When I lent my services to a collegue who was working on a film about 12 years ago, I was introduced to the world of cnc. I remember watching this huge machining centre milling out a slab of mdf and turning it into a fantastic set of gears. I knew that it would have taken me hours to achieve the same thing with traditional power tools. I decided then that I would invest in a cnc router for my own business Oxenham Design. At that time I could turn on a computer, but even to check email seemed like a crazy set of operations. I persevered and learned every piece of relevant software I could get my hands on. I am now fortunate enough to be using Vectric's ASPIRE software, and Techno cnc routers, which has helped us to create some amazing projects, both in part, or in full. I thought that this blog would be a great place to share "behind the scenes" adventures with the software, materials and equipment we use, as well as the projects we build.

Monday 16 September 2013

getting close to done!





We got home from set last week pretty late Friday night. Then back at the shop first thing Saturday!
The first thing was to get the last decal on Bob the boat. Both these boats were in pretty rough shape when we got them back from last years shoot. Jody did a great job feathering out the chips and chunks, and prepping him for painting. His paint was 3 days dry when we got back from set, so on went his graphics!



We managed the last minute color change on 10 vehicles just in time for pick-up on Saturday, as well as some finishing accessories for a couple more characters. On the Rose character above, we made little wooden box sides to hold in the "dirt pile". Jody made that from Apoxie sculpt epoxy putty, then she planted a silk rose right in the middle. This should bob around when Rose drives around, akin to a little dog wagging it's tail!

All day Sunday was spent cutting a HUGE pile of 300 pcs of cardboard for road painting stencils. We do these periodically for the Township's road department. While I was running our Techno, Jody was painting the 30 pcs for the beer tap handles we do as well.






 She cast these from the mold we made last year and sprayed them out a light beige color. Then dragged a coarse brush over them with a dark gel stain to simulate woodgrain. I sprayed them up with a tinted urethane clear, and when they were dry, Jody had the task of painting the text in white!

Most of today was spent taping the cut road stencil sections together. While John and Jody worked on those, I had to get started on the 2 planes that are being picked up tomorrow evening, for shooting on Wednesday. I had envisioned this character wearing old school aviator goggles. I thought about drawing the 3d file up, and cnc-ing it, but the time it would take to get the existing plane into the computer would just take too long. I decided to use 2 plastic cup bottoms for the base form of the goggles.
Once the cups were located over the eyeballs (not an easy thing to do through an opaque cup) I filled the gaps with body-filler. This will get cleaned up in the AM, and vacuum formed into one thin piece of plastic. The plan is to cut the bottom out of the vacuum formed cups, and install a clear piece of PET-G as the glass lens. Unless the reflections obscure the eyeball, then it won't get any lenses. We still have to draw up all the striping for the planes as well, but it shouldn't take to long!
8)
JO

1 comment:

  1. Can i ask what the trucks are that you started out with.. most ppl i talk to think that its an axial scx10 how far off are we..

    ReplyDelete