Check this out... Awesome Video

[drfrightner]

Check out the new Batman website. First off it is simply an awesome website to behold...however click on the video button. Then watch the video on making the clown masks. You want to see how Hollywood makes a mask, well it is like nothing you've seen before. Watch the whole thing.

http://www.comcast.net/thedarkknightmovie/

Larry

[The Ghoulish Gallery]

That technology has been around for a while. I don't remember the name of the machine but it was first used for film application on Star Trek: Search for Spock. My friend who makes The Ghoulish Gallery's Isabelle Awards works for a high end collectible company and they have several of these machines. They are pretty amazing.

The original clown design was sculpted in what's called perceived 3D via computer program called Z-Brush. In other words, the entire sculpt was designed in a computer without any clay. Literally, every brush stroke in that program is converted into a numerical equations. When the sculpt via Z-Brush is done, all those numerical equations are sent to a machine and converts those numerical equations into depth and movement commands which allows the machine to essentially sculpt/carve the image out of a foam block. It literally converts your perceived 3D sculpt into an actual physical 3D sculpt.

The super cool thing about this machine is that you can tweak the conversion rate and get a sculpt that's larger or smaller than the original.

Now if you think that's cool, get this...they can actually do a face or body cast with lasers which essentially uses the same technology. The lasers scan an actor and then converts the distance measurements into a numerical equation. Those numbers go to the same machine which in turn carves out the life cast. This process is most commonly used to make action figures that look exactly like the original actors, etc.

My friend recently gave me a C-3P0 figure that's about 12" tall that was created from a scan of the original costume at Skywalker Ranch. This thing is 100% exact to the original down to every last nut and bolt. It's really amazing.

My friend also created one of the hitchhiking ghosts from the Haunted Mansion using Z-brush and this machine. If you went to the recent Fangoria in Los Angeles you probably saw it on display. He did a great job on it. I have pic and would be happy to share it if someone let's me know how to get it posted here.

The part of the video where you see the milky white liquid filling up the see-through box that contains the clown mask...that's just a silicone mold being made in a clear vaccum chamber (which uses a negative vaccum pressure to remove bubbles from the silicone). The video is speed up which is why the silicone looks thin and liquidy. Silicone is actually very thick.

A final bit of trivia... that guy in the video with the long beard...that is Peter Robb-King, the same make-up artist that did The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He was at the make-up school where I teach Digital Special Make-up Effects Design just a few weeks back for a seminar.

Moral of the story: Batman has the same make-up artists as a sweet transvestite.

Wow, sometimes even I surprise myself with all the things I know - lol

-Tim Turner, Evil Genius
www.theghoulishgallery.com

[The Ghoulish Gallery]

A follow up... here's a link to a pic of the HH Ghost from my friend's Myspace page. Enjoy:

http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/inde...mageID=5941364

Tim Turner, evil genius
www.theghoulishgallery.com

[Jim Warfield]

I used to collect plastic model kits and assemble them. I noticed many years ago how tight every little piece would fit similair to a snap-together kit, but they were not snap together's.
This was true for almost every brand of kit too. Technology had taken another leap.
Of course it often leaps away from alot of us, leaving us behind in the dust still doing things the old fashioned slow way.

[maliciousstudios]

Clown MAsks

Looks like an expensive way to make cheap masks....

[drfrightner]

I would have to agree, seems like the old fashion way would work best and be cheaper.

TIM... thanks for the info on that. Interesting facts there! I guess you being out in the Hollywood area you pick up on these things.

No matter it was one awesome video!

Larry

[The Ghoulish Gallery]

I know that on some of the Pirates of the Caribbean action figures, they took a portable scanner out to location and did scans of the actors in costume and everything. That's why the finished product ended up looking so good. However, for the masks in Dark Night, well, that's a little over kill. Don't quote me on this but I think it runs something like $10,000. for one sculpt about that size. They could have gone with #407 pour and pull latex or vac-u-form (if they wanted it rigid) and bought a lot more In and Out Burgers for the cast and crew with the chunk of change they would have saved. - lol.

Tim Turner
www.theghoulishgallery.com

[Greg Chrise]

They probably only really did one sculpt like that just as a media teaser to say hey kids, you don't have one of these! In reality it was all probably farmed out to Mexico.

[Jim Warfield]

When computer-driven machines do everything and those of us not owning such equiptment are struggling to develope our own human skills...It might get pretty discouraging to be alive, I know! I can be compost!
("Iv'e always been "heavy" in the "post" department!)

Actually with the drudgery of meanial work taken over by machines it will free us up to do the more creative and fun things in this life ...like develope wilder bullchitt to verbally and keyboard- throw around at one another!

[Greg Chrise]

I found a "making of segment" a few weeks ago on Utube about the tumbler/batmobile having a great chase scene in this movie. They made them to really do the stunts and made 6 of them at a cost of 1.5 million each. They look like $150,000 tractor pullers/dunebuggy/farm equipment to me. A total of 9 million for cars?

So the man in the suit has just bought a new car from the profit he's made on your dreams. CnC machines are programed to take the debit card out of your pocket and charge your block buster video card too, put them back and spray something in code on your forehead.

The cars do look cool even with the skins off, being run over jumps and such.

Of course this is why I'm stuck in drudgery, I don't have the capability to build 6 lunar landers in 3 weeks on demand and throw in a fancy toilet seat. That must be it. You can jump 75 feet distances 30 feet high in the air and it has a padded special seat for what that makes the driver do.

[Greg Chrise]

Maybe they bought carbon footprint credits? Every time the booster goes off on the back of the Batmobile, 3 acres of trees get planted. 400 people died from eating too many french fries so 8 gallons of bio deisel could be produced. It's all factored in.

[Greg Chrise]

Meanwhile on Mars...The 420 million dollar Phoenix Lander just glogged up the first oven out of 4 trying to put frozen soil through a screen. One commenter suggested the robot arm just wave bye bye for the camera as it really hasn't done anything yet. What was the line from the 80's about how space technology has effected so many things in our lives? Like not getting a hold of that $420 million and trying to be happy with $3 microwave dinners and 10 hour work days.

Meanwhile on earth, haunters are finding materials that are surplus or intended for other uses and hand fashioning them into things. The end result is similar but didn't cost millions. Sort of like how on the Discovery Channel years ago, there were 3 $80,000 cameras and battery packs filming 2 poor guys in the jungles of Brazil. They hand dug a pit, covered it with found material and made a single bullet out of old tooth paste tubes by pounding the metal like material into a wad over a few days, to kill a 600 pound tiger that was killing people in their village.

I have always loved the Batman movies but, I wonder if anyone is going to get tired of all the cool stuff Millionaire Bruce Wayne just happened into? We never see him grinding things off of concrete to make ends meet? I'm sure it will drag me in again. After the movie I will go out to my 30 year old truck and begin the start up sequence and watch the oil pressure come up over a very long 20 seconds, all the while having some Batman song in my head. Then hit the streets at 45 MPH. Hit every traffic light just hangin off the steering wheel. Temporarily thinking how cool life could be.

[Infoamtek]

Was the tiger from a zoo? Brazil normally doesn't have tigers in its jungles.

[MDKing]

I thought so too, thought the Jaguar was the top predator in South America...
Allan

[Greg Chrise]

I never thought of that. It might have been a run away from somewhere as it was a white tiger as well. This TV show might have been 15 years ago? It has stuck in my mind as many of the things we do every day we just have to get in there and do things that might be considered hard labor to others. I always think of the toothpaste tube bullet. It isn't as bad as that. At least sometimes it's not as bad as that.