I Gave the Tardis Wood!

Don't get excited, it's just the result of me looking for something to do during a dull, wet, weekend. I decided to fully texture the tardis model I'd knocked up in Cinema 4D, using the software's own texturer 'bodypaint.' Bodypaint was used recently for some of the texture work on Spiderman 3.

After a few hours of cutting and pasting wood panel images on to the model mesh I ended up with a huge tardis woody! (really, it gave me such a clue) Below are some renders in Vue 6 and one in Cinema 4D (it's got daleks in it). Hope you like them, I do. Now I have to think of something to do with it apart from bore you lot. I may try and do some work again, I hear all the kids are doing it.

Mark Stirton has an animated version of the un-woody one on his cracking Dr Who title sequence, here. Of course all images and thingies are copyright BBC Worldwide.

The Tardis.

Suffering from a bit of Dr Who withdrawal recently so I made my own Tardis. Downside is it's only a model - it won't travel in time and space and it doesn't come with a little Nicola Bryant or Janet Fielding... Arse! Good side is that it doesn't take up much space and won't attract the Titanic into your living room - like a big blue disaster magnet.

Here are pics.

Poster Presentation Post

This week I have been mostly getting on to some of the marketing for the movie, so far I've came up with 2 main poster ideas (only drafts at the moment) and a bunch of variations. All the posters are created at the standard UK quad ( 40" x 30" / 102cm x 76cm) or onesheet size (27" x 40" / 69cm x 102cm) for using in cinemas and retail. Large files, each about 100 meg or so, but necessary for good quality printing.

I just love Patrick's expression in the second poster, what has Scott done to scare him so much, well you'll have to wait for the film I guess.

All the photos used in the layouts are from our photo bloke Mark Wyness.

Near Miss

Look 2 updates in the same week, I'll need a lie down now. Mark, Pat, Graham and Mark W. were out filming last week, getting some coverage of the van - long shots etc. Graham provided a stunt beard for Scott Ironside's character as they are beard twins (really).

During some filming in a single track road in the country, Patrick was told to drive close to the camera for a nice shot. Pat did as he was told and the photo says everything, Mark even dropped his cig he was that scared.

Other photo shows a gloomy looking overcast Aberdeen, with the van crossing the Bridge of Dee. It looks much better when it's sunny, honest.

Filming Photos

As promised, here are shots from some recent filming. This batch is from the 2 days we had Mike Mitchell over, there wasn't much space left after he came into the wee room (as you see from the photo below). It was a pretty intense 2 days filming as there was so much to cover,but Mark did take us all out for lunch (working in town is so much better than eating in a windy field) so many thankies Markie.

Even though we were all stuck in a tiny kitchen it was a bit like the last movie - The Planet, as Mike and Pat got on really well and enjoyed working together again. Mark and I were sweating like monkey rapists (or rapist monkeys) and mostly dead by the end, but the footage was in the can so it made up for it.

Photos, as always, provided by Mark Wyness.





This image may stay with me forever..... but not in a good way!

Interlude 3.

I got an email from my mate Duncan (Aktoman) last Friday about a minute before I left work. 'I'm going up Bennachie (hill near Aberdeen) to try new camera, coming?' What can you say to that?

I was knackered after a long day staring at a screen and was thinking of crawling into a cupboard and dying, but I went along instead. For the first time in a week it wasn't raining so we wandered up the hill in a leisurely fashion- Bennachie isn't a very demanding walk at 375 metres (about 1230 feet) but it has some steep parts so we had a few breaks to get our breath back and take photos.

The hill itself has several peaks but we were heading for the one known as 'mither tap,' which has a natural rocky plinth with the remains of 2 ancient stone forts surrounding it. One of the stone barricades is comprised of fused stone, not a bad job considering the picts didn't have plasma furnaces or crazy glue. The hill is one of the most probable sites for the Roman battle of Mons Graupius (84AD approx.) - where 10.000 hairy arsed Scotsmen led by the war leader, Calgacus showed the Romans what they were made of , literally, by being wiped out by about 30.000 trained combat troops and cavalry. It did however show the Romans that the Scots were way too mental to try and rule over. Yay us.

It was sunny but pretty windy so we could only manage F stops below 5.6 at 100 asa which for landscape photos is a bit flat, but without a tripod it was our best option as the wind was chucking us about like rubber kittens. Duncan's new cam is a canon 350D, it's a good entry level digital SLR and it has a nice lens. As he's never used one before I was helping him out with some basic tips and settings, he does have a good eye for composition though so that helps heaps.

Here are some photos which we took, I think my ones are the long shot of the top of the hill and the Lord of the Rings one of the valley below (yup, the clouds are real). They are a bit soft due to lack of tripod but not too bad.