Pacific Rim

For some people, summer means time to take off from work or school. For others, it's all about the beaches and amusement parks. But for me, the perfect summer is one filled with amazing blockbuster movies. I wait all year for the popcorn fair the summer season cinema brings. And at the top of the 2013 lineup is Pacific Rim, Guillermo Del Toro's ode to the classic giant robot and monster movies we all grew up with. 

To celebrate the release of this much anticipated film, I teamed up with Polaris, Warner Brothers, and Legendary Pictures to create a video about some famous gamers training to be Jaeger pilots. It's pretty great! Check it out below...

For the actual movie, there were scores of CG artists rendering robots, and millions of dollars to create breath taking full size sets and hardcore pilot armor. We didn't have that. In typical BarnYard FX style, we had to be clever and practical, and pull all of our movie magic tricks out to pull off something worthy of such a prestigious project. Luckily del Toro and the guys at ILM gave us incredible imagery to work from.

Photo 1: To start the whole process, I had Amish draw up some Jaegers. If you don't know this about Amish, he is an expert on all things robot. If you have a Roomba vacuuming your floors, Amish probably knows its pattern settings. I figured if the thousands of hours Amish has spent watching Evangelion and building Robotech model kits was ever going to massively impact a project, this was the time to unleash it!

Photo 2: After Amish finished the turn arounds, and Guillermo, Warner Brothers, Legendary, and Polaris signed off on them, I blew them up to full size. Well, full size would be like 30 stories tall. Let's say, actual size! And in this case, actual size is the height of the people wearing them! Unlike the feature film, which uses GC exclusively to create the robots, we went old-school and built suits for stunt performers to wear. In our own fun way, this was our tribute to the classic sentai shows, like Power Rangers.

Photo 3: Now having a scale, I started sculpting pieces. I wanted the boots to be large, anime large. So I figured they were the best place to start to set the proportions for the rest of the suits. I kept the armature simple, a single piece of speedrail bolted to a wooden base, and some plastic bottles duct taped to it as filler. We drink a lot of Gatorade here at the BarnYard. It's good to reuse and recycle!

Photo 4: The first boot roughed out. Of you aren't sure how big it is from this photo, you are currently looking at about 150 pounds of WED clay!

Photo 5: More progress. I chose WED clay (which is glycerin based instead of water based) because it is fast and cheap. But it MUCH softer than oil clay, so geometric shapes are difficult. I had to actually let this sculpture dry out for a few days before I could start getting smooth surfaces and crisp lines.

Photo 6: Some guy finishing off the sculpture. This boot belongs to the Jaeger codenamed: Redflag Horowitz.

Photo 7: Out in the shop space temporarily called "the robot room", Kaygo starts to block out Redflag's head. On the smaller to mid-sized sculpts, we went with roma plastalina to keep the details and forms tight.

Photo 8: This is my sculpt for the head of the Jaeger named Shameless Fox.

Photo 9: With several sculptures finished, it was time to start molding stuff! Here I am explaining to our summer intern Emily how I want the mold split. Emily is in school for film design, and by the end of the first week at the BarnYard, she was building, molding, and casting like a pro!

Photo 10: Here's Shameless Fox's boot molded in fiberglass.

Photo 11: The more detailed sculpts needed to be molded in silicone. This rubber starts out in liquid form, and gets catalyzed to solidify. In order to get all of the air out of the thick liquid material before it sets, it needs to be placed into a vacuum chamber. It takes a while to get all the bubbles out, so Red5 gets comfortable while waiting. Um, I guess that's comfortable...

Photo 12: Emily puts the final layer on the Redflag torso. Yes, it was sculpted around Arnold. A soft foam version of the robot will be pulled from this mold so the stuntman can wear it and still have enough flexibility to move.

Photo 13: Not all of the robot parts were sculpted. Here, Sarah and Emily prepare to reinforce the upper torso Amish built from sintra for the Wolfqueen Jaeger.

Photo 14: This is a robot forearm that Amish crafted out of a PVC pipe, some sintra plastic, and a bondo stipple. We were invited over to Warner Brothers to review all of the film assets, so we tried to incorporate as many of the shapes and textures used on the movie's robots as possible into our versions.

Photo 15: Red5 preps on of the silicone molds for foaming. The waffle grid around it will lock into a fiberglass jacket to help it keep its shape during the foaming process.

Photo 16: The foam is a two part liquid that gets mixed together, then it expands into a solid, cushiony sponge. It creates a lot of pressure as it foams up, so Sarah is helping Arnold stay in the chest mold so the robot torso forms properly. Or, something else entirely different could be happing here. Time time to move on, nothing to see here, people...

Photo 17: Once the foam pieces are removed from the mold, they need to be trimmed and patched. Red5 gets ready to seam the Redflag boots. I told you they were big!

Photo 18: Each Jaeger suit had dozens of pieces. As we were getting close to having the molding and casting complete, we needed to do a test fitting to make sure everything was connecting together. The stunt guys weren't immediately available, so all of the short, scrawny artists here at the studio decided we would give it a go so we could keep moving forward. I know what Red5 is wearing for Halloween this year...

Photo 19: No one was safe from embarrassment on fitting night. Here is Amish as a junior sized Wolfqueen. That look on his face says, "I should have designed these things to be more comfortable!" 

Photo 20: And finally me as Redflag Horowitz. Or I guess in this case, Redflag Aronowitz :P

Photo 21: Now knowing that we had all the pieces we need, it was time to bring the actual suit performers in and make sure all the elements were adjusted to fit them perfectly, and make sure they had the full range of movement necessary to make the robots come alive. Here Yoshi, a Power Rangers alumni, inspects his suit. Even not fully dressed, he looks better in the suit than I did!

Photo 22: With final adjustments made, everything is ready to start painting. The biggest challenge we had was that all of the different materials the suit was made of all needed to be painted with different kinds of paint, but all the colors needed to match! Here, Keri bases out those giant boots using PAX paint tinted to the Jaeger team's colors.

Photo 23: Once all the base colors were applied, the pieces came in to my "house of mess" where I aged them down with acrylic washes and added nicks and dings with chrome paint.

Photo 24: The final painting process involved highlighting panels and spraying semi transparent reflective tints over the face shields.

Photo 25: Everything was ready to go on set, and we did the final assembly on the stunt guys in front of a green screen.

Photo 26: The Jaegers complete: Shameless Fox.

Photo 27: Wolfqueen.

Photo 28: Redflag Horowitz.

Photo 29: All of the robot footage was shot on green screen with a sand box floor, and the desert location was comped in later. Here, director Aaron Umetani explains a shot to the director of photography. I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who is always making crazy hand gestures in on set photographs.

Photo 30: Just like in the movie, part of the original plan was to have WWII style nose art painted on our Jaegers. We ran out of time in pre-production, but the directors decided they could make a little time on set if I could still make it happen. Based on concept art that Amish did for each team, I hand painted the nose art on the Jaegers while the stunt guys were wearing them. I only had about 15 minutes a piece! This logo is on Redflag, piloted by the Game Grumps.

Photo 31: The suits were heavy and hot, so we needed to take them off the actors as much as possible. If there wasn't enough time to get them out fully, we would just remove as many parts as we could in the time we had, and then be ready to get them suited up again when the cameras started rolling. Here, Red5 is standing by!

Photo 32: To give the stunt guys a longer break, director Nathan Kitada dons Wolfqueen's arm to film some insert shots.

Photo 33: In the video, the Jaegers are piloted by some of the most popular gamers on youtube. Dodger dropped by the set to hang out with us and go all hands in with me and her very own Shameless Fox.

Photo 34: But our work wasn't done! We still had to get Dodger and crew geared up to pilot the Jaegers. In the film, each robot is piloted by two people who wear full body neuro suits. Legacy FX did the movie's pilot suits, and they are drop dead gorgeous. We made our versions out of used motocross and hokey gear, with a few specialty pieces like these scratch built helmets. Here, Keri preps the fiberglass casts to be fitted with the vacuum formed visors.

Photo 35: We didn't have a lot of time to customize the pilot suits, but I thought a few extra details might help sell them as being closer to what you see in the actual movie. I found an old carpenter's kneepad in the workshop that kind of resembled the shoulder pads on one of the official pilot suits, so I used the time I saved not having to scratch build on to sculpt the Pan Pacific Defense Corps logo on the found piece before molding it. When del Toro saw the final product, he asked, "How did you get those?"

Photo 36: Nathan and Aaron knew they were only ever going to shoot the pilots from the chest up, so we didn't make lower suits. The gamers wore their own close, and we put the armor over it. Here, Game Grumps JonTron  and EgoRaptor rehearse in costume.

Photo 37: Jesse Cox and Dodger make Jaeger pilot suits look fashionable as they prepare to set Shameless Fox in motion.

Photo 38: Fully geared up, Husky Starcraft and Total Biscuit work as one mind to pilot Wolfqueen. This shot of the on set monitor shows what the camera sees. For all we know, Husky isn't even wearing pants!

After the shoot, the VFX team comped in the pilots chamber. Ironically, for the film, the pilots chamber was a real set, and the robots were all digital. For our video, we did the exact opposite!

Photo 39: Well, that's a little behind the scenes on our Pacific Rim video. I hope it made you smile, and better yet, I hope it made you want to go see the movie! Summer doesn't count until you do!

Let me know what you thought of the video, the movie, and our Jaegers below. And be sure to follow me and my BarnYardFX crew, as well as our friends on youtube, on twitter and instagram for more updates and pictures on this and future projects!

SyFy's Hot Set

A few months ago, I had the privilege of joining SyFy Channel on a new show called Hot Set. But, as a first, I wasn't behind the scenes this time, I was actually starring in the show! Well, at least an episode of the show.

Hot Set is from the minds that brought you the make-up effects based sensation Face Off, only this time the focus is on the art of production design for film and television. Each week, two designers go head to head to design their version of a set based on an excerpt from a script.

Each designer is allowed to bring two team members that they usually work with. I was joined by Red5 and Amish, and our set theme was "Alien Queen".

It was a very different experience, creating a set as "competitive sport". Probably the closest I will ever come to "live performance art!"

It was quite the challenge, but we had a great time doing it. Curious how it turned out? You can now watch it online thanks to SyFy.com.

It's so strange to see myself on television! Let me know what you think about how we did in the comments below.

The Wasp Woman

Recently, I did some filming at Bronson Cave, and it brought back a lot of memories. Bronson Cave is a man made tunnel under the Hollywood sign, at the west end of Griffith Park. It was dug out in the 60’s to be the entrance for the Batcave in the infamous Adam West version of BATMAN

I hadn’t shot there for a while, but early in my FX career, when I did a lot of lower budget horror movies, I frequented the place. I probably did about 30 films at that location. Most of them blend together, tons of gore effects and bullet wounds, but the first memory that comes to mind every time I step foot in that cave is Roger Corman’s WASP WOMAN

Photo 1: Obviously, not the classic original! I definitely wasn't doing effects in 1959. I didn’t even exist when Roger came up with the idea of selling a horror movie by superimposing a woman’s head onto the body of a giant wasp as a marketing campaign.

Photo 2: For some strange reason, what's on the poster is not even what the creature looks like in the movie! It’s quite the opposite, a woman’s body with the head of an…well, a…I’m not sure what that is exactly! I guess it’s supposed to be an insect. What ever it is, it sure scared people at the drive-ins 50 years ago!

Photo 3, 3a: In 1995, Roger decided to remake Wasp Woman for his Showtime series, Roger Corman Presents. But this time, he wanted to make the creature much more convincing. I got the call to re-envision the title character. The main question was, should it be the body of a woman with the head of an insect, or the head of a woman on the body of an insect? Which image from the original was the most haunting? The answer I got was, “Doesn’t matter, as long as it has cleavage!”

Photo 4: So I went with a full on giant wasp, with a D cup. Only in Hollywood can such things be possible. In the end, Roger stated that my Wasp Woman was his favorite creature from his extensive movie catalogue. He said he just wished the movie were better!

Photo 5: The movie starred Jennifer Rubin (The Crush) as an aging super model/ cosmetic company owner who has just been replaced by a younger model. Daniel J. Travanti (Hill Street Blues) is in the role of the scientist who formulates an experimental de-aging serum made from bee pollen. Jennifer takes the serum against the doctor’s wishes and, well, turns into a revenge seeking, murderous wasp! Hey, I didn’t say it was Shakespeare!

Photo 6: Scream Queen Maria Ford played Caitlin, the younger model, and naturally, one of the wasp’s earliest victims. Ironically, I used Maria’s body cast from a previous project we had done together as the study for the Wasp Woman sculpture.

Photo 7: In order for the Wasp Woman creature to be low budget friendly, it needed to be a suit rather than a make-up. That way, it could slip over an actor quickly, instead of being applied like prosthetics for hours. But the wasp needed to have a very shapely hourglass figure, so the actor wearing it needed to be rail thin so the curves could be sculpted on without making the whole body too bulky.

Ultimately, the heady, body, and multiple leg rig would be considerably heavy, so a professional suit performer was necessary. The production talked to multiple people, but somehow the decision was made that I should be the one in the suit! It sounded like fun at first, but I had no idea what I was in for…

Photo 8: It’s often difficult to tell if a creature sculpture is “attractive” enough. As I was finishing this WED clay sculpt, this winged insect wouldn’t leave it alone! I took that as a good sign...

Photo 9: The leg rig was the most complicated part of the Wasp Woman suit. I wanted to have full mobility, but never really have my legs shown. I designed this welded steel rig to support me while I pretzeled my legs behind me, to be hidden in the abdomen. So, not only was I freakishly skinny, I apparently was much more flexible 15 years ago…

Photo 10: The welded frame was wrapped in sheet foam, which was then covered in a latex skin. The abdomen was constructed out of L200 foam, so it would be light and hollow. That, too, was covered in textured latex. This process was faster and cheaper than sculpting, molding, and casting pieces as large as this was.

Photo 11: The next step was painting everything. I used an old make-up trick to speed things up. I based everything out using an adhesive called Kryton, thinned with a chemical called Solvent 111. Kryton was actually invented during WWII as a rubberized de-icer for airplane wings. Somewhere along the way, it was adopted for wig adhesive, and then it’s use as a paint was discovered. It’s pretty hard to get a hold of these days, but for large areas like this wasp suit, it is pretty useful. The advantage is that you can apply the base, which I tinted yellow for this purpose, then airbrush layers of straight acrylic over it. This makes painting super fast and clean. Then a clear coat of the Kryton goes over the top, locking in the acrylic and making it just as flexible as rubber cement paint, or PAX.

Photo 12: Here’s the head. I went for a very wasp-like look. The mandibles and antenna are animatronic, with the servos housed at the back, behind my head. The eyes are made from a front and back vac-u-form piece housing a cluster of ¾ inch clear spheres. The front vac-u-form is sprayed with a translucent amber acrylic, and the back plate is lined with aluminum foil to help reflect the light. The end result was very cool, but the dozens of solid marbles added about 10 pounds to the head. After an 18-hour day of shooting, I was scrambling for the Tylenol!

Photo 13: And there she, uh, I, am in all my glory!

Photo 14: It was a weird experience walking around with breasts. Yes, I know, I actually just said that. Honestly, when we were done filming, I swore I would never let anyone know that it was me in that costume! I even demanded that I go uncredited in the film. But, years later, looking at these ridiculous pictures, I figured I just had to share…

Photo 15: But sometimes the sharing was just too much! Seriously! The staring and the gawking!!! Even when I didn’t have the head on, guys were goggling. Dude, I’m a dude! Eyes up here. Please.

Photo 16: If you spend any time on a film set, you will know that there is a lot of sitting and waiting. I made a point to remember that the NEXT time I designed a creature suit. This is not a comfortable position to sit in while waiting for lighting changes and camera reloads.

Photo 17: And here we are up at Bronson Cave. It was a hot summer’s day. That’s producer Marta Mobley running to the left. She and I went on to work together many times. My favorite story about this film, and this location, involves her. But she would kill me if I blogged about it. I’ll have to tell you next time I see you in person…

Photo 18: In the cave and on the rig. You can tell by my expression that I have been on the rig way too long!

Photo 19: For the “over the shoulder” shots, which usually involved attacking the victim, I was rig free so I could run and jump. The exciting part of this for me was that I got to sit down on a chair like a normal person!

My on-set support team included Kenn Scott, an avid suit performer himself, most famously known for his portrayal of Raphael in Jim Henson’s Teen Age Mutant Ninja Turtles movies. To the right is Tom Skelington, who started work at the Barnyard with this production. His 8-year stint started when he wandered into Bronson Cave to see what was being filmed. I happened to be the person he asked first, sans costume, and when I told him it was a remake of the Corman classic, he jumped for joy. Oddly, the original Wasp Woman was his favorite film, and the one that inspired him to get into FX. I asked him if he wanted to work on the new version. He started that day!

Photo 20: Outside the cave, a second unit picked up some shots of the “cat wasp.” In the film, the doctor first tests the serum’s safety level by injecting his pet cat. Shockingly, it turns into a hybrid cat/wasp and starts to kill people!

Photo 21: The cat/wasp puppet had motorized wings and a radio controlled head. The hero close-up puppet had the same marble eyes as the suit. The version in this photo hangs in my bathroom, and every once in a while a new visitor will scream when they go in there.

Photo 22: The puppet legs were cast over armature wire so I could bend them in different poses, and the wings were clear plastic vac-u-formed over textured plaster.

Photo 23: There were very few cat like qualities in the final puppet, but even still, it did not get along with my English Bull Terrier, Action!

Photo 24: What would a B-movie be without more scream queens! Here I am posing with Melissa “Rocky” Brasselle and Antonia Dorian. I had my wasp head on for a magazine shoot, but in this photo I think we were comparing cleavage!

Photo 25: Rocky and I became great friends during the shoot.

Photo 26: And then I had to kill her! Just kidding, it was totally fake. Except for the part were she punched my wasp head in the face, which then in turn crunched my real face.

Photo 27: But later, she apologized and gave me a hug.

Photo 28: And apparently, even she was fascinated by my new, uh, assets.

Photo 29: It’s funny how people have no reservations about poking at you when you are wearing a costume. But don’t even think about doing the same to them…

Photo 30: Or you will end up getting punched in the face again!