The Planet - Premiere Night


Well, 6th of September saw the whole cast and crew milling around the Belmont Cinema to a 'sell out' screening of our movie, The Planet. It was the first time all the cast and crew had met up in the two years since filming and the premiere had pretty good party atmosphere going even before the film started.

As comedy producer and show off I was hosting the show, which sounds really easy until you stare back at a cinema full of people expecting you to say something interesting - I did and all went well. The only hitch during the screening was with the magic lantern the movie was being projected from, the fast action and jump cuts seemed to upset the glow worm inside the apparatus and there were occasional flickers. Nothing too bad and everybody enjoyed the show.

Afterwards a question and answer session was held, which was fun and not too serious, Then everybody vanished off to the bar in the cinema for a pish up. It was, all in all, pretty fun and a nice evening for the cast and crew. I'll post some photos at the end of this blogglet and let you see them all, anybody wishing to find out who the people are will have to check out the cast page on the Stirton Productions web link in me profile.

There is another showing on 4th October at the Belmont Cinema, Aberdeen. Tickets can be bought from the cinema or online here

Also at the premiere Mark Stirton (writer/director) made the announcement that he had secured a six figure budget for the next movie, a black comedy/drama set in Aberdeen. So far details are being kept pretty vague during the development phase, but the movie will involve several cast from 'The Planet and a large Viking longship. I'll be production designer again so I'm going to have some fun with the longship, I will post some production artwork when I can - we're in pre production at the moment and its all hands on deck!

Main cast from the movie, don't we all look just great!

Former multiple Mr. Universe, Mike Mitchell, and director of Stirton Productions, Mark Stirton.

Stirton Productons, 'The Planet' - Design Work

Before I post these I'd like to point out that we made this movie on a tiny budget and that none of us are trained 3d animators, we are film makers. Unlike many recent movies made by groups of modellers, this film has a plot and acting. What a novel idea!

Below are some early renders of the main spacecraft used in the movie. The attack craft and views of the main transporter ship. Both the main models were made by Kerwin Robertson, an architect and cg modeller, using autocad and Cinema 4D. The design was initiated by Kerwin and modifications made during the production process by the team. I retro fitted the suicide craft with some barrels of 'explodium' and pipe bombs; the baddies in the movie are a bit on the poor side.

I did the texturing and modification to the attack ships and some of the transporter craft, the main challenge was making the cannons work the way we wanted. I devised a series of particle emitters for the lasers and muzzle flash which work well when the ship is static but have to be adjusted for velocity of the craft: The faster the ship moves the faster the rate of emission for the lasers, or they start trailing behind and flying out of the ship's arse (comical, but wrong).

After a few months of r&d the firing system was worked for the attack craft and later applied to the gun turrets on the main ship. The rate of fire was adjustable so we had a lot of fun going mental with the space battles. The director, editor, digital effects chief, Mark Stirton, put all the work together and laid on the explosions etc. The results can be seen on the trailer, or on the movie if anyone is willing to buy it (www.stirtonproductions.com).

There are other bits of design and physical props from the movie but I'll leave those till later, way too much for one blog. I'm currently working on the production artwork for the next project which features a Viking longship, so I'll put those up soon.

Hi I'm Michael Clark and welcome to my blog. I'm a designer and illustrator currently working with a film company in my native Scotland. For the past 2 years I have been working on a film called 'The Planet', starring Mr Universe, Mike Mitchell. Check the website, its pretty cool.

After being locked in a cupboard for years doing the design and animation work I've finally been released and have some spare time, this blog is intended to show some of my design work and for general rant purposes. I am currently getting my head round the more complex features of 3d prog Cinema 4D, so I'll chuck some of my latest work on to illustrate how infuriating even a simple package can be.

Expect swearing, blood and gutoids..... But first, a dalek.

Not my model (thanks to Dystopia for that), but textures and environments are. Really like new dalek design so I thought I'd play about with colour schemes. Nothing to do with the film I was working on, I'll post some of that work later.