Save the Supers!

If you grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons like I did, Save the Supers is the web series for you! A parody of icon driven animated shows such as Super Friends, STS draws back the curtain to show us what it's like to be a super hero when they are not in the spotlight. Unfortunately for this group of avengers, they are being filmed 24/7 reality show style, so they ultimately let their guard down and reveal to us who they really are as people. And although it is hilarious, it is not always pretty!

Photo 1: Save the Supers is the brain child of writer/director/star Sandeep Parikh. Although it just premiered this year, it can actually be considered the grandfather of all web series! Long before watching serialized content on the web was popular, Sandeep shot a pilot for Supers to pitch to the networks under the banner of his production company, Effin Funny. It was a cross between Justice League and The Office. The episode was pitch perfect, but way too high concept for TV execs to wrap their minds around, so Sandeep started developing the show for an audience more interested in the genre: the web! The subject matter proved to be too tough to produce with the limited resources of internet budgets, so Sandeep and team turned their efforts to something more manageable: The Legend of Neil (If you know the show, then you get that that was a joke!) While putting LON together, Sandeep joined his improv troop cast member Felicia Day on her new venture, The Guild, and the web has never been the same.

Along the road to completing 3 seasons of Neil, and 5 seasons of The Guild, Sandeep accrued a massive following and met a wide range of crew members that were willing and able to help him realize his vision. I was one of those people, and this is my adventure to Save the Supers!

Photo 2: Sandeep was not in the original pilot, but after Felicia asked him to play Zaboo in The Guild, it became apparent that people liked to see him in front of the camera as much as behind it. I have to give him credit, I don't know how he does it! I usually take on the role of designer/director, and it's very difficult to monitor everything from where I sit. I cannot imagine directing a whole show while BEING IN the show! But he pulls it off effortlessly.

Sandeep plays Merman, an Aquaman type hero that finds himself somewhat useless if there isn't a mission under water. He is however, the most organized, sensible, and sane of the group, so he tries to make himself useful by actually holding the Force together.

I signed on to do the usual props and sets, but I thought it would be fun this time around to handle the costumes, too. It was a lot of work for my small crew, but we had a lot of fun and I think the end results were pretty entertaining. I thought I would show you my concept sketches, inspirational reference clips, and the final product all at once.

I wanted the show to still look like the cartoons it was based on, so I went with bright colors and broad shapes. I wish we could have made everyone look like Iron Man or The Dark Knight, but that was still beyond our budget, and honestly, not in the style of the show. I wanted to capture the campiness of the 70's superhero spandex, while trying to find the line that didn't cross into cheesy.

For the most part, the final costumes were pretty close to my initial sketches, with a few minor tweaks here and there. On Merman, the major changes were the lessening of the amount of scaled material, because a full scaled body suit ended up looking a little ridiculous, and the addition of sleeves. Jenn Rose was concerned about the amount of prosthetics it would take to hide ink-squirting tubes down Sandeep's bare arms, and Sandeep was worried about the amount of time he would have to spend at the gym to show his bare arms and be convincing as a super hero. I pushed as much as I could, because I really like the idea of a sleeveless swimmer, but it was a battle I did not win. I still think he looks cool, though.

Photo 3: Night Knight is Super Force's equivalent to Batman. He doesn't have super powers, but he has high impact armor and more gadgets than ThinkGeek. This costume made it through the process relatively unaltered, save the deletion of his top knot, replaced by a razor sharp saw blade fin. I went a little more centurion than bat, since I felt the character captured enough of the essence it was parodying that the costume had more freedom to play off the Knight aspect of the name. Team Unicorn's Rileah Vanderbilt went fabric hunting for me, and found some amazing chain mail patterned spandex that saved Max Bird-Ridnell from having to wear extra pounds of metal links.

Photo 4: If there is one thing I learned on this show, it's that Lycra is NOT easy to sew! Luckily, I have a bunch of awesome cosplayer friends that came to help get all this stuff together. Fleetfoot was one of the simplest designs, but the hardest to construct, since all his stripes and angles needed to be cut out and sewn into the suit. It took multiple senti suits in the various colors to fuse together this single suit. We found a jacket that was a pretty good match, but it was white, so I had to paint it! Strangely, the paint held really well, and the thing I thought would need the most daily maintenance was the only thing we never had to touch up!

 

Photo 5: Worldman underwent the most radical changes. The body of the suit remained intact, but the cape ended up being much more traditional than I planned. I was hoping to do something more like Hawkman's floating ribbon cape, just to pull away from a carbon copy Superman. But the most noticable change is the fact that my concept art has him as an alien. I really tried to convince Sandeep to make Worldman look like he was from another world. I liked the idea of having a Martian Man Hunter type character, making him blue, and giving him green birthmarks that looked like a map of the Earth. But Sandeep felt strongly about casting Mickey Hawtrey, who played Worldman in the pilot, and many of the scripted jokes were based on the fact that Worldman believed he was the perfect man, so it was important that he looked human. I am a firm believer that story trumps design, so my alien was not to be. In hindsight, I am VERY thankful, as it was hard enough to get all 5 actors plus villains into costume in any sense of a timely manner, so a full head prosthetic every day would have killed me. Although, I do hope we have at least one full alien villain or guest hero in Season 2. Just cause I'm a glutton for punishment like that. 

 

Photo 6: And no super hero line-up would be complete without the sexy heroine. Mandell Maughan plays the part well. Although Elementra is very much the Wonder Woman of SuperForce, Sandeep wanted to take the character in more of the Greek Goddess route. The final design had a few additions, like the loincloth, and a few ideas removed, like the furry boot covers. My concept with this was to keep it sleek and sexy, but with enough flowy textures that we could see the costume physically interact with Elementra's wind power. Ashphord Jacoway stepped in to sew up the very complicated spiral striped cape and all the panel work.

 

Photo 7: Last, but not least, is my favorite costume of the series. It's no surprise that it is yet another collaboration with the amazing Felicia Day. This was the first drawing I did, and it was also the only costume to have zero changes in the final. Perhaps it's because Felicia and I have had so much practice! I've made her into an assassin, an alien, a damsel in distress, etc., so a super villain only seems natural!

 

Photo 8: The real challenge with web series is the ever changing schedules and conflicts with all of the busy people pitching in.  The hardest part of costuming Save the Supers were the fittings. The cast are all super talented actors, so naturally, they were always shooting on a set somewhere. There were several components of costumes that required body casting, like Felicia's Panthera cowl. We had planned on doing a head cast of her so it would fit perfectly, but then she got called back onto Eureka, and ended up in Canada the entire month before shooting. She was scheduled to arrive home the day before we needed her, and that obviously was too short of a turnaround for me to cast her, sculpt, mold, cast, and paint the cowl.  So we decided to improvise. Felicia measured her head in the mirror of her hotel room, and gave me the sizes over the phone. If you know Felicia, you can imagine that scenario would be a million view youtube video.

Photo 9: I've been doing head casts for 25 years, so I have an actual sea of  stone heads in storage. If an actor needs an appliance or helmet of some sort but can't come in for a casting, I just find a head with the closest measurements and work off of that. It's tricky business, because even though diameters and distances might match up, no two people have the same head shape, and that can make a cowl like this very uncomfortable. At first I though one of the casts I made while sculpting the cowls for WB's Birds of Prey might work, but the closest match was actually Power Rangers SPD 's Yellow Ranger, Monica May.

 

Photo 10: It took a little bit of onset adjusting, but I lucked out and the cowl fit. But that doesn't mean it was comfortable! It was pretty tight, which it needed to be, and Felicia was fine to wear it while shooting, but between takes, it was better to have it off. It took a while to set her hair through the mask, so she started just wearing it on top of her head!

Photo 11: But trust me, the cowl wasn't the only tight thing she had to wear! Her costume was made of metallic purple Lycra we got at a stripper store on Hollywood Blvd. They only had pants, and I couldn't find an exact fabric match, so the rest was made of, well, more pants!  Cosplay expert Ginny McQueen tackled that massive undertaking. Artoo helped, of course...

Photo 11: When it comes to super hero shows, the women aren't the only ones subject to tight spandex. No one is safe. Including the viewers!

 

Photo 12: Another example of head matching was for Night Knight's helmet. We didn't have time to get Max in for a cast, so I took measurements and went out to the storage locker. Ever wonder which celebrity has the same size head as you? Well, in Max's case, it was Arnold! An exact match on every measurement.

I sculpted all of Night Knight's armor in WED clay for speed. This clay needs to be packed very tightly, so I usually start a sculpture off by grabbing handfuls and throwing it as hard as I can at the armature or cast. I was just starting to get some mass on the helmet when I realized it was looking like Arnold's high school yearbook photo...

Photo 13: When I was finished, it looked much more like the Arnold we know today. 

 

Photo 14: I'm sure Max will get an ego boost from knowing that he also has the exact same body measurements as Arnold circa 1995. I have a collection of Schwarzenegger bodies around from the multiple times I cast him for films in the 90's, and they come in handy at times like these. Here, I am sculpting NK's chest armor.

 Photo 15: In an attempt to stylize Night Knight's costume up a bit, I decided to sculpt shin guards that look like gargoyles from a castle, or Notre Dame. I was hoping to only have to do one, but the curvature of the shin forced me to make two so they looked balanced when Max wore them. 

Although all of these components were supposed to be armor, I cast them in latex and polyfoam so they would be soft and flexible and not inhibit Max's movement. I worked on the Batsuits for Batman Forever and (sigh) Batman & Robin, which were made from dense foam latex mounted on custom made neoprene suits. My goal was to emulate that process as much as possible, however, a single bat suit cost more than the entire production budget of Save The Supers. So, yeah...

Photo 16: Arnold's shoulders were bigger than Max's (sorry, Max) so I sculpted the shoulder guards on a mannequin. The final casts were, however, large enough to double as a turtle shell for my Frenchie, Art. We all know who is going as King of the Koopas for Halloween next year...

Photo 17: With all of the costumes done, it was time to concentrate on the Super Force HQ. Naturally, the inspiration was the Hall of Justice.

Photo 18: I wanted the inside to be filled with blinking lights and large control panels, just like the cartoon. I tried to keep the color scheme neutral, as to not conflict with all of the bright color patterns on the characters.

Photo 19: Each hero had their own station, and Night Knight had his secret lab. Although I had to build this set INSIDE another existing set for another show I was producing, it was still pretty large for a web show. The meeting room was on the second floor, and the party the Supers held in the main control room held about 100 people for the finale!

Photo 20: The HQ was the biggest build, but that didn't mean it was the only challenge. There were several locations that needed to be fully dressed. Producer Jeff Winkler found this awesome empty bank to use for the opening scene. It was both a blessing and a curse to have such a blank canvas. We had the freedom to do anything we wanted, but that was a lot of real estate to fill on a shoestring budget.

Photo 21: The bank scene was a lot of fun, though, and it was even more so for me due to that fact that my buddy Zack Ward came in to be the Jokester, a Joker/Carrot Top hybrid villain. You know Zack from such classics as Battle Planet...er, well, no. I still owe him for that. But definitely from Resident Evil, Transformers, Dollhouse, Titus, and with Christmas fast approaching, he will be on your TV 24 hours a day as Scut Farkus in the holiday classic, A Christmas Story. The Jokester was a fun character for me, mostly because of the large number of props he used in his "act."

Photo 22: Of course there was the Rubber Chicken Grenade,  which is probably my favorite prop of the whole show.

Photo 23: The Jokester is a prop comic turned bad, so he uses visual aides to punctuate all of his bad puns. Naturally, no security card would consider this drill a threat if a man in clown makeup carries it into a bank...

Photo 24: But "you know the drill!" This hardware is actually a cleverly disguised gun! Red5 made this prop, and no, she does not want to make another one!

Photo 25: All of the Jokester's henchmen wore masks to hide their faces. Each mask was a famous comedian. At first we thought it would be easy to find these masks on line, or in Hollywood at the LARGEST HALLOWEEN STORE IN THE WORLD, but none were to be found except a creepy Jay Leno. So I sculpted the other 5 myself. I was hoping to spend a whole week on this task alone, but as things got piled up and I spent most of my time putting out low budget fires, the mask project kept getting put aside in hopes that some existing ones would surface. Ultimately, I ended up sculpting all five masks in one afternoon, the day before they shot! Red5 and Winkler pulled an all-nighter with me to mold and cast them, and I painted them on the liftgate of the art truck at the location as Sandeep paced around inside the bank waiting to shoot. No pressure or anything.

Photo 26: The scene ends with Morphman transforming into a wrecking ball, and Worldman throwing him through the bank wall. My friends at Sypher Studios helped create the damaged wall, and we set it up in front of a set of double doors.

I didn't have to make a costume for Morphman, because he is never seen in human form during the show. He is, however, in tons of scenes morphing into different props. Dozens of them. We decided that every prop would have his color scheme with tell tale pinstripes, so you always knew it was him.

Photo 27: Even when he was a piggy bank...

Photo 28: Or a toaster...

Photo 29: Or a gavel. He was also a chair, a coat rack, a shopping cart, a lamp, a vase, a balloon, a guitar, a soccer ball...the list was endless.

Photo 30: But Morph and Jokester weren't the only ones enjoying propage. Night Knight had his fair share of personal arsenal this season. The coat of arms he wears on his chest is the Swiss army logo supers dream about. It has mini swords, a chainsaw, a grappling hook, these throwing stars shaped like his initials...

Photo 31: Night Knight also has a jam packed utility belt, filled with handy things like this smoke bomb for quick escapes. I tried to make all of his gadgets look "medieval."

Photo 32: No one knows exactly where Night Knight gets his gadgets, but it is suspected that he makes a fair share of them himself. We get to see his skill in action as he crafts some booties for his future super baby. The kid is sure to be warm and deadly with this footwear...

Photo 33: Once again, though, the reigning crown of props goes to Felicia Day. Panthera had more custom props than any other character, even though she was only in a single episode of the show. She was the purrrfect criminal. (deal with it, there is so much more to come) Her super power is that she can recreate an exact duplicate of ANYTHING from cardboard, justifiably called "DupliCats." This way she can steal the original, and no one will even notice it is gone, making her the cat's meow of burglars. Of cat burglars... terrible, I know.

Photo 34: The most intricate Duplicat was the replica of an Assyrian bull. This was only seen as a final product, so it didn't need to be made of cardboard. But it did need to be light weight so it could be tossed around like cardboard. I wanted to find a fiberglass copy at a prop house, but everything we came across was stone and heavy. I ended up carving this one out of a chunk of foam.

Photo 35: We did manage to find a decent and affordable bust of Nefertiti. This still needed to be duplicated, or, uh, duplicat-ed, in cardboard so Night Knight could smash it.

Photo 36: The hardest part of prop making is watching something you spent so much time on get purposely destroyed right before your eyes...

Photo 37: Other Duplicats were works in progress, where we actually see Panthera constructing great works of art from crude materials. The script called out a few specifics, but I got to add a few of my own. I thought this Remington would be a nice touch.

Photo 38: For her great escape, Panthera makes a duplicat of herself to fool the surveillance cameras. When we shot the scene, we had Felicia strike a pose for the front view, then I matched it with this hollow cardboard dummy for the over the shoulder shot.

Photo 39: The Panthera prop list seemed never ending. There was also duplicat jail bars, a Merman standee, a cardboard car door, computer monitors. There was also a ton of arts and craft supplies, and random gags like these custom cat themed magazines. Josie Kavadoy and Red5 did the graphics. Pawlin is my Boston Terrier, Print, who also played Zaboo's mom in an episode of the Guild. We like to keep it in the family!

Photo 40: Some characters, thankfully, had very low prop demands. The benefit of a super hero like Worldman is that he doesn't need anything but his cape and his good looks. Unless, of course, he's shamelessly promoting his own cereal...

Photo 41: Once filming was done, the BarnYard took on some of the post FX work. One of our main jobs was to make the exterior of SuperForce HQ match the interior I designed. Sandeep shot a plate downtown, and we needed to create elements that would make the Los Angeles building look like a version of the Hall of Justice.

Photo 42: BarnYardFX alum Mazin Dajani helmed this exterior, painting out all of the tell tale LA signage, and constructing some new architectural elements to convert the building into the HQ. I had him add the SF signal light on top, along with statues of the heroes. We also emphasized the black framed frosted glass, so it would echo the interior shots.

Photo 43: You can do a lot of amazing things with computer effects these days, but I still think the best effects are the ones you didn't even know were there. A good example would be this exterior shot of Elementra grabbing a smoke. Nothing distracting about this shot, right? Well, it took a lot of work to make it that way.

Photo 44: In typical indie style, we had to steal this shot downtown. It's hard enough trying to run and gun film making in Los Angeles, so it definitely doesn't help that you have a hot super hero in full costume capturing everyone's attention. Needless to say, there was no time to risk covering the signage, and this was the best possible place to shoot. So Mazin painstakingly painted the signage out. Ordinarily, it would be no big deal, Mandell crosses past the right hand sign, and in front of the doors, which needed to match the interior set doors. Plus, the footage needed to be shot hand held (You will be ticketed for filming in LA before your tripod legs even touch the ground if you try to use gear without a permit) so no two frames were the same. That meant days of tracking and rotoscoping, for an effect no one even knew was an effect! A big round of applause to Mazin for making it look so easy!

Photo 45: So that's Save The Supers! I hope you enjoyed the show, and I hope there will be more to come! I'm curious to know who everyone's favorite character is, and which prop you like the best! Let me know in the comments below, and be sure to follow me on twitter for more behind the scenes!

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.

Written By A Kid: Ginger Potato

 Have you seen this show yet? It's pretty amazing. The concept is that a kid tells a story, straight from their imagination, live on camera, and then filmmakers use that as a script and bring the story to life. There is currently a full season of 10 episodes up on Geek & Sundry, and they are definitely worth a watch!

I was first introduced to the show by Executive Producer Kim Evey, who asked if I would direct an episode. It sounded right up my alley, so I jumped on board immediately. The show was still in it's early stages, so filming was a few months off, but Kim asked if I would design the logo as they were gearing up for production. 

I created multiple pages of sketches, some very sophisticated logo concepts, others strong title designs, but the thing that everyone responded to instantly was a doodle of a kid riding inside a pencil, drawn as if by a child's hand. It pretty much looked exactly like what you see above, with the exception that the final was refined in Adobe Illustrator to make it look a little slicker. Amish put together the opening title sequence in After Effects, and so began the BarnYard's journey into Written By A Kid!

Photo 1: The show works by pairing kids with directors that click with their stories. Kim and the gang chose the directors they wanted to work with, and everyone got to watch the interviews and pitch their take on the kid's story they were most drawn to. I chose three different stories, and pretty much found an angle on each one to bring puppets into the mix. Everyone was pretty excited about the concept of using puppetry, and while I was waiting to find out which story I would get, Kim called me and said, "If that's how you are going to do it, I really want you to do a story you haven't heard about yet! It's called Ginger Potato, and I think it's perfect for you." 

So I designed and directed Ginger Potato. It's the story of a gingerbread man named Gumdrop who just can't catch a break. As with all the projects I direct, I start with dissecting the characters. Or, in this case, building them!

I began the gingerbread puppet process by cutting out the silhouette of Gumdrop from a sheet of sintra plastic. 

Photo 2: Then I built up a thickness of roma plastilina #3 clay to give him shape and dimension. I only made this sculpt half as thick as I wanted the final puppet. I finalized the sculpt with a light texture to simulate cookie dough!

Photo 3: When the sculpture was complete, I hot glued it to a piece of foam core, and made foam core walls around it. I then poured silicone over it to make a negative box mold. This was to become the back side of Gumdrop.

Photo 4: I was able to pull the mold off without damaging the sculpt, so I reused it create Gumdrop's front half. I sculpted "frosting" in the shape of clothing, and made indents for his eyes. I thought about leaving his body blank and adding the frosting later with silicone or slip latex, but I knew I would need multiple puppets, which would mean making exact duplicates of the hand applied clothing, plus the worry of it peeling, popping, and cracking. 

I didn't take any pictures of the front half for some reason, but you can see the sculpted frosting in the negative mold above. 

Photo 5: Mark Viniello ran the foam latex for me, and he tinted it to such a perfect gingerbread color, I didn't even bother painting a base coat!  Here you see two assembled puppets, consisting of a front and back foam glued together, and the side seam coated in prosaide. The upper puppet is getting his gumdrop "shoes", which I made from chunks of mattress foam, scissor cut to shape, stippled with PAX  paint, and coated with clear glitter.

Photo 6: I ended up making a total of three puppets for this shoot. The one on the left is the "bottom puppet", named so because of the permanent rod protruding from his bottom. The rod goes all the way through the body and attaches to a styrene disc inside Gumdrop's head. When I turn the rod, the puppets head turns. This puppet was mostly used for close-ups where you couldn't see him from the waist down. 

The middle puppet was used for shooting the sequence when Gumdrop first wakes up, and before he is dressed. I made this version using two back halves. When you see him before he puts his eyes on, you are looking at the back of this same puppet. After he has eyes, I just flipped him around. 

The last puppet is the most used of all. He is a fully rod puppet, meaning that I operated him completely with external rods. He has no armature whatsoever, the foam he is made of was just the right density to allow him to move in all the right places. 

Photo 6: I embedded small sleeves of brass square tube stock into each hand, the bottom of each foot, and the top of his head. I could move each limb by manipulating long rods of solid brass square stock that fit perfectly into these sleeves.

Photo 7: I am the first one to argue the advantages of practical effects in this digital age, but I firmly believe that the best results are achieved when you use all the best tools at your disposal. So I decided that I would keep my puppets simple, but give Gumdrop lifelike expressions by adding a CG mouth in post. In order to do that, we had to add red tracking dots onto his face so that Mazin Dazani would always know where the mouth needed to be as the head turned and moved around in the frame. Here's his explanation of how all that compacted stuff works:

Photo 8: Now that Gumdrop is a fully realized character, I needed to give him a home. Ima, who crated the story, was very descriptive about where Gumdrop lived. She mentioned that his house was pretty normal looking, but smaller. And of course, made of candy and gingerbread! This house is actually made of sintra, stippled with bondo, and painted with acrylics. But it still looks tasty!

Photo 9: The next step was to tile the roof. I went with vanilla wafers. And a lot of them, too! If you live in the Los Angeles area and noticed a shortage of cookies at your local grocery store, now you know why! We bought out several stores multiple times over! It may not look like tons of cookies, but each side of the roof took about 8 boxes, and we made two houses!

Photo 10: The first house was the "hero" house, that always needed to look pristine and perfect. I wanted it to last a while, so I decided to do all the frosting using white silicone tiling caulk. It worked really well, but the second "stunt" version of the house needed to be edible, as the actor playing Potato would be bitting chucks off of it. So I made a simple frosting from powdered sugar. Again, simple enough, with the exception that we used about 10 pounds of powdered sugar before we were done!

Photo 11: I really wanted the hero house to be a permanent part of the BarnYard collection, so my original idea was to mold, cast, and fabricate ALL of the candy decorations. I figured if it was all artificial, it would last forever. unfortunately, there wasn't the time or budget, so we went with real sweets. 

Photo 12: And again, A LOT of them!!! This 3.75 pound bag of Jolly Ranchers is one of 5 we used to make the candy brick work for this episode. I don't think I've eaten that many in my life. 

Photo 13: Here is edible version of the chimney being made. It was laid up like real brick and mortar. just stickier. A second hero version was made using silicon caulk between the Jolly Ranchers. 

Photo 14: Oreos, Lifesavers, ribbon candy, candy canes, sour patch ribbons as curtains, you name it, we used it. And ate it. I can honestly say that working with this much candy was one of the hardest things in my career. The difficulty of building with it was only matched by the stomach aches from eating every other piece! 

Photo 15: Gumdrop wasn't the only one who needed a home. I decided right away that I would build Potato's house, too, instead of finding a location. I would have more control over the design and the lighting, and Chris Darnell and I could create a more stylized look because of that. Web budgets being tight, I had to carefully chose how much of the house I wanted to see, and create the environment around it accordingly. 

Photo 16: We shot on a sound stage, and I thought having a tall, solid fence would make it easier to sell that we were outdoors, especially since most of the shots would be from a low puppet level. I went with bright, cheerful colors, because that's what i saw in my mind as Ima told her story. 

Photo 17: We essentially had a "3 walled set" for the shoot, consisting of the side of the house, and a corner of fence. 

Photo 18: For those few shots were we did look up, James O'Connor painted the walls behind the set blue to represent sky. The work light up in the corner makes it look like we already had a sun!

Photo 19: The whole story revolves around an apple tree in the back yard, so I went to Jackson Shrubs in North Hollywood to see if they had anything that worked. There was something about this particular tree that appealed to me, but it was lacking a low hanging branch where I could puppeteer Gumdrop. The greensman were happy to add one on for me, so i lucked out with the perfect tree. I only needed to add the apples!

Photo 20: Once everything was built and ready to shoot, I did a quick pass of storyboards to show everyone HOW we were going to shoot it. Ordinarily, I like to have very polished boards with clean drawings, but with so much to do in so little time, I felt that my chicken scratch first pass doodles were sufficient enough to get us through the shoot. The most important thing is that they show composition and movement through the frame, so that all the visual departments can be on the same page. 

Above is an example of a sequence, comparing the original board to the final frame below it. You can see how close they match, with the few exceptions of adjustments made during filming to work better with the set. 

Photo 21: Finally, we were filming! I had a small crew, but everything was very localized, so setting up the lighting and camera equipment went very quickly. Chris decided to shoot on the RED, which helped a lot in the post, giving us the highest resolution to work with on the FX plates. 

Photo 25: If you have watched Ginger Potato already, you certainly recognized the amazing Bonnie Friedericy as Potato's mom. I'm a huge fan, and I love her as the General on Chuck. It meant a lot to me that she came out to do the role, and it was really fun working with her. Hopefully we'll do it again some time soon!

Photo 26: If you are unfamiliar with how movie sets work, here's a basic break down: The director watches the actors on a monitor. 

Photo 27: The DP, or Director of Photography, watches the lighting and the movement in the frame through the camera.

Photo 28: And the producer watches everything and everybody! Kim Evey stayed on set with me the whole time, making sure everybody had what they needed, supervising all of the paperwork, business and legal stuff, and provided a second pair of eyes to help keep me on track with actor performances, schedule, and storyboard matching. Kim is one of my best friends, and we work on lots of stuff together, and I can honestly say I rarely see her away from that computer!!! Even a potential shark attack cannot break her cyber concentration!

Photo 29: Caption this photo as you will...

 Photo 30: I was originally thinking about a kid for Potato, but the second Kim introduced me to Michael Busch, I knew he had to play the part. He has very youthful features, and his talent enabled him to capture the spirit of the tyrannical neighbor kid we all had to grow up next to. His acting convinced you he was a child, but he is so clearly an adult, it really just help solidify the surreal quality I was looking for in the show. 

I love this photo of Michael relaxing as we set up for the interior night shot because it shows how little set we actually had! The bedroom "interior" was literally the back of the exterior wall painted blue, and it was hardly longer than the bed. 

You can also see Lindse, one of my model makers, standing in front of the New York hallway set. Keeping in mind that the backyard and fence is right outside of Michael's window, you can get a sense of how small our shooting area was!

Photo 31: Speaking of the New York hallway set, one of my favorite parts of Ginger Potato was the gingerbread Brownstone. Ima mentions in her story that Gumdrop "buys a house" when he gets to New York. I may have jumped to my own assumption, but it seemed to me that by New York, she meant NYC. I thought it would be fun, and less repetitious, if instead of Gumdrop's new home being in the yard again, or even on the street, it was a miniature Brownstone in the hall of a full size duplex. 

Red 5 took my drawing and the instructions that "everything had to be brown" and crafted this awesome (and truthfully the most delicious smelling model I have ever come across) facade from graham crackers, cinnamon sticks, caramel cubes, Hershey's frosting, Milky Way stairs, and a Nestle Crunch door. 

Photo 32: It's kind of an inside joke, probably only funny to me, that I based the design for the Brownstone on a similar one in Manhattan that housed Jim Henson's company. For years, the muppets were made there, so it seemed only fitting that a puppet would want that style for himself. 

I went with a darker, dingier wallpaper for the hall, since most of my memories growing up on the East Coast reflect that. Not in a creepy way, just more in an older building due for some maintenance sort of way. It just felt more natural to me than a Uptown, modern building type condo.

Photo 33: Every once in a while, when dropping off a foam run, Mark will bring his kids to the BarnYard. They love to play with Art and Print, and his daughters, not surprisingly, are very well versed in the art of special effects even at their young age. His entire family is very photogenic and jovial, and he mentioned once that Ava often talked about being an actress. I wasn't sure if she would want to do it at first, but it was only a few hours after I asked Mark if Ava would be interested in playing Potato 2 when I received this drawing of us on set with Gumdrop. 

Mark brought Ava and her sisters to the set, and they seriously were like a flock of angels. They helped decorate the set, and even took turns calling "Action!" Ava took direction like a seasoned pro, and she is so adorable in the end sequence I wish we could do a sequel. I told Felicia that there needs to be a Guild flashback were Ava plays the young Codex. To see what I'm talking about, watch this behind the scenes clip:

Photo 34: We wrapped photography on the stage, but only half of the storyboards were x'd out. A big chunk of the show takes place inside Gumdrop's house, and that was going to be a second day of shooting on a miniature set at the BarnYard. But first, I had to build the set! I hate repeating myself, so i wanted the interior design to include all new and diverse candy from the exterior. Influenced by the original Willy Wonka, I decided to go with the idea of edible wallpaper. It took several trips around town to buy up all the available candy buttons. The people at Rocket Fizz in Burbank thought I was crazy! 

Photo 35: The interior house was a three walled set, the basic structure made from sintra. I spray painted the walls a light blue base, then spray mounted the candy button strips to look like 50's style stripped wall paper. The "home sweet home" sign (America Young smiles knowingly) is actually made of stacked layers of sintra painted brown, although I did write the words in cake decorating gel!

Photo 36: Another huge bag of Jolly Ranchers was cracked open for the fireplace. I kind of had to repeat this idea for bricks, so it tied into the chimney. But I can't complain, it worked really well! One thing I can complain about: Those damn Jolly Rancher wrappers!!! Why are they so hard to get off! I swear it took longer to unwrap all the candy than it did to assemble the final prop.

Photo 37: In a effort to save time, Red5 came up with the plan to hot glue all the Jolly Ranchers in place, perfectly spaced, and then pipe in the icing around them, rather than build it up layer by layer like the chimney. 

Photo 38: Sadly, any time saved there was lost unwrapping the HUNDREDS of Starburst Fruit Chews we needed to tile the floor. Who's brilliant idea was that? Regrettably, mine. Well, regrettably at the time as it took days to assemble, especially since the floor had to have hidden trap doors in it for puppeteering, but now that I watch the final film, I wouldn't change a single tile. I would, however, eat less Starburst! I bet this is my dentist's favorite thing I ever filmed...

 Photo 39: Each Starburst was glued in and had to be gently shaped by hand, as they are all not perfect squares. The toughest part was making sure that no two tiles of the same color ever came into contact with each other. We mixed the traditional flavors with bags of the tropical flavors for more variety, but it was enough floor space that it got tricky to avoid color collisions!

Photo 40: I created Wayne's coating out of Kit Kats. A word of advice: Don't use Kit Kats for model building. They taste great, but the melt so easily, and they're impossible to glue! I had my fingers crossed during the entire shoot, hoping they weren't going to just crumble onto the Starburst floor!

Photo 41: Gumdrop is quite the interior decorator! Lollipop throw rugs, fruit roll-up carpet, candy cane chairs, pop-tart table, marshmallow nightstand, rock candy chandelier. He has all the sweet furniture. The bed is the only thing in his home NOT made of candy. I toyed around with the idea of different kinds of candy beds, but I knew I wanted him to be "baking", so in the end, the idea of heater coils and candy didn't really mesh. It made more sense that he would have an "easy bake oven" type of set up, and since this was more of equipment than furniture, I was ok with sugar not being the main construction material. 

Another early idea was to use miniature neon to create the "hot coil" effect. It proved to be too costly, so it bumped to an After Effects plate. But on the day, Chris lit it so well, it ended up being a simple practical lighting gag in the final film. Maz was very happy.

Photo 42: Another view of Gumdrop's home, as he sleeps under the oven coils. None of that was part of Ima's story, but it just seemed like the right way to introduce the character. I figured she was telling a "day in the life of a gingerbread man" story, so I wanted to show how a typical day starts for him. The piece is very short, and since he's our hero, the concept of watching him wake up and prep for a good day in the yard endeared him to me, and hopefully you, which makes Potato all that more menacing. 

I think its funny that I didn't even bother finishing the top of the oven canopy. This photo shows an angle I never intended to shoot for the film, so I just didn't put any detail into anything outside the lens. Obviously, the danger in doing so is it limits your ability to make radical changes to the camera placement, but since the director and the designer are the same person, there wasn't a lot of finger pointing! 

Photo 43: I hope you enjoyed the tour of Gumdrop Potato! I just realized that there wasn't much explanation about the puppeteering aspect of the show, but I guess we can save that for another blog! I have a few more awesome puppet projects coming up soon, so be sure to come back for more information. Oh, and don't forget to wish Kenny Mittleider a happy birthday in the comments below! This blog wouldn't exist without him!!!