia herself. When I was designing the Tallis costume, many key words floated around in my head: Sexy, Strong, Functional, Authentic, Organic, and did I mention Sexy!?! Words like "Warm" and "Cozy" never really made the cut. You will never feel so wimpy as when you are standing on a mountaintop in mid January, wearing multiple layers of Down, electric thermal gloves, scarves, wool face mask and fur lined hat, and complaining about the cold as the star/writer/producer stands next to you in skin tight leather pants and revealing corset of your purposeful design.

But Felicia is a trooper, and wardrobe had giant warm coats to bundle her up in between takes. Once the scene got going, Tallis was very active, and Felicia channeled her struggle against the cold into fierce assassin energy.

Photo 14: The Sundermount battle climaxes with Tallis making the choice to execute Saarebas (Again, sorry if that's a spoiler. But really? C'mon!!!) In the original script, Tallis delivers a final blow that severs the Qunari mage's head from his shoulders. In the last scene, as the remaining heroes bury their dead, Tallis walks off toward the horizon carrying the head as her prize.

Ultimately, it was decided in the final version of the show that keeping the head was out of character for Tallis, and the imagery changed the message Felicia wanted for the message of the show. Although I completely agree with the way the finale plays out, I was bummed that one of my favorite DA:R props found it's final resting place on the cutting room floor.

None the less, I made it, and here's how! I did a fiberglass cast of the cowl and horns from the silicone matrix mold used to create the make-up, as seen above.

Photo 15: Then I did a 1630 urethane cast of the face appliance, backed with fiberglass. Because the action in the script was very specific, and the head would only ever be seen held by the hair as a trophy, I decided to create it as a rigid version from the original molds. Ordinarily, if it needed to roll or be held by the face, or move in any way, we would have made a foam or soft silicone version. However, this would require additional molds, an underskull, possibly simple mechanics. Doing it as a rigid "looks only" prop saved us days of work and thousands of dollars.

Photo 16: I wanted to add a "dead" expression to the head, as apposed to the neutral look on Doug's lifecast, so I dremeled off the lower lip and chin, and removed the closed eyes. I glued in some glass eyes that were pretty close to Doug's color, then used Magic Sculpt 2 part epoxy resin to sculpt in the eyelids. I tried to make them look relaxed and asymmetrical, since the muscles would have loosened up after death.

Photo 17: Next, I fused the face to the cowl. I glued the lower jaw back on, but repositioned it so it was a little slack, and slightly twisted to one side. I used more Magic Sculpt to bridge the spaces created by the cuts, and rebuilt the lower lip to sag from it's own weight. Then I added castings of the secondary horns. I was also careful to not secure the top of the forehead, so the wig could be tucked under after the head was painted.

I used the hole in the bottom of the neck to put a set of teeth in, since the open lips revealed them. I believe those are a spare casting of Ben Affleck's teeth that were laying around! Once those were set, I capped the severed neck off with a circle of sintra plastic, then smeared some Bondo over it roughly to simulate meaty, sinewy bits!

Photo 18: This is the head after I finished painting it. I matched the paint scheme I did on the hero appliances, but added more purple veins along the wound, the jawline, and eye sockets, to represent settled, clotted blood.

Photo 19: This is the head after it was splattered with blood on set. I also did a light spray of Krylon Crystal Clear to give the skin a dewy sheen.

Photo 20: Because you can't blog about a severed head and not make the joke...WHAT"S IN THE BOX!?!?! (If the reference is lost on you, click here) The sad truth is, the head IS boxed up now, waiting for a future open space on my display shelf. As for Tallis's trophy, it was digitally removed from the final show.

Photo 21: There were many moving parts to the series finale, and the restrictive time schedule put more things at risk of ending up on the chopping block than just my prop head. There were several key moments that main unit just couldn't fit into the schedule, so Felicia called The Guild director Sean Becker to step in and helm 2nd unit.

Sean was in charge of capturing all of the insert shots and pick-up shots from various scenes that would help stitch the sequences together seamlessly. Most of this was done towards the end of the schedule, when we were back on the stage, so my team needed to recreate small chunks of the various locations in corners of our warehouse.

Photo 22: The Guild's director of photography, Chris Darnell, joined Sean to film each shot. We all studied the footage together to make sure that the right environment was created, and Chris very carefully recreated John Bartley's lighting. Inserts and pick-up shots are more difficult than they look, as you are trying to match another team's footage exactly while being in a completely different place, with completely different resources.

Here, Chris lines up an over the shoulder close up of the mask of Fen'Heral as Saarebas prepares it for the ceremony.

Photo 23: The mask and dagger await their close-up insert shots by 2nd unit.

Photo 24: The biggest challenge for the 2nd unit art team was piecing together environments for the fight scenes. We needed pick-ups for both the cave fight and the Sundermount fight, which were both heavily location dependent sets. Here, Chris rigged a large backdrop out of a black fabric called Duvetyne to simulate the night sky above Nyree as she deals her death blow.

Photo 25: Lune is at the receiving end of that rock! Pooja and Red 5 helped Sean and Chris painstakingly recreate a small section of the Topanga mountains in order to complete this scene. I think that grass is from my lawn!

Photo 26: When filming was done, we spent the next week striking the sets and wrapping out the show. I tried to hang on to as much as possible for use in future projects, but there really was just too much! We ended up filling three 40 yard dumpsters with set walls and broken props. It's always a little heart breaking to work on something so hard for so long, and see it end up in a trash pile. Here, the remains of Sundermount await their fate.

But don't be too dismayed! I made sure all of the hero props, weapons, and set dressing was carefully packed away. And there was a lot of it! Imagine the final shot in Raiders of the Lost Ark, that giant warehouse of wooden crates containing all the known secrets of the universe. Just know that there is a version of that storing everything you love from Dragon Age: Redemption, The Guild, Legend of Neil, Labou, Babylon 5, Speilberg's AI, Lost World, and everything else I ever worked on, just waiting for a reason to be put on public display.

Photo 27: All of those things will not be forgotten, much as DA:R will not be forgotten even though the series has come to an end. Tallis vanished over the horizon, but everything that Felicia accomplished by bringing Dragon Age to life has paved the way for so many more adventures to come. Hopefully some of them will be yours! I know I would love to see them.

And the genius of digital media is that the entertainment doesn't need to end when the show is over. I'm certain this is not my last blog ever about DA:R, as I remember new stories every day about the journey we had to create it. Felicia has also created an episode by episode commentary so you can get more of her insight on the making of the show.

So, for now, that has been my experience on the making of Dragon Age: Redemption. I hope you have enjoyed my public logging of the memories! It was an amazing project to work on, and I must thank Felicia for involving me, and especially for letting me take on so much of the responsibility, even when everyone else thought I was crazy for wanting to do so. Everyone else except Kim Evey, who I am eternily greatful for, as she suported my artistic insanity to the very end. Huge thanks to BioWare for letting me play so freely in their abundant and detailed world. I also need to thank my tireless crew again for their undying dedication during the endless hours and often unbarable weather! I hope this blog allowed you to know more about them and their incredible talents, without which the show could never have been made.

And I want to thank you for reading this. The response to my blog has been overwhelming, and honestly, surprising to me, and I am honored that so many are interested in what I do. It means the world to me that I get to ineract with you about the work done at the BarnYard, and your comments and sharing have really insired me to do more. Thanks again!

With Dragon Age:Redemption complete, it's time to move on to other things. But now that you have seen EVERYTHING, definitely let me know what your favorite set, prop, make-up, or any part of DA:R was! And I feel like I covered pretty much everything, but was there something I missed that you really wanted to know about? Leave a comment below and let me know. Oh, and don't forget about that DLC! As of right now, Talis is pretty much my favorite video came character ever. I think Felicia might agree...

Minecon or bust!

2011-11-24T21:53:00.001-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday. I, of course, am working, trying to get several sets done for several projects that shoot next week. One of the productions sent over some turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie to the stage where I am building, so my small band of die hard crew members got a taste of the holiday!

I'm sure many of you reading this couldn't even imagine working on Thanksgiving, but I guess I'm used to it. My first Thanksgiving in Hollywood was spent alone on a sound stage finishing up space helmets for an alien movie. I've worked them all: Christmas, New Years, Valentine's Day, the film industry has no sympathy when it comes to deadlines. But the reality is, I'm thankful for the work. I am grateful for every opportunity I get to be able to do what I do best, which is make things. On this day of thanks, I look back at all the amazing projects I've gotten to work on this year, and I am inspired to branch out even more next year.

It will be exciting to see what comes my way in the future. This year has been pretty rangy as it is. I started 2011 by building a fantasy world for Felicia Day's Dragon Age: Redemption. I know I owe one final blog on that, but I wanted to tell you about my most recent adventure. Having just created a fake convention for The Guild season 5, I thought it was a fitting challenge to help create a REAL convention for the official release of one of the internet's most popular games.

If you are a fan of online gaming, pop culture, or internet sensations, you have had to have heard about Minecraft by now. Created by one man, Notch, working in his garage, the game became an international phenomenon, pulling in millions of players before it was even out of beta.

The time had come to officially launch the game, and the game developing company, Mojang, decided to do it in style. They created MINECON, a Las Vegas based convention solely dedicated to the world of MineCraft. I'm not sure how long the plans for the show were in motion, but somewhere along the way it was decided that elements of the game should be brought to life for the attendees to interact with. My friends Vu Bui and @minecraftchick called me to see what I could create. The biggest challenge was that by the time I came on board, there was less than 2 weeks till the show!

Photo 1: MineCraft is a low poly, three dimensional world. At first glance, the characters and settings seem almost 8-bit in simplicity. But having to analyze them for a physical build, I realized that they are much more complicated than that. The polygons can intersect and move on any axis, which added a level of intricacy to building these things full size.

Photo 2: Another aspect was the coloration. Again, at first glance, these textures are simple patterns of basic color palettes. I decided right away that my versions should be hand painted rather than printed and mounted, and this decision would set the tone for what was going to be a week of hell!

Photo 3: Even the simplest characters would require endless amounts of mapping to get the paint just right.

Photo 4: We started by breaking every character down to its most basic forms, and figuring out all the proportions and measurements. My Art department coordinator, Danielle, created sketch up models of everything for us to work off of.

Photo 5: Some how, our work roster climbed up to 40 individual pieces, so multiple things needed to be worked on at once. Here, Art lays out the graphics for the 20 foot creeper. (He didn't actually do it. Red 5 did. Art is more of a pencil to paper kinda dog.)

Photo 6: Vu Bui really wanted to make the con an interactive experience for fans, so he devised a photo booth were people could get a shot of themselves inside the game. He wanted a physical build rather than a greenscreen composite. He built this version of the booth IN Minecraft to show me how he wanted it.

Photo 7: Danielle made this foam core model of the booth based on my design for construction. Once again, the block nature of the booth gives the illusion of simplicity, but a lot of engineering needed to go into the building so that it could break down, fit in a truck, get to Vegas, and re-assemble quickly.

Photo 8: In the meantime, animals were being built from 1/2 inch cabinet grade plywood. Here, a few wooden chickens share a pizza.

Photo 9: Construction is complete on a wooden sheep.

Photo 10: A collection of creepers are base coated green.

Photo 11: The pixel pigs before they are pixelated!

Photo 12: One of the longest parts of the process was griding out all of the animals. Minecraft seems to have a unit of measurement, but not necessarily a standard increment. We scaled every character out to the best of our ability based on the reference we had, but it seemed like every character had different sized pixels. Here, Jordan Dodge grids out a zombie arm.

Photo 13: I chose to grid each character out using a colored pencil that was just darker than their base color, so it would be acceptable to see the grid even if pixels were not painted. Once that was complete, the individual squares were colored in by hand. Here, Gino paints a creeper face.

Photo 14: Red Bull. We needed to drink a lot of it. All-nighters were in the cards.

Photo 15: Mojang was nice enough to send us the raw texture maps for all of the characters. I was excited, because I thought we could just print them out and use them as guides. But I guess the game needs very little info to wrap the polys, cause the maps we got were like 123k each! The image above is actual size to what we worked off of.

Photo 16: It took a while to convert that thumbnail to this full size Mooshroom.

Photo 17: The tamed wolf was the most intricate builds. Here, he is base coated and waiting for the next step.

Photo 18: We mixed hundreds of colors for this job. Some characters only had a few pixels of a color, so we worked in small cups to save paint.

Photo 19: It took FOREVER to paint all of those pixels. As the clock ticked down, I needed to call in reinforcements. In case of emergency, call in a unicorn! Milynn Sarley of Team Unicorn dropped by to paint some creepers.

Photo 20: And Kenny of Knights of the Guild fame stood at this table painting Steve arms from dawn till dusk!

Photo 21: While mad painting was going on outside, I built some inhabitants for the photo booth. The first of which being a cave spider. He is made from a series of sintra boxes, and wrapped in printouts Red 5 created from scratch based on the tiny texture maps.

Photo 22: Amish made the torches. He used them to discover the mooshroom's shrooms. His productivity greatly declined after this discovery!

Photo 23: We were deep into making a million things when Vu sent me an email with this image. He stated that the guys at Mojang had just created this Enderdragon, and no one knew about it yet. He thought it would be great to unveil it at the show with a giant model. You know, if I was interested...

Photo 24: How could I not be!?! Who doesn't want to build a dragon? I guess I should have said no, considering that I got that email about 5 days before the show, and we already had over 30 items on our plate, none of which were near completion. But, c'mon, it was a DRAGON!

To make things harder on myself, I chose to build it full size. We played with the scale of this sketch up model, but the dragon doesn't have much volume. Shrinking it down made it feel unimportant. So I went for it. All 40 feet, with a 36 foot wingspan.

Photo 25: The size of the thing didn't really hit me until I got to the legs, which ended up being taller that I am!

Photo 26: Here, you can see that the beginning stages of the dragon's head are almost as large as my arcade cabinets!

Photo 27: The dragon was made entirely out of sintra boxes. Here, Anthony covers the feet boxes in printed textures Red 5 made to match the dragon's skin.

Photo 28: Finally the time came to pack up for Vegas. Here, our week and a half of work waits in the driveway.

Photo 29: Between the photobooth, the animals, the dragon, and all our equipment, we actually needed 2 trucks for the trip to Vegas. A 16 foot, and a monster 24!

Photo 30: We arrived in Vegas to find signs of exactly how excited people were about Minecon.

Photo 31: We also realized that there were many things we forgot in the mad rush to get there. Cosplay Queen Ginny McQueen came to the rescue with a late night pizza and Home Depot run! She got us zip ties so we could finished hanging the banner sides of the 20 foot creeper.

Photo 33: If you ever wondered what a creeper looks like on the inside...

Photo 34: Red 5 is watched by a chicken as she cuts out the Enderdragon's wings.

Photo 35: Mazin Dajani and Jordan begin assembling the dragon.

Photo 36: All of the dragon's parts were put together for the first time on the venue floor!

Photo 37: Red 5 stands in front of our 20 foot tall creeper.

Photo 38: The biggest hurdle for me was the photobooth. I had so much going on with the animals and dragon that I hired a separate team to construct and paint the booth. They got it built pretty quick, but the painters decided to quit before they even started. I hired another team, and they walked out the day before the booth shipped, saying it was "too complicated!" I had no choice but to get the thing in the truck and take it to Vegas unfinished.

Photo 39: My goal was to get everything set up, and then try to re-paint the booth myself on site. of course, it took way longer than expected to get the rest of the stuff in place. I didn't even get to start on the booth until about 4am, and that was after having already been up for 48 hrs. With the show opening in a few hours, I attempted to do a wash over the whole booth to get the color values more like what you see in the game. It was not anything like what I hoped it would be, but fans seemed to enjoy it none the less, and it looked like an organic, "real world" version of the game in the photos.

Photo 40: When the show opened, the guys from Jones Soda gave me an official Minecon bottle of Creme Soda, and it was the greatest thing in the world. It kept me going for the next few hours.

Photo 41: Thousands of people showed up for Minecon.

Photo 42: It was good to see that we weren't the only ones busy building stuff for Minecon.

Photo 43: Look! A Minecraft version of Legend of Neil!!!

Photo 44: Our animals were very interactive.

Photo 45: Sheep and chicken greet people in line for game demos.

Photo 46: It only took about 3 hours before someone stole a shroom off the Mooshroom's back!

Photo 47: He also got his butt signed by people waiting in the Xbox line...

Photo 48: Steve and his tamed wolf waiting for a photo op.

Photo 49: The finished cow.

Photo 50: The Enderdragon finally takes flight!

Photo 51: Trailing 12 feet of tail!

Photo 52: The Enderdragon was so big, Vu Bui used it's belly as an office!

Photo 53: At 40 feet, the dragon was as long as the lighting truss for the main stage!

Photo 54: Thousands of seats were set up for the opening ceremony. In the far distance, you can see my grass blocks.

Photo 55: For easy of transportation, assembly, and cost, I made the stage blocks by covering 3x3 feet cardboard boxes in printed graphics. Again, Red 5 made the graphics by painstakingly recreating the tiny texture maps as hi-rez files.

Photo 56: My carpenters actually FORGOT to build the "Activate Minecraft" lever block tower, but thought they did and said it was on the truck, so I had to scramble at 9am Friday to have something workable on stage by 10am for rehearsal. My lead carpenter and good friend Ronnie Wilson bailed me out by helping built this prop from scraps in the truck and some styrofoam. Luckily, Red 5 had pre-printed the brick graphics.

I showed Notch how to work the lever, and when he went to pull it during rehersal, everyone in attendance screamed, "No, not yet!" as if my styrofoam switch would actually activate Minecraft!!!

Photo 57: Everyone liked the stage dressing so much they left it up for the rest of the panels, even though it was only meant for the opening ceremony.

Photo 58: Upstairs, the animals were multi-tasking as swag tables...

Photo 59: And the giant creeper became a garbage can...

Photo 60: My buddies from Jinx had a line that cut across the whole convention. People were going crazy for their Minecraft collection.

Photo 61: They were sold out of stuff before the first day was even half way over!

Photo 63: Xbox had some pretty awesome stuff up for grabs, too.

Photo 64: I missed the closing ceremonies cause I had to break all our stuff down, but I heard Lydia gave me a huge thank you that got massive applause. The reaction of both the game creators and the fans really made all the work worth while.

I caught the tail end of the back stage celebration, and I was introduced to all the staff. The Mojang guys were so nice, and they were all very excited about my work and thanked me for participating in the con. They said having all of the characters there elevated the experience. I talked to Notch about getting some photos of us together with the animals, and he jumped up to do it right away. I didn't want to take him away from group, so I suggested we do it at the after party, since they were taking animals over there to be on stage with DeadMau5. He agreed that the stage setting would make for better photos.

Photo 65: Here I am back stage with Lydia. She was so busy during the show that I barely got to see her. She and her team did an amazing job, and I have to thank her and Vu so much for letting me be involved.

Photo 66: After the breaking down the con, everyone went to XS for the party and concert.

Photo 67: Even though I had a VIP bracelet, they wouldn't let me in! I guess the VIP area was over capacity, and no matter who tried to get me in there, the club wouldn't let up. I was mostly bummed because I wanted to give Notch the Activate Minecraft sign and say goodbye to everyone before I left Vegas. It was pretty disappointing, but on the bright side, I finally got to go to sleep!

Photo 68: I was told the next day that some of my props had taken damage. The chicken that was put on stage with Deadmau5 had been destroyed. At first, I was outraged. But them I learned that Deadmau5 had given Notch a Minecraft sword and ordered him to slay the chicken! If you must have a piece of art you made defiled, there truly is no better way go about it than performance art starring the creator of the character himself! I only wish I could have seen it in person!!!

Photo 69: After the con, the hall looked like a low poly war zone...

Photo 70: Actually, everything started to look like MineCraft architecture by the time the week was up...

Photo 71: Everywhere I looked, all I saw was blocks. Even when I checked out of the hotel, the holiday display looked like MineCraft...

So that was my adventure into the land of virtual Legos! If you attended Minecon, I hope you enjoyed my work. If you didn't, but are a fan of Minecraft, I hope this blog gave you a tour of the experience! And if you don't know what Minecraft is, go check it out! You'll be hooked for hours! It's a perfect way to spend those holiday vacation hours!

Dragon Age: Redemption Episode 6

2011-11-15T02:31:00.000-08:00

So this is it, the final episode, the exciting conclusion of Dragon Age:Redemption! It's been a long time coming. We started this over a year ago, but at the same time, I can't believe it's over already. I'm very proud to share this behind the scenes look at last chapter of the saga, yet it's a bitter sweet moment. I've enjoyed reliving the process by blogging with each new episode, and I'm sad that we've reached the end so quickly. I hope you enjoyed my posts, as well as the realization of Felicia's amazing vision.

Photo 1: One of the biggest challenges of the final episode, and actually, of the entire series, was bringing Sundermount to life. Sundermount is known in Dragon Age II as a sacred place to the Dalish elves. A place of magic and power, essentially the Stonehenge of Bioware's virtual world.

One thing that I have learned about Felicia Day is that we share a very similar approach to writing. Before a story is completely fleshed out there will be certain visual elements that she will lock onto and the script will grow from there. It can be anything really, a character, an action, a prop, in the case of DA:R, a place. From our earliest conversations, before there was even a solid plot, Felicia knew that she wanted the characters to eventually visit Sundermount.

Photo 2: What made this set so challenging is that it was the one environment we were pulling directly out of the game. Much like all of the weapons and props that I had blogged about from previous episodes, I wanted this set to be as accurate to the game as possible. We literally constructed the set stone by stone to construct the graphics.

Photo 3: Despite out best efforts, we did have to take some liberties. We searched the entire radius of Los Angeles for rolling European hills, but couldn't quite find anything accessible to match the grounds in the game. It was ultimately decided to shoot in the alien landscape of the Topanga hills. The setting was very cool, but it forced us to change our color scheme from European gray field stone to California desert sandstone.

Photo 4: Another challenge was trying to make the small shootable area that we found look like the vast landscapes that Bioware provided us. Several of the views revealed houses and freeways in the distance, and the Sundermount walls wouldn't block them all.
Photo 5: My solution was to move the in game gates and crumbled walls closer to the sacred ruins
Photo 6: Due to time budget and space constraints, I had to pick and choose which game assets we brought to reality. In some cases, such as this gateway, I chose what I felt were the coolest elements, out of a larger structure, pairing it down to a more achievable set piece.

Photo 7: All of the Sundermount elements were made of polystyrene sheet foam, the kind used to insulate houses, mounted onto wooden frames. The foam was carved, coated in joint compound, and painted.

Photo 8: Several days before shooting the set pieces as far up the mountain as possible, then carried by hand the rest of the way. There were over 20 pieces total, some being more than 12 feet in length and several hundred pounds. Lets just say, it was not easy to get up that mountain.

Photo 9: It took my crew two days to erect Sundermount. Once all of the places were staked in place and connected, all of the seams needed to be puttied and painted. The really tall structures needed to be roped off against the elements.

Photo 10: Several rock samples were taken to the shop to help guide the painting of the sets, but once it actually stood at the location, it was obvious that we needed to do some more painting to blend it into the landscape.

Photo 11: It is funny that I would blog about this alter in one of the finals DA.R posts, being that it was actually the first set piece to be constructed for the entire series. It consists of a 2x4 and plywood frame layered with the styrofoam which was then carved to look like individual stone blocks.

Photo 12: We knew that the alter was going to be involved in the fight scene and possibly end up needing to hold a lot of weight. The wooden structure was completely up to the task, but the foam stone skin would not be able to take any weight or impact. I decided to put several layers of fiber glass on the altar's surface to protect it.

The polyester resin we use for fiber glassing actually eats the styrofoam, so a trick I use is to spray mount a protective layer of aluminum foil onto the sculpted foam. This allows all of the detail to remain and keeps the resin away from the foam. Here, Josie Kavadoy and Jason Swearingen apply the final layer of fiberglass mat.

Photo 13: The final alter as it appeared on set awaiting it's sacrifice.

Photo 14: Of course, that sacrifice happens to be my dearest friend Marissa Cuevas. I knew all along that this prop played a big part in Marissa's climactic scene, so it was kind of special to be able to build it for her.

She was very excited about the role that Felicia wrote for her. And who wouldn't be? After all, its not everyday you get to dress like a princess. Especially one who gets to wear a dress designed by Shawna Trpcic, who also designed many of Marissa's favorite shows, including Firefly! Here she is during the final fitting for her ceremonial dress. I couldn't wait to see her in action.

Photo 15: Of course, actually seeing it was horrifying. That is one of the cruel twists of Hollywood, working with friends and loved one on movie sets, despite the fact that none of this is real, there are certain images you never really want to see.

It's okay though, Marissa was unharmed in the filming of this scene. The dress, however, did not survive.

Photo 16: Marissa was not the only things pretending to be dead at Sundermount. The evil mage Saarebas attempts to hold his ground by raising an army of the dead to battle our heroes. Luckily for him the Dalish elves buried their fallen comrades in a cemetery not far from the Sundermount ruins. We made a wide variety of tombstones based on Bioware game assets from foam and wood.
Photo 17: Tombstones being set in place in the Topanga hills, creepy but peaceful. For the moment...
Photo 18: This next series of photos are truly a behind the scenes exclusive. Due to circumstances beyond our control, production had delays during the Sundermount shooting schedule, and almost all of the zombies, which I am about to show you, did not make it on the film. We created a variety of foam latex appliances, such as this one piece pull-over zombie. All of the appliances were sculpted by Digger Mesh and myself.

Photo 19: One of the first pitfalls was that the stuntman hired to play the large zombie was allergic to latex, so I couldn't apply his make up. We considered switching actors but there was no one available to fit the mask. In an experiment to see what the latex would look like on a smaller person, I donned the dead elf head. You can tell its me because of the hat.

Photo 20: Here we have a female zombie elf warrior. This was a full head single piece appliance.

Photo 21: The best part of the zombies was that it gave members of my art department an opportunity to do some make up effects. Here Rikki Techner applies the zombie girl. Rikki's true passion is make up, so she really enjoyed being able to create a character that would be filmed on a set that she had helped to build.

Photo 22:This pruney zombie was sculpted on a life cast of Ben Afflek's face.

Photo 23: Art Department Coordinator Pooja Sharma tries her hand at applying zombie make up for the first time.

Photo 24: This elf obviously died from severe wounds to the face. It was done as a one piece face appliance.

Photo 25: Yeah, yeah, yeah... you get it.

Photo 26: About at this point we were informed that the zombies would not be filmed. As you can see, they were not happy about it.

Photo 27: No really, they were not happy! They kind of haunted us for the rest of the night.

Photo 28: The ghastly ghouls had their revenge though, summoning the dark forces of nature to reek even more havoc on poor Sundermount. When we returned in the morning, we discovered that the winds that blew through the mountains in the late hours of the night took down our set, despite out best efforts to secure it. Needless to say, I had a situation on my hands...

Photo 29: It was a mad scramble to get everything back online, but I will save that story for the final post of my DA:R blog.

I am excited to hear all of your reactions to the epic finale of our series. Please leave comments below and feel free to ask me about anything I might have left out within these blogs. Don't forget to like and share this page below!

Dragon Age: Redemption Episode 5

2011-11-08T04:39:00.000-08:00

It's been crazier than usual around here the past few weeks! Lots going on, both on and off site: I dropped by BlizzCon and Long Beach Comic Con. I'm starting a full size Jurassic Park dinosaur sculpture to go on display in Hawaii. I'm in the middle of painting a few DVD covers, designing a feature film, two television pilots, building a couple specialty costumes for a network funded web series, filming some more episodes of Brent Spiner's FRESH HELL series at the BarnYard, prepping new episodes of The Tommy Wi-Show, building stuff for MineCon in Vegas, the .tv booth for BlogWorld Expo, trying to sneak away to roam the floor of Comickaze, starting up a new collectible toy company, and doing some concept art for friends at a major ad agency. There just aren't enough hours in the day.

I will be telling you about all of that stuff very soon. But I promised I would write a behind the scenes art department blog for every episode of Dragon Age: Redemption, and I do not like to break my word. Forgive the run on sentences and any misspelled words you may encounter, as I am typing in the deepest hours of night to make sure this posts on time for the release of Episode 5!

When we last left our heroes, they were attempting to enjoy a moment or peace over some hot stew in the comfort of a rural inn. But Tallis notices the glint of a bladed weapon, and the ambush is upon them!

Photo 1: Welcome back to the Inn! My favorite set from the DA:R series. This 30'x40', two story set looks so cozy and calm at first glance.

Photo 2: but once inside, you will find Felicia Day causing a ruckus!

Photo 3: Much to the dismay of the townsfolk who patron the place. We needed lots of extras for the Inn scene, so a call was made to friends and fans. Here, my buddy Grant Kimura tries to impress the ladies with his tales of the time of dragons. Grant has come in to help The Knights of Good with the planning of several social events. He usually dresses better.

Photo 4: Guild social media marketing guru Brian Kameoka double his work load as second 2nd Assistant Director by making a cameo appearance in the Inn. It was his wearing this costume that lead to the jokes about his resemblance to Return of the Jedi 's Nien Numb, which ultimately resulted in me created a Star Wars cosplay costume for him.

Photo 5: Brian, or should I say Nien, cruised conventions across the country all summer in this awesome costume. You may be asking yourself why I am standing next to a Star Wars character and yet making the Vulcan salute. This is a little know fact, but Nien Numb is actually half Klingon!

Photo 6: Here he is enjoying San Diego Comicon with the rest of the family!

Photo 7: I was trying to make everything in the Inn big and bulky, to capture a sense of medieval grandeur. But I guess I chose to make the tables too big at first! When Felicia came in to rehearse on the nearly completed set, she looked like a Hobbit sitting at the table! We ultimately cut the legs down six inches, and raised the chairs up a few inches more, so our heroes stayed larger than life.

Photo 8: Of course, my initial instinct was to make the tables to accommodate all walks of life from Dragon Age II. You never know when a massive Qunari is going to need a hot meal!

Photo 9: We chose to serve real food, so the cast and extras could have the option of actually eating in the scene. Bread, chicken, potatoes, and asparagus where on the menu. I chose these items because they looked the part, and most of it stayed edible for long periods of time. Every few shots, the art team would swap out the chicken for fresh pieces to keep the customers happy. And you need to in a place like this...

Photo 10: ...Otherwise people start smashing tables!

Photo 11: Actually, that was Art Director Bryan Fulk and Leadman John Bell who dropped the chandelier onto the table! The original plan was to have a stuntman fall off the loft and crush the table, but things changed and that shot got cut. Felicia still wanted to smash the table since I had put a lot of time and money into carefully creating an exact replica out of balsa wood in order for it to break, so she decided to have Josmael use magic to bring down the chandelier. You may have noticed that the chandeliers are actually the wagon wheels off the Dalsih wagons! That's me using magic to stretch the budget!!!

Photo 12: The other tables, however, were not made of balsa. They were quite the opposite. Three tables in the room needed to be built sturdy enough to support actors jumping up on them during the fight scene. Here, Tallis prepares to do a back flip off the table. I say Tallis because I can't remember if this is Felicia or her stunt double, ! Can you tell? Hey, Felicia, leave a comment and let us know who's in the picture. If you can tell, that is!

Photo 13: This photo is DEFINITELY Felicia! Here, she grabs a throwing dart to use as an impromptu weapon. This is the thing with fantasy and sci-fi scripts: there are lots of every day objects mentioned, but its not as simple to find the props as going to Target or thrift stores! Something as ordinary as a dart board needs to be made from scratch so it looks like it belongs in a Medieval Inn and not a modern sports bar. Bryan Fulk made this one from bead foam and burlap, with staples sapling twigs for rings. The darts were cut from branches, with nails attached to the front and turkey feathers for fins. It had the crude look I wanted, but I tested it out as a joke, and actually got all 5 darts in the bulls eye from the center of the room! He must have balanced them perfectly, because I have never done that before in my life!

Photo 14: Tallis is pretty good with a dart, too, it would appear! One throw and she takes out this rogue's frontal lobe! A wise move, considering the fire power he was wielding.

Photo 15: I believe in the game it is called the Dark Spawn crossbow. Here is one of the images BioWare sent of the game asset.

Photo 16: Here is the final DA:R prop, as constructed by Amish Ivers. It has a pine body, aluminum bow and trigger mechanism, and sintra spikes back filled with 808 urethane for durability.

Photo 16: All 0f that stunt rehearsal in the set space as it was being built really paid off. It gave the performers and production a good sense of how to move within the space, and utilize every aspect of it. The art department was also able to inspire some ideas and make some changes to the set to heighten the action. The best example would be the loft. I originally intended it only to be a facade, only sturdy enough to handle some set dressing so it added some depth and shadow to the space. But when the team saw the design in reality, imaginations ran wild, and I rebuilt the loft to be weight baring so it could support a crew.

Photo 17: The Inn fight also offered the opportunity for the art department to create a few original weapon designs. Although we made sure to stay within the aesthetic created by the BioWare team, we broke away from the weapons chart and made a few unique pieces, such as this mercenary's sword-staff, designed and built by Armorer Mazin Dajani.

Photo 18: The only thing more dangerous than a mercenary brandishing a sword-staff is Mazin MAKING a sword-staff! The blade was cut from 1/4 inch aluminum plate, and ground down to a rounded edge. This was bolted onto a section of 1 1/2 inch aluminum pipe. The finished weapon was decorated with leather and feathers for fashionable slaying.

Photo 19: Some of the hired hunters preferred getting more close and personal to their prey. And you can't get closer than hand to hand combat.

Photo 20: Of course, it's cheating when your hands are shielded inside these spiked steel gauntlets!

Photo 21: Art Department Coordinator Pooja tested them out thoroughly! She was very effective in budget meetings!

Photo 22: Felicia implemented the same method on set to keep the crew motivated. Just kidding, of course! Everyone involved wanted to have their picture taken with Tallis, and Felicia was kind enough to take the time to assassinate each crew member with the weapon of their choice!

Photo 23: The war hammer is huge, but actually pretty light. It is a block of bead foam coated with a textured spread of Bondo.

Photo 24: We all know Nyree carries a much more lethal weapon, but she showed us that she can be spontaneous and resourceful when alternative killing devices are needed. Cornered by the fireplace, Nyree takes out a mercenary with a lethal blow from smoldering log.

Photo 25: Rob "The Kid" Lindores carved the logs from styrofoam, and assembled the ash end out of scraps left over from the casting of the chains in the Chantry cell. Each ember was connected with a small daub of hot glue so that it would easily break apart on impact without hurting Luci Romberg when she got hit. Luci is a friend for the Team Tempest Freerunning Academy!

Photo 26: Not everyone visiting the Inn is looking for a fight. Second Unit Director is just dropping by for a visit, shooting a little behind the scenes video, and maybe grabbing a refreshing Cold brand cola.

Photo 27: Elves just come to be social. The beautiful Marissa Cuevas hangs out for a moment between takes elsewhere on the stage. That face tells me I obviously caught her in the midst of some interesting gossip!

Photo 28: The Inn is a very popular place. There is always a line outside. Even bouncers. Alright, I'm delirious. That's actually production assistant Greg Checchi giving our heroes an off camera cue to enter the Inn. Notice the exterior walls are bare flats, completely different from the design latent interior.

Photo 29: The exterior you saw in the show was actually a digital effect done by the VFX team. A CG model of the Inn was placed into a plate we shot on location. We looked at potential sights all around LA, and finally found the right one in Malibu. Here, two of my favorite people ever, Kim Evey and Felicia Day, check out the final location during the scout.

Photo 30: Our journey is almost at it's end. Next week brings us the sixth and final episode of Dragon Age: Redemption. But there is so much more to talk about before we reach that final credit scroll, so don't lose hope. Honestly, the adventure is only beginning...

Dragon Age: Redemption Episode 4

2011-11-01T09:00:00.000-07:00

I spent so many hours of my childhood, and most of my teenage years, huddled over my desk, under the dim glow of a single lamp, painstakingly painting tiny lead orcs, dragons, and knights for the weekly D&D gathering. It seemed that the role of laying out the dungeon, or plotting the storyline was always going to fall into the hands of the friend who had more rank, age, books, or muscle (even in nerd circles there is always the one friend who can punch the hardest and get their way) but no matter who I played with, I always got the task of doing the art.

My earliest experiences with model making centered around trying to build the Star Wars vehicles that were either unavailable at the time, or out of reach financially, and creating physical environments in which to act out our D&D quests.

Photo 1: The caves, castles, and evil fortresses where always fun, but for some reason my favorite was always the Medieval Inn. It's a classic staple of fantasy lore, the modest thatched roof structure offering a moment of comfort, a warm meal, or shielding from the elements to a weary band of travelers. It is the perfect place for a brew, a brawl, or, most likely, both!

Needless to say, I was ecstatic to find that Felicia had written of such a place in Dragon Age: Redemption. And I was even more excited when BioWare provided this concept art, plucking the building right out of my imagination.

Photo 2: These were the only two images we received as reference for the inn, neither showing the actual interior we would film in. But I pulled from both drawings to create the final set.

Felicia dreamed big, but at all times we must remember that this was a web series. We made this show with all the professionalism of a major motion picture, or a network television series, but in all honesty, our budget probably wouldn't cover the daily Starbucks tab on a studio lot. There were so many conversations about the script and how to achieve it, where to cut corners, what seemed to ambitious. I had the full support of my art team when I continuously chose to argue on the side of NOT cutting elements, and the inn was a major one that kept being a possible contender for deletion.

Poor Felicia was constantly torn, knowing that it was a huge sequence to film, but also knowing that it really cemented the reality in this fantasy world she was bringing to life. We explored many avenues, such as finding a location, using sets from RenFaire, and filming on a greenscreen stage. But in the end, she was convinced to keep the episode script in tact, and had faith that I could build the set from scratch.

Photo 3: The first step was to figure out how much floor space the set would take up, and how to fill it while still leaving adequate room for the fight scene. I did some quick sketches on scrap paper with estimated dimensions, starting with a 30'x40' floor. Mazin took that info and did a simple SketchUp model, making this walk thru video so Felicia and the production team could get a sense of what a space that size would look like.

Photo 4: When everyone agreed that the layout felt right, Mazin went back in and added another layer of detail. Here is the same walk thru with more elements.

Photos 5-7: The next step was to take the 3D model and print gridded floor plans and elevations from sections of it. This allowed my carpenters to replicate the model in full size without massive amounts of blueprints. Each square of the grid above equals one foot.

Photo 8: The basic structure of the inn was assembled from existing 10'x12' flats that I traded my friend Doug at 41 Sets for. It was a good deal, as that amount of walls can cost tens of thousands of dollars. We made the ponywall flats separately, and covered them in multiple layers of styrofoam sheet insulation, which was carved to look like stacked field stone.

Photo 9: The fireplace was built in 4 sections: the hearth, the firebox, the mantle, and the chimney. They were all wood structures skinned with foam. The hearth was capped with 3/4' ply, since I was sure a stunt person would jump on it during the scene. I felt it was better safe than sorry! The fireplace was built at the BarnYard and trucked to the stage in pieces.

Photo 10: When all the walls were up, a temporary version of the back loft was erected to make sure that the proportions worked for the shots planned before diving into the expense of building the final, structural loft.

Notice the warehouse support column to the right. It wasn't that hard to blend it into the set, but it was difficult getting the set into a position where it fit on the stage AND the pole wasn't in a terrible place for the look of the inn.

Photo 11: We started working alternate shifts, do more construction at night, so Felicia and the gang could come in and figure out how to utilize the space. Here, director Peter Winther works on the choreography with Tallis and Cairn.

Photo 12: As the sets were being built on stage in downtown LA, the weapons, props, and makeup FX were moving along at the BarnYard. I was constantly running back and forth between both, and when I couldn't be at one, photos were taken to communicate. Here, Stunt Coordinator Thom Williams demonstrates his idea of how the Templar sword should be sheathed. Notice that lead stuntman Tim Eulich is holding a fiberglass stunt copy of sword.

Photo 13: Thom chooses a position for the Templar shield to be stowed.

Photo 14: Nyree (Marcia Battise) can't take the waiting and decides to choke someone!

Photo 15: The stunt team left, and it was time to get back to work. Oh, I remember these late nights!!! I wanted the walls to have a muddy, stucco look, so thinned down joint compound was randomly, and roughly, slapped up on the walls.

Photo 16: Then it was time for everything to get a base coat. The stone all went medium warm grey, and the walls a pale beige.

Photo 17: We didn't have enough tall ladders, so sometimes people did both steps of wall treatment as high as they could go, and then the rest would get done as the ladders became available! Here, Jason Swearingen does his best to reach the 8' mark!

Photo 18: Quite the opposite, Frank Bonanno finished the wall by hanging off the ladder!

Photo 19: Here, the next step of painting the wood trim has been finished. With everything base coated, it's time for scenicing.

Photo 20: Multiple washes are applied to all the stones, using different color combos to separate them individually from the carved styrofoam sheet. A burnt sienna wash is sprayed around all the edges of the wall, then wiped down with damp rags to simulate age and water stains.

Photo 21: This was probably the longest task of the entire inn building process, but it was worth it for the amount of realism it added. We used several hundred rags to accomplish it!

Photo 22: Not to mention the amount of paint I ended up wearing!

Photo 23: It took several nights to scenic the inn, and by the end of each I looked like I had severe frost bite!

Photo 24: Even Red 5 couldn't escape getting covered in paint. Here, she takes a momentary break from painting under the second loft, which hung over the bar. Red sits on a stack of barrels, which are placed exactly were they were in the CG concept model!

Photo 25: We finally finished painting, and then the fun part started: Dressing the set! All the fancy construction in the world won't help a set if it isn't dressed properly. The items in a room are as informative, if not more so, than the architecture itself. If you compare this photo with photo 20, you can see how much more alive the fireplace seems with the addition of candles, fire irons, and trophies. One glance and you instantly understand that you are in a huntsman's lodge.

Photo 26: Across from the fireplace, I tried to add a "homey" touch by adding shelves of earthware behind the bar.

Photo 27: Chandeliers were hung from the warehouse's real rafters, and sections of thatched roof were added onto the back and side walls so the camera could look higher and wider. The thatch is actually fallen palm fronds from the trees in my yard!

The stage floor was concrete, and not very Medieval looking. We weren't allowed to paint it, so my idea was to cover it in hay. I was surprised to find that hay was pretty cheap, being a city boy and all, so I got some extra bales to use as set dressing, Turns out it only took one or two bales to put a thick covering over the floor, so I had LOTS of extras for set dressing and props. Not sure why an inn would have that much hay in the loft, but it look cool and didn't feel out of place, so I went with it.

Photo 28: Can't say Art Department Coordinator Pooja Sharma was as excited about the hay as I was, especially after she shoveled hundreds of pounds of it across the floor.

Photo 29: Here is what the inn looked like from up in the back loft. You can see the fake rafter I put through the middle of the set. It's actually a hollow "U" of luan suspened with rope from the building's real rafters. And look how far two bales of hay stretch!

Photo 30: It did indeed get everywhere, though. Art Director Bryan Fulk found out pretty quick how easily hay gets into your shoes. Armorer Mazin Dazani thought it was pretty funny...wait! Mazin! What are you doing on the set! There are soooo many weapons to get ready for this scene!!!

Dragon Age: Redemption: Nyree is definitely my favorite episode so far, and this is without a doubt my favorite set. I feel like everyone has the same image in there mind when they think about a Tolkien-esqe fantasy inn, and I hope I came close to capturing it in real life. This set was a dream come true for me, and I felt like my 12 year old self playing the ultimate game of D&D the entire time we were working on it.

Anyone else out there more obsesed with painting the figures than actually playing the game? Or am I alone on that one!?!? Let me know in the comments below. And don't forget to like and/or share this blog!

More to come on DA:R...

Dragon Age: Redemption Episode 3 Part 2

2011-10-28T14:30:00.000-07:00

The third installment of the Dragon Age: Redemption series is fitting titled "Josmael", as the young, lovelorn Dalish mage turns the tide of the story with one fateful yelp. This blog finds both our heroes and villains in the hidden cave of an ancient Elven god, thick in the heat of battle.

Photo 1: Right from the start of DA:R pre-production, the hunt was on for a suitable cave to film this episode in. The fight choreography was going to be quite elaborate, and there were very specific location based requirements for the scene to play out properly. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of actual caves in the Los Angeles area!

We discussed building a cave on stage, but the budget was too restrictive to create a space big enough to be effective. Another issue was that the scene was meant to be lit entirely by torch light. We were not permitted to have open flame on the stage, and the cave would be way too intimate to try and sell the torch effect with a lighting gag.

Photo 2: Plugging up one end of Bronson Caves ended up being the most viable option, since it was local, cave like, and we could use fire! I will openly admit I was against the idea at first, since the cave is so over used for low budget, and because the interior texture is much more like a carved tunnel than an organic cave. But ultimately we were able to dress it properly, and make it look like a different place.

Photo 3: Our special FX supervisor carefully cut into our altar set piece to be able to run copper tubing from the torches to a propane tank, so the fire could be controlled safely, and burn for long lengths of time.

Photo 4: The propane fire was smokeless, but the FX department ran a small hazer to add some density to the atmosphere. Combined with the heavily gelled amber and red lighting provided by Director of Photography John Bartley (The X-Files, Lost), the mood was pretty convincing.

Photo 5: Tallis's party sneaks into the cave from a small entrance at the far side, and take cover behind an upcropping of stalagmites.

Photo 6: This entrance was actually a third opening in the tunnel, a small outlet that forked off the main thruway through the mountain. It was pretty small, and since this cave was built for the Batmobile to be able to drive through, the ground was very flat.

Photo 7: You can see how adding a few shapes can drastically change the look of an environment. The stalagmites were carved from scraps of styrofoam glued around wooden frames.
Photo 8: Felicia Day as Tallis, preparing for battle with the Reaver Nyree.

Photo 9: But Nyree wasn't the only henchman in the cave. Tallis and Cairn had to fight their way through multiple obstacles to get to Saarebas, including the dwarf Rukk, portrayed by actor Michael Munoz.

Photo 10: Rukk may not have been the tallest member of Saarebas's band of misfits, but he definitely was not light on battlements! We plucked this painful mace from the BioWare weapons chart, and Armorer Mazin Dajani carefully recreated it from plates of aluminum, welded into a ball of doom.

Photo 11: All the insane maces on the rack wouldn't save poor Rukk from the sting of Tallis's blade, though. Here, Felicia wears leg guards to slide under Rukk's mace, and deal a lethal blow and take the dwarf out.
Photo 12: Felicia did a huge amount of the stunts herself, but for those few that were deemed too dangerous for the writer/actor/producer, a professional stunt double was brought in. We made a Tallis costume to fit Candace Hollinger, in which she pulled of some amazing stunt performances.

Photo 13: The Qunari mage's other rogues were a pair of stunt performers who also had strong acting backgrounds, so they were cast in the roles, and did their own fighting and stunts.

Alex Huynh played Ludd, who fought in an eastern style along side his twin sister, Lune. It was great to work with Tara Macken again. She actually did her first feature film stunt work as space infantry in my Sci-Fi channel movie Battle Planet.

Photo 14: The rogue twins wielded mirrored weapons, fighting as reflections of each other. Lune held a sickle in her right hand, a hatchet in her left, and Ludd was the exact opposite.

Here, Art Director Bryan Fulk holds a printout of the Dragon Age II game asset for the sickle. It was mounted on foam core, cut out, and held against the ruler for scale so Stunt Coordinator Thom Williams could sign off on the proportions before we started building the final prop.

Photo 15: The hatched game asset sent to us from BioWare. I really enjoyed the solidity of this weapon. It looked like it was cast as one solid pour of heavy iron.

Photo 16: Here are the finished weapons as constructed by Mazin. The sickle blade was cut from a sheet of aircraft aluminum. I sculpted the handle to look like leather wrapped wood, but it was actually cast in a flexible urethane to provide some grip. The hatchet was cut on the CnC, molded, and cast in a light but durable rigid urethane with a wooden dowel run through it.

Photo 17: During the fight scenes, we had a whole team of people that made sure all the weapons were properly cared for. They were held for the actors between takes, touched up and repaired if damaged, and hero and stunt versions were swiftly swapped out for the appropriate shots. Here, Leo Nasca, Katie Moest, Kamela Lim stand by with the arsenal.

Photo 18: Outside the cave, Guild Director, and DA:R second unit director, Sean Becker, Bryan Fulk, and prop maker Kevin "Amish" Ivers take a break to see some daylight. It was hard to get your bearings staying in that dark and smokey cave all day!

Photo 19: It was nice to step out side for a moment, especially since we had such a pleasant view! Nothing reminds you of the value of entertainment like the iconic Hollywood sign! It sits on the mountain overlooking Griffith Park, facing right toward Bronson Cave. That signal tower to the right of the sign is on the edge of the Disney lot, which rests just over that crest.

Photo 20: Things are not looking so great for our heroes inside the cave, though! Saarebas collapsed the mouth of the cave on them during the fight, and they are trapped inside. The "avalanche" was actually a collection of styrofoam chunks, coated in spackle, and painted to look like rock.

I hope you are enjoying these blogs, as I am trying to give you as much detail as possible about what was happening behind the camera to bring this show to life. Leave me a comment, or ask a question about the show below. And like and/or share this page! I really appreciate it. Can't wait to show you around next week's episode. It's my favorite!

Have a good weekend. Maybe I will see some of you at Long Beach Comicon!

Dragon Age: Redemption Episode 3

2011-10-25T21:24:00.000-07:00

So, Dragon Age: Redemption is starting to get pretty intense, huh!?! Episode three brings us lots of action, and finally a clue as to what Saarebas is up to...

Photo 1: With the young Dalish mage joining our heroes, the group sets out to find Saarebas. But they find that he is still not alone. The reaver Nyree guards the enterance to the cave.

Photo 2: There was a lot of back and forth in regard to how big the reaver's weapon should be, and I believed the bigger the better! The game asset we chose from the BioWare chart looked mean, but I wanted it to strike fear in people's hearts just sitting on Nyree's shoulder. We went pretty large, ultimately, but Marcia Battise make it look natural to weild, which made the weapon and warrior combo even that more impossing.

Photo 3: And once inside the cave, we finally get to see Doug Jones in costume designer Shawna Trpic's final ceremonial Saarebas armor. Here he is during the last fitting before the shoot started. Doug is the nicest guy you will ever meet in Hollywood. That whole evil hands thing is just an act!

Photo 5: And yes, Felicia Day once again wore mismatched socks to the fitting!

Photo 6: I am friends with the entire cast, but no one is more dear to me than the lovely Marissa Cuevas. When I signed on to DA:R, Felicia hadn't worked out the entire story yet. After getting the first script and seeing the role of Fina, I suggest that Marissa audition for it. I was so thrilled when Felicia replied, "Oh, no, I WROTE that role for her!"

Photo 7: I'm sure you notice Marissa in many of my blogs. It's a long story as to how she became such an important person in my life and a major part of the BarnYard, but it all started with the first feature film I wrote and directed, LABOU. Marissa was only 12 years old when I discovered her while casting in New Orleans for the lead girl. We shot the film all summer long, right up until the morning Hurricane Katrina hit. The storm devestated the city, and destroyed many people's lives. We were very fortunate to survive the ordeal, but it did derail my movie, and it took almost a year to pull it all back together.

The entire time, Marissa and her family supported me in every way possible, and were there to see the whole thing through. After the movie, Marissa had her sights set on making film her career, but New Orleans was in no shape to give the entertainment business a fair shot. So she packed up and headed to LA, and I have tried to help her succeed in every way I possibly can.

Photo 8: Not that she needs my help! She is going to be a star, and there is no storm front strong enough to stop her!

Photo 9: Marissa was the second pair of ears to get cast, after Felicia. See the irony of Marissa helping cast all the other elf ears now?

Photo 10: Here's a close up of Marissa's right elf ear sculpture. I decided to only apply the elf ear to the pinna, and not sculpt all the way to the inner ring. This allowed the foam ear to fit tighter and have a little more room for adjustment. You can also see Marissa's name and charater etched into the base. We had so many Elves, I needed to make sure that each actor's ears were perminately labeled so there wouldn't be any confusion in the lab.

Photo 11: The elf ears were also one of those rare occations where the mold needed to be designed before the sculpt, so that everything was executed in a fashion that would work! Specifically since the molds needed to be run so many times. We couldn't afford for them to degrade, or get damaged in the process due to difficulty in use.

Photo 12: Fina plays a major role in Saarebas's plan. In order for his blood magic to work, he needs the blood of a virgin!

Photo 13: To procure that blood, the wicked mage uses a ceremonial dagger. There were once again many choices on BioWare's Dragon Age II weapons chart, but the second we saw the shark jaw bone sword, I knew I had to shrink it down to be the mage's blade.

Mike Laidlaw at BioWare agreed with the idea, and I didn't even have to beg! I sculpted the dagger out of roma clay. Here it is in its bed of leisure clay, getting ready for a silicone box mold.

Photo 14: Despite the fact that Marissa watched me the entire time I sculpted and molded the dagger, I don't think it sunk in until she held the multiple urethane castings in her had. If I'm reading this photo right, she's saying, "Really!?!? I get sliced with this!?!?"

Photo 14: Here is a comparison of the Dragon Age game asset, and my final prop.

Photo 15: Saarebas uses the blood to awaken the magic contained within the sacred Mask of Fen'Harel, the dread wolf.

Photo 16: Fen'Harel is the god of trickery and decite. He is spoken of in DA lore, and the Dalish use this idol to protect their camps, but not much more detail is know about the god. Felicia penned the mask as a device within the story, but no such item existed in the game. This was one of the few oppertunites I had to create an original design.

Photo 17: We had already seen the Dalish wagons and bows, and I knew that they were very ornate and detailed in there craftsmanship. Josmael stresses the mask's value in episode 2, so I wanted it to have a definite visual presence when we finally see it to support that statement. And, obviously, Felicia and I agreed it should look like a wolf!

Photo 18: We were on a very tight schedule, only having just over a month to manufature hundreds of props, and I wasn't quite sure were I was going with the mask. Instead of figuring it out in sketches, which would only be an idea, I jumped right into clay and started exploring shapes and expressions. Once I felt like I was onto something, I sent the images you see above to Felicia and production for feedback.

Photo 19: When everyone signed off on my rough sculpt, I spent a few days refining it, then carving in the Dalsih patterns and runes.

Photo 20: The sculpture was molded in an open faced silicone mold, and then a 1630 urethane brush-up was done. The final mask needed to be two pieces, the face and the jaw, and we needed multiple copies of each. So this first casting was a preliminary step. Here, I explain to Art Director Bryan Fulk how to divide the mask and finish of the back surface.

Photo 21: After the mask was divided and finished, each piece was remolded as a two sided silicone mold. The final casts were done in a very durable BJB 808 urethane. Everyone loved to run around with the mask on! If this looks way too familiar, it's beacuse the sculpture was done on my head cast!

Photo 22: It was decided early on, for many reasons, that the mask would not actually be made of gold. A major factor being that on an item this big, gold paint would not look real. We couldn't afford the time to do any of the other trick processes that might get around this, nor the money to have the masks electroplated. Storywise, it seemed important to keep the focus on the mask's mystical value, and not it's monetary worth. I felt terra cotta was the next best option for earthen people like the Dalish. Here, I'm painting the teeth to look as if they were real wolf's teeth set into the jaw.

Photo 23: Here are the two components of the mask. The lower half was never meant to be seen on its own, as it magically grows from the mask during the ceremony. You can see the registration areas that lock into the upper half.

Photo 24: Here is the completed mask. The jeweled eyes appear after the mask is run with virgin blood upon the altar dog...

Photo 25: Oops! Wrong dog...

Photo 26: The altar of Fen'Harel. Hidden deep within a mountain cave, this wolf statue awaits a blood sacrifice. I originally had an elaborate plan of seeing the statue crumble when the completed mask was removed, revealing the skeleton of Fen'Harel's human form. Very Conan the Barbarian. Alas, there was no time for such a thing.

Photo 27: I did a quick sketch of the altar, and it was carved out of foam. Digger Mesch did the dog, and Joanne Gross helmed the set piece. We didn't have the budget for giant blocks of foam like we usually use on studio movies, so mutiple layers were fused together with spray insulation to get the thicknesses we needed. For all the stryofoam people throw away on a daily basis, you would think the stuff was cheap. But large blocks of foam run in the thousands of dollars!

Photo 28: The finished carving was coated in a layer of spackle, then a base coat of house paint was applied. The set piece was sceniced with a combonation of washes, dry-brushing, and splattering to give a stone effect. For large pieces like this, I use a hudson sprayer with thinned down house paint. If you open the nozzel all the way, it sputters and creates a realistic granite effect.
Photo 29: Fen'Heral keeps an eye on the cast and crew in the cave. Which is actually the Bat Cave!

We filmed in Bronson Cave, a staple of the LA filming community, located in Griffith Park. It was originally used as the Bat Cave in the 60s Adam West version of BATMAN. Since then it has appeared in hundreds, if not thousands of movies. I actually died in there a few times. Oh, and this one time, I had breasts and ate somebody in that cave. No, seriously. It was a Roger Corman movie...

Soooo, anyway. The funny thing about shooting at Bronson cave? It's not a cave at all!

Photo 30: It's more like a tunnel...!

Photo 31: ...with giant opening at both ends. So the trick was to turn it INTO a cave. We decided to plug up the largest opening, so the smaller one could more easily be tarped of by the grip team.

There was no small amount of obstacles to this task. The mouth of the cave was huge (You can see Joanne standing there for scale) the ground was loose and sloped, and we weren't allowed to dig, nail, glue, stake, or lean on any part of the cave! And to top it off, the way the mountain was positioned, the tunnel was a bona fide wind tunnel! It was hard to stand in the middle at times from the force of the air rushing through. Our styrofoam plug was going to need a well engineered support system to resist against that.

Photo 32: Joanne took basic measuments of the cave mouth, and set off to extend the altar to include cave walls.

Photo 33: The beginning of the extended altar. The "plug" needed to be built in sections so the individual pieces could be transported to the cave.

Photo 34: The altar was assembled in place, and the cave plug walls are being brought in. It took several days at the loctaion to get everything together and blended into the surrounding rock.

The cave is a landmark, and a tourist attraction, so even though we had permission to film there, we couldn't prevent people from entering during the construction days. It was amazing to me that people had absolutely no issues with walking right up and breaking pieces of styrofoam off the altar just to see what it was made of! While we were standing right there!

Photo 35: I guess they had to come inside to see it, beacuse from the outside, there was no hint of the adventure to come...

Alright, there's been a lot more blogging than usual this month. But I can't help it! I want to share all the behind the scenes DA:R with you that I can. Obviously, there will be yet another entry for episode 3 by the end of the week. So much more ground to cover.

Share this with your friends if you think they might be interested, and leave me your comments on episode 3! How about that Nyree?!? What are your thoughts on the series so far?

Blizzcon 2011

2011-10-22T11:02:00.000-07:00

Photo 1: If you play WOW, or are addicted to any of the Blizzard games, you need to attend BlizzCon in Anaheim, California.

Photo 2: The show fills the entire Anaheim Convention Center, and there are giant screens everywhere showing the latest and greatest in the world of MMOs.

Photo 3: The show sells out within minutes every year, and thousands of people show up to log on and try all of the break through upgrades to their favorite Blizzard games. There are also intense competitions, with prizes worth tens of thousands of dollars going to the best gamers!

Photo 4: I had never been to the show before, but I was invited to attend this year as a guest of THE GUILD. Felicia Day, Amy Okuda, Robin Thorsen, and Vince Caso were all there to sign autographs and take pictures with the fans.

Photo 5: I saw lots of amazing costumes. Creatures were literally climbing out of the game.

Photo 6: And I had lots of friends there. Kyle and the Jinx gang were selling all of their Warcraft wares. If you don't have a Jinx Murloc hoodie, stop everything and go get one now! They are the coolest!

Photo 7: I was most excited to see the massive collection of art. I think I have admitted this in previous blogs, but I am not an avid gamer. Despite the fact that I have an in-house arcade, I'm really just not good at video games. Or card games. Games in general, I guess. You could probably kick my ass at Chutes and Ladders! But even as a kid, when my friends would play D&D, I was always the one painting the figures and drawing the dungeons. I love fantasy art, and Blizzard has some of the best stuff out there right now. This giant bronze Orc on a mount was so incredible to see in real life.

Photo 8: I'm not sure how many of the life sized statues Steve Wang and co. did, but I know this Kerrigan is one of them for sure. There is no mistaking that amazing detail and imaginative paint job!

Photo 9: Red 5 finally found a red-head she was taller than!

Photo 10: The Guild producer Kim Evey finds that the best defense against angry winged demons is ice cream.

Photo 11: Kim is always on the move, busy working doing producer stuff. Apparently, her ice cream cone was tired of waiting for her attention, and dove off the table where she left it, to end it's life in a puddly mess on her White Room: 02B3 crew bag. The bag was saved. The cone did not survive.

Photo 12: There were tons of art displays, including original concept sketches and paintings from the earliest days of the game.

Photo 13: And as always, if there are cool characters, there are SideShow collectibles. They had a small display of their newest, awesome Blizzard statues.

Photo 14: And on the opposite side of that art scale, but equally as awesome, MegaBloks had this giant Orc made completely out of, well, MegaBloks!!!

Photo 15: One of my favorites was this power suit from StarCraft. See, this didn't make me want to play the game...It made me want to get to the BarnYard and start building power armor! I need to write a show with giant robots in it, stat! Hmmm, I wonder if Felicia wants to operate a mech...?

Photo 16: If I needed to play StarCraft, it wouldn't be a problem. There were gaming stations as far as the eye could see. It truly was an amazing sight. And the competitions were awe inspiring. It wasn't even so much the incredible level of game play, as much as the roar of the crowd cheering the players on. You would think you were at the world series, or a heavy weight worlds championship fight.

Photo 17: The best part of the show for me was getting to catch up with friends. I hung out for a while with Team Unicorn, talked cameras with Vu Bui, got the Hollywood inside scope from George Ruiz, met up with some old friends from Jim Henson's, and strategized on taking over the world with master of social media Brian Kameoka. Here, he stands before the ice thrown that will some day melt beneath his wrath.

Photo 18: After the show, we all went out for dinner. Amy pretends like its no big deal, but you know you've made it when they serve you drinks with your picture on it! Of course Jones Soda Co. made Vork's flavor SOUR APPLE!!!!

Photo 19: Then the night was wrapped up with a bed time story by Robin!

I had a great time, and I'm not kidding when I say that Blizzcon has inspired me to make some crazy sci-fi, fantasy stuff! I'm not sure how it will manifest yet, but I assure you it will involve people mentioned in this blog, and it will be awesome. Keep checking to see what i come up with!

And post a comment below with any stories you have from Blizzcon. I'd love to hear about your experiences at the show!

Dragon Age: Redemption Episode 2 Part 2

2011-10-21T09:00:00.000-07:00

Photo 1: Felicia Day called the wide reveal of the Dalish Camp her favorite shot of the whole series, and I have to agree. The designs BioWare created for the game were so refreshing and unique, and despite their resistance to the laws of physics, I think our reproductions in reality ended up being quite striking.

Photo 2: But not everything about the Dalish camp was beautiful. When our heroes find it, they discover they were too late, and Saarebas had already cast the camp in ruins. May of the surviving warriors were dismembered, battered, and bruised...

Photo 3: And they were the lucky ones! The twisted mage cast fiery spells that charred Elves to the bone. Here, Construction Leadman John Bell tends to one of many burial piles of burnt skeletons.

Photo 4: We started prepping Dragon Age: Redemption the day after Halloween last year, so one of Art Director Bryan Fulk's first orders of business was to hit up all of the local Halloween stores for sales. If you have a closet or garage to store stuff, the week after the holiday is always the best time to shop! We got these highly articulated skeletons for 75% off! They were pretty good quality, and way less expensive than the medical grade versions we usually use.

We removed any silly decorative elements from the skeletons so they were just bare bones, and then built up our own "flesh" with liquid latex, cotton, and paper towel.

Photo: The Kid used a heat gun to speed up the drying process, and coated the final layer of latex with dark brown house paint. You may notice the crutches on the edge of the table. The Kid broke his leg at Marissa's rolling skating birthday party a few weeks earlier, which prevented him from being a Dalish Elf! He was the first person Felicia picked to populate the camp, but he couldn't do it in a cast. Maybe for the sequel!

Photo 5: Here, Rikki layers up some leg bones with paper towel and latex. Rikki joined the art department through the Knights of Good call, but she really is a make-up artist. Special effects is were those two worlds meet, so she definitely had her hands full with DA:R creature projects! The finished skeletons pictured were "charred" simply using black spray paint to dust them.

Photo 6: Maerwynn (Iris Klein)is Felicia's acting teacher. She was kind enough to drop by the BarnYard for an ear casting to complete her look as the Dalish Keeper's wife. I specifically tried to sculpt each actor's ears in a unique way, so everyone didn't look like Christmas elves with ears purchased from a costume shop. Make-up artist Kim Graczyk created the tattoos using a simple prosaide transfer technique.

Photo 6: Originally, there were going to be very few survivors in the Dalish camp. But as the scope of the series grew, so did the cast. As the numbers increased, early talks had most of the background wearing hoods and scarves to avoid the need for creating and applying so many pairs of ears. But then the large number of Elves trying to hide their ears started feeling apparent. The compromise was that I had my Foam Tech, Mark Vinello, run multiple copies of all of the hero ears to be used on the extras. Mark is no stranger to Elf ears, he was the Lead Prosthetics foam runner for the Lord of the Rings trilogy!

The number of ears continued to grow, starting at around 6 background pairs, and ending with several dozen! May of which ended up on members of the art department, like Jason Swearingen, above center.

Photo 7: Josmael, however, got his own personal set of ears. The first thing I thought when meeting Masam Holden was that he had perfect Elvin hair! Very Hobbit like! What I didn't realize was how difficult it would be to tame that mane while casting his ears and applying the Elf prosthetics!

Photo 8: Luckily, I had Marissa Cuevas to help me on this one. Marissa is usually my assistant when it comes to head and body casting, and one of her main jobs is to explain to people exactly what they will experience. She has first hand experience, as I've turned her into zombies and aliens many times!

Photo 9: Usually, we apply latex bald caps to people's heads when doing castings. But the caps are expensive, and the process to apply them right takes a while. We had so many casts to do for DA:R that I decided to cut some corners for the ear casts and use plastic bags and tape. It's a little low-rent, and kind of embarrassing when I publicly post these pictures! But it gets the job done and saved us enough money to make a few extra pairs of ears!

The casting process uses alginate impression material, which starts as a powder, and turns to a paste when water is added. I coat the ear in the paste, which sets to a rubber material in minutes. Here, Marissa hands me a plaster bandage to create a rigid backing for the flexible rubber-like alginate cast.

Photo 10: Another of my favorite props is Josmael's staff. This was one of the few items in the script that had no real ties to the game, so I was able to create something from scratch. I don't even remember my reason (I'm certain I had one!) for going with a bird as the staff head, but it seemed like the right idea. I did a rough sculpt, with out the Celtic knot pattern, in Roma clay. The Kid made a garbage mold, and got me a single casting in feather weight urethane BJB-812. This material has very wood-like properties. I sketched the pattern onto the cast, and then during meeting and conference calls for the next week, I whittled away at it to create the finished bird.

Photo 11: Here's a little insight into the mind of a mad artist: I searched my property for multiple straight sticks to be used for Josmael's staff (There's a lot of trees on in my yard) and picked the one I liked the best to be the hero prop. Upon taking the chosen stick into the main room of the workshop, it wedged between the floor and ceiling. Perfectly. This random stick was the exact dimension of the height of my room. Which, I must point out, is not a standard sized room. It wasn't pressing tightly into the ceiling, just barely touching it, but enough to keep it from falling down. I was so fascinated by this random alignment of math, that I left the stick in that position for months!!! We even eventually hung lights off of it and called it the Christmas Pole. It celebrated several holidays with us before someone bumped it and knocked it over. At which point I no longer had interest and put it back in the yard. Don't judge!

Photo 12: Back to the story, Tallis meets Josmael, and he shows her the ransacked Keeper's wagon. Here, production decides not to remove the side of the wagon, but rather to shoot through the windows sans decorative red panels.

Photo 13: I really wanted the red panels on the main wagon, mostly because they were the main connection to the rest of the wagons. I felt the Keeper's wagon almost went too western without them. The happy middle ground was to have them in place, but torn and hanging on the camera side so they were part of frame, but not obscuring it.

Photo 14: Withing the wagon, Tallis finds a secret panel hiding a small storage area. The Dalish Clan's sack of gold coin is hidden in there. Art Department Pooja Sharma was in charge of making the many sacks for the series.

Photo 15: Felicia decides exactly how much gold is fair to steal in good conscious. Art director Bryan Fulk pockets the rest.

Photo 16: But this smile makes me think Felicia got the exact amount of gold she wanted!

Photo 17: The art department standing by. There were over 100 props and pieces of set dressing on the Dalish camp shoot. It was all hands on deck to move things as the camera changed angles, and keep track of the easily misplaced items, like these arrows, with hand threaded fletching by Mazin Dajani.

Photo 18: It is know in the lore of Dragon Age that the Dalish always keep a statue of Fen'Heral, the wolf god, out on the perimeter, facing away from camp, to protect them. In an early version of the script, Maerwynn finds this idol knocked over in the woods. The scene got cut prior to filming, but the prop still existed. Here, Bryan does some last minute painting in hopes of getting it into one of the wide shots. Alas, you will never see it because it never made it into the cut. Too bad, maybe fewer elves would have met their fiery death if the statue was there to protect them!

Photo 19: If you look closely, however, you will see The Guild Director Sean Becker as a Dalish warrior!

Photo 20: Tallis convinces Cairn that they should hunt the mage together, exposing that she has a valuable asset to their quest: A Qunari collar. This magical device can render the mage's power useless once it is snapped around his neck. In the BioWare artwork, the collars are huge, like wooden stockades that lock around the neck and hands. Story wise, we needed a version that Tallis could be carrying on her person. In that very tight costume...with no pockets...

Photo 21: We went with a ruin encrusted dog collar of sorts, something that can roll up and hid in the tiny pouch Tallis hangs from the back of her belt. I sculpted the ruins out of Magic Sculpt two part epoxy, and glued them to a strip of leather. The two "claps" at the end contain magnets, so a flick of the leather band, and the two ends snap together. I used Testor's enamel copper and brass for the base, and patinaed the whole thing with acrylics.

Photo 22: And since we are back to talking about the Templar in this scene, I thought I would show you something I couldn't fit in the earlier blogs. This is a CG model of the Templar sword.

Every artist has their go to medium, the one that just flows naturally and allows them to think and work out design problems without the actual medium getting in the way. For me, it's sculpture. I can work out a form so much faster in clay than I can in any other art form. For Mazin, it's CG. His background is in video games, ahving done character design and animation for games such as The Simpsons, Family Guy, and Leisure Suit Larry. As effortlessly as it was for him to create all of the amazing Dragon Age weapons out of metal, it helped him to have a plan of attack by building a quick virtual model. It helped me to understand exactly what the final result was before any building was even started. I'm most impresed with the consistancy, from BioWare art, to the Cg model, to the final, physical product.

Photo 22: So that's a wrap on the behind the scenes for episode 2: Cairn! But fear not, Felicia and I have many more artistic adventures planned for you in the world of Dragon Age: Redemption!

Two episodes in, what stands out the most to you about the live action version of Dragon Age? Let me know in the comments below!

And don't forget to like this page on Google +, and share it with others using the widgets below. Follow me on twitter, too @gregaronowitz for more behind the scenes!

Dragon Age: Redemption Episode 2

2011-10-18T09:09:00.001-07:00

I hope you enjoyed my companion blogs for the first episode! I imagine that you have come for more, if you did. If you haven't seen the art department behind-the-scenes about the Chantry, Qunari, and the Tallis costume, click here! The path will bring you back to this entry eventually...

The world of Dragon Age: Redemption gets larger in Episode 2: Cairn, showing us the rogue Elf culture of the Dalish. If you have yet to see this episode, watch it below.

Photo 1: After Tallis slays Brom, she and the Templar part ways to find Saarebas. While Tallis uses her wit and cunning, the Templar uses a magical object called the Phylactery. It contains the blood of the mage, and glows when pointed in the mage's direction. This leads the Templar to a Dalish camp.

Photo 2: In Felicia Day's script, the Phylactery was mentioned, but not described in detail. BioWare provided us with images of the game assets, but they were all simple vials or jars of blood. I wanted this particular version to have a presence, and importance. It also seemed that the Chantry used the Phalacteries as tracking devices, so I thought it should be slightly more functional looking than a jar. I proposed the idea of it looking like a compass to Felicia.

Photo 3: She liked the idea, and it made a lot of sense that Cairn could wear it around his neck like a medallion, or easily hide it under his breastplate. The next step was to get the guys at BioWare to sign off on the design, so Kevin "Amish" Ivers elevated my rough sketches to this refined concept art for approval.

Photo 4: BioWare gave me the thumbs up, and I started engineering the thing. I realized that the center "hour glass" actually needed to be real glass, and since we needed multiple copies, it had to be made to very specific tolerances so all the parts were interchangeable. Amish did a Sketch Up schematic, calling out all the specs, and we farmed the glass out to a local scientific equipment manufacture. This was probably the single most expensive purchase for the whole show!

Photo 5: I sculpted the outer ring in a mirrored face, so I could cast 2 of the same piece, flip them, and make a back and front from one sculpture. Just like what we did for Brom's Axe. This saved sculpting time, plus the plastic outer ring needed to be in two halves in order to insert the hour glass. I made the center support bar out of brass bar stock that was highly detailed with an intricate acid etched pattern. I had a 9" piece that I was saving for years to use on something special, and when I decided it would be the Phylactery, Pooja tried to find more stock. I didn't remember where I got the original piece, but we searched everywhere and no one sold anything like it anymore. Hence, only the hero Phylactery has etching on both sides, and one stunt copy has etching on one side! The rest just have solid brass bar stock. :(

Photo 6: Once the whole Phylactery was assembled and painted, I filled the hour glass with fake blood. The glass was opened on one end and the ring had a hole that lined up with the opening. I used a syringe to inject the blood in, and then used a micro-fine steel rod to bleed air out so the blood would settle in the lower chamber. Once the hourglass was full enough, I dried out the hole with alcohol and cotton swabs, and sealed it with silicone caulking. It was very delicate work...

Photo 7: Meanwhile, next to my desk, Marissa was pounding coffee beans with a meat tenderizer!!! I'm not sure if this was another physics experiment, or if our coffee grinder broke...

Photo 8: When Carin finally finds the Dalish camp, he is met by a band of angry Dalish Warrior Elves. The leader of this guard is played by Timothy Lee Depreist. Here, Costume Designer Shawna Trpcic works her magic to transform pieces of existing costumes into Elven fashion that jumps right out of the Dragon Age game. Shawna knew what was hiding in every corner of the costume houses we used, and pulled every possible texture and finding to make the DA:R wardrobe as rich as it could possibly be. You are already a fan of her work, even if you don't know it. I'll give you the short list: Angel, Torchwood, Dollhouse, Firefly , Power Rangers, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog .... any of those ring a bell?

Photo 9: Here I am casting Tim's ears for his Elf appliances. Tim is an old friend of mine, and for years he has had an "office" at the BarnYard in the form of an vintage camper. If you are a fan of The Guild, you've seen it in the Christmas video I directed, "The Guild Sells Out: Bladezz Blade!" Tim is one of the best model makers out there, having worked on blockbusters such as Men in Black and Daredevil. We were building models for "The Hulk" at the BarnYard years back when he confessed to me that he really wanted to try his hand at acting. I encouraged him to go for it, grab a BackStage West and send in some head shots. To my surprise, he picked one up over lunch, and the first number he called, booked the role! Since then he has been on almost every crime investigation drama on TV. He also started practicing Yoga, and is now a top instructor for the Hollywood elite, including Eliza Dushku and Tamlyn Tomita.

Photo 10: Producer Kim Evey had met Tim during a visit to the BarnYard, and threw his hat in the ring to play the Dalish Warrior. Felicia agreed that he had the right look, and it was really exciting for me to be able to tell him he had the part. It was fun having so many important people in my life all be involved in the same project. It was also fun to be able to transform many of them. This is Tim in full Dalish gear. Everybody loved those bows...

Photo 11: Did I mention that EVERYBODY loved those bows! It became a favorite photo op on set, second only to being hugged by Doug Jones! Here, Art Department Coordinator Pooja Sharma does her best Robin Hood!

Photo 12: Once again we went to the BioWare weapons chart to look for a Dalish Long Bow. There were many options, but of course, my eye went right to the most intricate design! As I've mentioned before, I was feverishly fighting to avoid the "off the shelf" look that so many low budget fantasy films suffer from. I wanted to pick as many designs that were uniquely Dragon Age as possible.

Above, you can see the original game asset on the left, and our final prop on the right.

Photo 13: We took a different approach to this prop. Since I was so short handed on staff, and everyone was working beyond full capacity, it was hard to schedule in detailed prop building jobs like the Dalish Long Bow. So it was time to bring in the robots!!!

Mazin Dajani had constructed a homemade CnC machine in the corner of the BarnYard earlier in the year, and he convinced me that it could do the days of sculpting work necessary while keeping all the talented human hands free.

The bow was built in Studio 3D Max, then the upper half was computer cut in dense blue insulation foam. This was sanded smooth and molded, two copies where cast in fiberglass, then attached with a handle in the middle to form a whole bow.

Above, Leo Nasca patches the seam with Evercoat glazing putty.

Photo 14: We didn't have the budget for ANY custom made bows, but I really wanted them in the show, so I paid for all the materials out of pocket. The original plan was to just have one hero prop for Tim. But so much work went into it, and it looked so cool, I decided to pull more copies since the mold already existed. Here, Shanna Choung does a pass of sanding the Bondo spot putty on one of the copies.

Photo 15: As each bow was finished, it came to me for a final once over and some finish sanding.

Photo 16: The next step was painting. Each bow was base coated in a slightly different brown, all Testors enamel sprays. After that dried, I did a wash of burnt umber, wiped it down, then a thinner wash of black, wiped it down again, and then a dry brush of a light tan to simulate wear on the corners.

Photo 17: Sitting across the table from me as I painted was Emily Kung, who used cardboard poster tubes to create these arrow quivers. She wrapped them in leather, and added straps and fringe, each one completely different from the others. I remember this night specifically, as we pulled an all nighter to get the Dalish camp set, and around 4am, the power went out! It was January, freezing cold, and we were all sitting in the dark. At first, everyone thought we blew breakers because of the space heaters everywhere, but that wasn't the case. Then I had the horrifying thought that I may have forgotten to pay the power bill amidst all the chaos!!! But after a bunch of us wandered onto the street, it was evident that the whole block was shut down! A transformer a few streets away blew, and took out the grid. It didn't look promising, considering there was a bunch of work to do before leaving for our 6am call!!! If only we had some muffins!

Photo 18: Did I mention EVERYBODY loved the bows!??! Erika Ladd, Pooja, and Red 5 do their best Charlie's Angels!

Photo 19: But remember, the bow chooses the archer...Oh, wait, wrong fantasy realm...

Photo 20: The Templar is allowed into the camp under Tallis's instruction, and we get our first glimpse of the nomadic Dalish life. As travelers, the Dalish keep everything they own on wagons that are pulled by mighty steeds. The wagons have colorful sails to help them move effortlessly along. BioWare sent these game design layouts with scale and texture for us to follow.

Photo 21: John Bell constructed the wagon hulls from 1/2" ply and 1x3s. The wheels were plywood rings with dowel spokes, and luan wrapped around the outside.

Photo 22: The wagons were painted in several shades of brown, and then dozens of bright red fabric panels were laced onto them. We had a whole team of people working on the sewing and painting of the sails, as each wagon had over a dozen individual pieces, and all the yellow stripes had to line up in the end. Here, Katie Moest sorts out the finished panels for each wagon.

Photo 23: The biggest and most structural wagon belonged to THE KEEPER. This wagon required an interior, and it was scripted that no one could see what Tallis was doing once she entered it. I tried to incorporate the panels from the open wagons as sun shades, and have short pony walls on the sides to give it more solidity, since this wagon housed valuables.

I also incorporated the built in chest of drawers, since the wagon gets ransacked. I though having drawers open, missing, and stuff hanging out would express that visually, while still making sense for the lifestyle of a nomad.

You can see the opening for the "secret" panel in the lower right hand corner.

This whole wagon was built as a "wild" set, meaning all the walls can separate to make more room for camera and crew. But it was never shot that way, and stayed in tact the whole time.

Photo 24: Once the location was chosen, I sketched this quick layout of where I though everything should go, and it was sent out to production for a sign off or corrections.

Photo 25: Ultimately, we made 6 wagons in all, two of which were heavily damaged by Saarebas's clan. The wagons all had to be transported in pieces and assembled on site. I was hoping to have a few days to do this, but we only ended up with an afternoon the day before filming. Here, Frank Bonanno and Red 5 layout the sails in numbered order for each wagon at the Malibu location.

Photo 26: This differed from the game art, but I wanted to put a slightly more natural element to the Dalish wagons, so I made the masts from Yucca trees instead of milled lumber. Yucca is pretty light weight for 12 feet of tree, but even still, John Bell was the only one of us who could carry more than one at a time!!!

Photo 27: A finished Dalish wagon, after the wrath of Saarebas.

Photo 28:The Dalish camp was only the third day of shooting, and my team was already pretty worn out. We had survived weeks of pre-production, and now the grueling schedule of principle photography was crashing down on us. The day after we shot this scene, Felicia emailed me, stating, "I had a total trippy experience looking at that Dalish Camp, it was like it walked out of the Game. Unreal, thank you for your artistry." The team was super excited to hear how pleased she was, and that invigorated everyone to push onward for the next several weeks of filming.

Photo 29: I still have a few more things to talk about in the Dalish Camp, like meeting Josmel, but I'll save that for the end of the week. Don't forget to "thumbs up" on the Dragon Age: Redemption Episode 2 video if you liked it. It means a lot to the project, and the more positive feedback we get, the sooner we will be able to bring you more projects like it.

Also, leave me some feedback on this blog, too. What is your favorite prop from DA:R so far? There's so much more to come, don't forget to share this blog with others, and sign up to be a member yourself!