our first Reality show

My husband and I recently finished filming with our first Reality TV program this summer, and they've finally started airing episodes!

CAPTURE is kind of a Big Brother meets a game of tag with a little Hunger Games flair. All the episodes aired are available online, click the link! Lots of interesting personalities and neat tech!

A peek at base camp from the top of one of our temporary cell towers.

My husband and I were part of the tech crew that designed and built the gimmick of the show, the location devices and sonar vests. The gist of our job description was to build a temporary wifi/cellular network out in a very remote area of California.
We had to cover about 4 square miles of very mountainous, very forested terrain. Each contestant was given a location device, along with a vest that flashed LEDs, made noise, and allowed us to track exactly where they were at any given moment. We knew how fast they were running, how long they stood still, how close they were standing to their teammates, everything!

We were kept busy during the entire shoot, tweaking equipment locations day-to-day, fixing weather damage, changing the types of antennae or dishes used to bounce the internet from the town 7 miles away from the video camp location. We usually pulled 8am to 11pm shifts, so we were too tired to even really enjoy the good craft service meals. I have a hard time even remembering what happened on what day, just that it was nice to sit quietly in the command trailer for the hunt hours when we couldn't work lest we be caught on camera. As soon as the contestants returned to their base camp every day we would hop in the truck and drive around trying to improve the service and coverage for the next day.

Our crewmates were responsible for designing and writing the custom software that allowed the show to do all sorts of manipulations and punishments to the contestants in real time, it was really awesome to watch the teams live running from eachother or from the boobytraps set up by the producers. We also built the hardware that allowed each contestant to act as a walking siren and LED disco ball, which they fit into the vests custom built by the wardrobe department.

I have so many pictures, but most of them are of boring networking equipment and piles of CAT5 hidden in a huge forest. I'll get around to editing them eventually!

Of course on the last filming day we brought out one of our costumes and ran around the main stage area a little. :)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dragonsquared/9603147579/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dragonsquared/9603219027/

All in all, it was an interesting learning experience! I've never been at 7000ft altitude for such a long time, or worked in such a huge production crew before. We were put up in a nice cabin in the woods, and had a beautiful 30 minute drive through the mountains to get to work everyday.

I hope it gets renewed for a second season!

Faux-Taxidermy Lion

 So back in August we were contacted to do a studio job... I hinted at what it was, but tried very hard to adhere to our shop NDA (non-disclosure agreement) which we stick to whenever we do studio jobs. Mostly my day-job consists of making pretty average stuff for studios. Lots of welding, soldering, machining and tailoring. But this one was special!

I'm so proud of this, I'm so excited that we've got studio ok to share pictures and details!

This was definitely one of my favorite costumes I've built, and we were fortunate enough to be working with some great people who let us kinda run away with the idea and make it excellent!

The producer gave us some images of what they wanted, and we immediately got to work brainstorming how we could bring together a taxidermy-like cowl and cloak. I whipped up a few concept sketches, we had some ideas bounced back and forth, and then as soon as we got the ok we began ordering parts from about a dozen online stores to get started!

I couldn't help myself, and posted some component photos in this blog entry. It's so hard to pour so much love and energy into secret Hollywood stuff! I have moments of weakness, hah.

Ok, on to the good stuff! Here's just my favorite pictures of the process... There are hundreds! Thanks to my wonderful partner who is so supportive of me that he jumps at every opportunity to take snapshots of the 'insides' of our projects! 

Without him, I also probably would have mucked up the ratios on at least half of the resin fiberglass and casting rubbers, so he's just the best.

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I used sculpting epoxy for details; fairly malleable and cures in about 4 hrs, can be sanded and dremeled!

Dremeling the fiberglass head for rough spots and to fit in the taxidermy replica lion eyes. 

The claws were made from a two part resin in a platinum silicone mold.

First good pull out of the pawpad mold; made out of tinted casting rubber compound onto a lycra sheet.

Painting the jawset (a heavily modified taxidermy jaw set) and then coating everything in UltraGlo.

First test to see if the 'skin' fits!

Looks pretty good for a test fit and some rough fur shaving!

We made the paws 'dimentional', in that they had a front and back, as though they were stuffed taxidermy rather than flat. This was SO difficult, but SO worth it. We inset the pawpads and sewed them into the paws from within (not appliqué via adhesive on the outside), as well as sewing in the claws from the inside and reinforcing with E6000. They had such a wonderful weight to them!

Cutting into the bolt of NFT we ordered for the project was terrifying! 

We "gently" adhered to a standard lion's size when doing the cape portion. He'd be a small lion, but he sure was a pile of fur on my sewing table! 

Husband for size reference. Two colours/lengths of NFT fibers for the mane, elbow poofs and tail, such wonderful stuff!

Hand basting the faux suede lining to the inside for that added realistic look and so-soft comfort!

Started airbrushing some 'value' to the facial fur. I got way more aggressive with the shading later on hehe.

Test fit... I wanted to keep it!

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I'm so glad I got a chance to make this fella! I love the opportunity to stretch my comfort zones and really make something out of the ordinary (for me at least). It was a whole bunch of sleepless nights, trashed patterns, mis-casted parts and paint spills, but the stress was worth it!

Oh yeah, and I added some horsehair whiskers and eye-whiskers too!

If you have questions about the construction, or where I sourced materials, feel free to ask! Thanks for reading. :)

Behind the scenes with The Guild

A little behind the scenes of my partner & I! The Bui brothers did a great job with the impossible task of getting decent material out of us during our 4am screen time.
Do you know how hard it is to not look at the camera when doing an interview? It is! :)

Further Confusion 2012

Had a blast at Further Confusion 2012!

We've been working on LED components lately, and finished a 300+ LED hula hoop to film a bit of my hula routine in costume! The hula hoop is full of RGB LEDs, which means when we modify the controller inside the hoop, I should be able to obtain a spectrum of over 16.4 million different shades of colour, controllable to preset sequences or even reactive to inputs such as sound or oscillation or acceleration. Fantastic!

Can't wait to put together another hula video now that I've got a bunch of LED hoops to play with!

Sometimes I'm a dog

Thanks to a dear friend and a very quality DSLR, the Puppy officially has some fantastic headshots.

Some specs about this costume:

 - The bodysuit is built to fit unisex, so it's rather baggy. I built it with the thought that both my studio partner and I would be able to wear it. It fits anyone between 5'8-6'2". The body comfortably fits between 145lbs-200lbs, though it starts to get tight around the tummy any larger than that.
 - The materials used were for the most part unidentifiable. I haven't found similar fur to the body since! It's made of locally sourced 2" two-tone brown, 2" tipped beige (the kind that came with a faux suede backing), and some Monterey Mill's brand fox white.
 - It has 2 sets of feet; one built on size 11 mens shoes & one pair on size 7.5 womens shoes. The feet are soled with an additional .75" rubber matting so the traction is great and they're very comfortable for long uses.
 - The tail is carved foam with 2 belt loops, so it has a great wag and will always hold it's shape.
 - The hands are 3 fingered, the paw pads are textured pleather and the pads are lightly stuffed with polyfill for a little extra squish.
 - The nose is cast rubber, tinted with commercial rubber tint and a foam core. Solid and squishy yet very light! Read how I made it here.
 - The head is hand-carved foam lined with a lycra balaclava, the ears are semi-rigid cold foam, and the eyes are CNC machine cut plastic with plastic mesh for vision. The irises are painted with high quality acrylics so they won't bleed or fade. The vision is great out of this head; even in low-light/night settings it's fantastic! This head is so light, it barely weighs 1lb!

Definitely a lot of fun to wear!

as seen on TV!

Another episode, another costume! See Season 5 Episode 6, Revolving Doors on MSN & on The Guild website. 

Tink and Codex, a photo by watchtheguild on Flickr.

I was asked to build a giant plush doll version of one of The Guild's main characters. My first human costume, a little out of my comfort zone but I hope it played well on camera! I had a lot of fun making her shoes, with big puffy bows on them.
It's so fun watching other people wear my costumes!

There's a really awesome cameo in the episode, but my favorite is still coming up... Can't wait to see!

behind the scenes

Furry in Season 5 of The Guild, a photo by watchtheguild on Flickr.

In case you were wondering (which I'm sure you were!) the Boba Tea was made up of food coloring, milk, and blueberries. Amazing art / prop department magic! Listen to the Knights of the Guild Podcast for more behind-the-scenes secrets. Greg Aronowitz (the genius model maker in everything from Tomb Raider to Batman Forever to Jurassic Park etc etc...) is a master of make-believe.

Working on some new sculpted projects at the moment, promise to have some fresh content up soon!

Appearance on THE GUILD

It's been a while since we had any news in the studio; instead we've been having a relaxing summer holiday. Lots of time spent in the garden, at the beach, and devouring copious amounts of deliciousmess at the family BBQ.

But now there IS some excitement to report! The Guild has started airing episodes from season 5 (as of July 28), and with episode 3 has introduced one of our costumes!

Most of the pictures we have from the behind-the-scenes contain spoilers, so you'll just have to take my word for it 

that that puppy got into some serious mischief! Here he is with Script Supervisor Stephanie R. & Sound Editor 

Oakley, probably comparing top scores from Angry Birds on their iPads...

Episodes can be viewed every Tuesday on XBOX / Zune, and every Thursday on their website.

We also recorded some interviews about the making-of with the Knights of Good podcasters & the Bui Brother's upcoming documentary... can't wait to see how those turn out!

doggy again

Sent the puppy down to Los Angeles for use on another shoot. Can't share any details yet, but I should be able to publish some links soon!

Video Game Reunion

It's so hard keeping secrets, especially about nifty new projects!

But the season has finally finished, so I'm ok'd to post as many pictures as I like, yay!

This was a fun little project I took on over Christmas break, to build a mascot style head in just a few days of the Super Mario's character Birdo. The web-series director gave me free reign to do it however I pleased, so while it was really odd, it was fun! I really like this shot of the head & egg on the nightstand of the Wardrobe department. I love all the behind-the-scenes photographs!

Such neat pictures! Hope it wasn't too hot that day for costumes!

Go to videogamereunion.atom.com and watch the episodes! They're hilarious! But a little naughty. Episode 4 is my favorite, I think the Birdo scene turned out really excellent. I also designed and built Zelda's gold  Armor & belt pieces. Enjoy!

accessories

Quick project I finished ages ago of a dragon tail. The material is actually an upholstery fabric, with foam backing. Amazing stuff. The scale pattern is really lovely, and it's soft & stretchy. None of the stiffness of vinyl or faux leather reptile pattern fabric. The horns are a very rigid 'plasticky' material, makes some tough horns indeed!

Working on a matching set of ears & head horns for this outfit.

Start of 2011

Start of the new year, start of some new fun projects!

For Further Confusion 2011, I'm building a brand new costume; my first puppy dog!

The fur was an amazing find. Super luxurious soft mid-length pile, in two-tone! It shaves very nicely, still retains a silky feeling, and seems to resist creasing/crimping no matter what torture the testing crew put it through. It's always pleasant to work with really quality materials. I bought miles of it, after doing such a great job haggling, so there might be a small flock of puppies romping about eventually.

Of course, the studio is absolutely a mess of muslin & fur & foam. But in the chaos, new life emerges! Exciting, woof!