Another successful delivery!

The roller coaster car and the big brain got delivered today! It was great to see George and Matt. Everyone at the studio is so nice.

On another note, I found the short film we did last year with the Death Machine on You Tube. It's only ten minutes, but it brings back a lot of memories! In fact, I can remember exactly where I was hiding out in every scene that involved the Death Machine! Congratulations to Simon and everyone who worked on it. It was a blast!
It is a little dark and gross, so be warned :)



8)
JO

Death lives at #TIFF

Well it's official! Our Death Machine will make it's debut performance at the Toronto International Film Festival in Simon Ennis's short film "Up in Cottage Country" This is great news for Simon. Congratulations! (I snagged the video from his FB page)! So I guess with any luck, I will be at the festival. After seeing this trailer, it inspired me to re-live the build journey by reading some of my old posts. It's funny now that some time has passed, how the stressful bits of the job have all melted away, and now it all looked so easy!
I hope the posted video runs ok. It looks like a cool film, and not because I worked on it.
Julian Richings (the general) is definitely one of my super favourite actors!

JO

A picture is worth a thousand words

The Death machine is finally over. A lot of happiness, and a bit of sorrow. I find after a long build, I feel a bit sad when a job finally wraps. The weekend shoot went great though. It was filmed on location at the Scarborough bluffs in Toronto. The Death machine had one last laugh at our expense though. The location was quite wet due to all the rain we've been having. After the install on Friday, we were trying to get the truck unstuck from the mud, when I had the brainiac idea to try and help pull it out with a cable and my minivan. "It should be ok-if I stay on higher ground where its less wet" Well not so much. In the end, I was stuck, the pickup was stuck, the tow truck that we called was stuck, and the 2nd tow truck took an hour and a half to get us all out. Yup, one last laugh at our expense. And by expense, I mean $200.00 for the yank out.
Oh well, it was all worth it. Everyone we worked with on the weekend were stellar. It was a amazing to get to work with actor Julian Richings. An amazingly nice man who was absolutely captivating to watch run his lines.
As a write this blog, I am reminded of the email reply from the director when I submitted our quote: "I just want to point out how awesome an invoice for a DEATH MACHINE is!"

JO

Death claims another victim

Well the death machine claimed its second victim. It was Jody. I guess technically, she was the 2nd AND 3rd victim. After she drilled her finger working on the harrow plate, I had to lend a hand finishing up with that, and lifted the finished plate up and caught her in the mouth. She said she was going to tell everyone that I split her lip with my wedding ring :) We have been working mega overtime trying to get all the loose ends buttoned up so we are ready for the Friday install. We've also been doing some 3-d modelling for our client Brilliant Creative, modelling some trade show displays. So to say we've been swamped is an understatement!


On the harrow, I was able to move the needle assembly over to the toothed belt drive, and that seems to be working great.

The bed got it's final paint job and we also picked up the belts for the "victim" holding straps, and got those installed. I made a copper pipe mouth piece that the victims has to bite down on, while his head has a strap ratcheted down on it. It's kind of gruesome really.

So the only parts left, are to run the tubing that will spray water to wash the blood away, mount the legs to the concrete pylons, and make the harrow cover so no one can see the 18v cordless drill running the needles! Oh yeah, and the pipe that all the wires and smoke will run through.

Phew! that's all.
We also got awarded the "bubble Gun" job. That shoots Friday as well. I was able to pick up a small gun that really shoots bubbles! So with the deadline of Friday, the only option is to hack the one we bought to make it look way cooler. I did a bit of work on it today, and should finish up tomorrow. Maybe the prop fairy will visit the shop tonight. That would be awesome.


JO

Death, it's really a black and white issue

The last 2 days have seen some jumps in the death machine build. I was able to install all the camshafts and needle carriers. There's quite a few hours into this process for sure. When your dealing with plastic parts and small tolerance discrepancies, the errors can rapidly compound. And what is in the computer, doesn't always translate to the real world perfectly. I intentionally left the a little play in all the parts as we made them up, which translated into some issues when we were testing the camshafts. It took a little while to go over all of the 132 moving parts and fix  the little issues we had, but by the end of the day it was all running fine. I will switch out the pulley and belt system we were using for a toothed belt drive system. This will provide far more torque to drive all the needles. This is so I can run them all from 1 drive motor. The less stuff the better! The video shows only 1 bank of needles running, but it will look pretty cool with all 4 banks running at the same time.

 You'll also notice that all the pics of the death machine, from today on, will be in black and white. This is because the film is being shot in this format. And because of this, we really only need tones on the machine, not colour per say. As we progress on the painting, it won't really look all that great in colour :)


We really liked the original rust colours as a base, but now we  need to work for B&W. So as we photograph, we're taking them all sans colour. Just so we can keep an eye on the contrast. And these are the pics I'll post.

JO

Finally the texture

Today saw the texture make it onto the death machine bed and harrow. It looked like serious rain all day, but I did it anyway, and the rain held off. Nice. Jody got a few rust colour washes onto the machine and John came in for a bit to help with the camshaft assembies.

After finishing all the rest of the needle parts I started a test assemble, then I realized I made the 'piston rods' too short. When we were initially shooting ideas around, I made a 4 needle version for the director and producer to see work. After playing around with it for a bit, I thought the needle stroke was a bit long, and assembling it the way we did was a huge pain. So I changed the file to shorten the needle throw and make the piston rods 'snap' in, instead of painstakingly trying to assemble it the old way. Well the 'snapping in' part worked well, but a failure to pay total attention to my own drawings, yielded piston rods .100" shorter and caused them to bind on the camshaft. So I re-drew them, as well as some 'safety' caps to avoid the whole crankshaft from popping out of its mounting. It kind of sucks a little to re-do work that was done once already, but Aspire and Techno cnc made VERY short work of the replacement parts. In fact, it took longer to find the material in the rack then cut all 56 parts out again!


Tomorrow should see the final assembly on the moving needles. It might take a bit to retro-fit the worm drive motor I picked up to drive it all, but it should be fairly easy.


JO

Death gets a bed

Today was a bit of a juggle. I had 2 meetings for some upcoming tentative projects. So between meetings, I was able to get the bed for the death machine started. I had already cut the skins a while ago, so I really just had to cut the backer panels and apply the 2X2 supports. I was also able to make some more headway on the painting. There are definitely more gears at painting time then I remember making :) I mixed up a dirty reddish brown for the base coat and applied it liberally to all the parts. Before I knew it, it was the end of the day. I can't decide if today was a hugely productive day, but it certainly flew by pretty quick. I was really hoping to get the bed texture coated, but the rain outside had other plans. And after the over-spray explosion texturing the top of the death machine, I think I'll take this one outside!

 If all goes as planned, tomorrow I will finish all the base-coat colour, texturing, and be able to get back to assembling the tattoo needles of death.

 This job will start to come together by leaps and bounds once the weathering gets started. The last part should be running all the wiring and BAM, it should be done.

JO

It really is a Death Machine!

The Death  machine really does work. It seems that a misplaced finger, coupled with the law of the lever and Newton's first law of motion equals........... "!@#$?@" But now it only hurts all the time.

After taking care of all the mechanics, and adding considerably more, I am now re-doing some of the gears to make the machine appear to run in a wonky state of dis-repair. This includes a new elliptical drive gear system that will slow down and speed up the main gear assembly, as well as moving some of the gears slightly off centre, which will make it look a little wiggly.  We beefed up the lift system for the harrow platform, and added "steam hydraulic" lift arms to it. Due to all the moving parts that fold in on each other, the harrow has a tendency to swing back from side to side, a tendency I disliked very much. This is the real reason we added the lift arms. They actually just go along for the ride, but they did take the rocking out of it. A little to much so for the age and the condition of the machine. So I intentionally made them bind a little to make the up and down movement a bit more jerky. This should be it for the mechanics of it all. We will have to put this job on the backburner for a week as the Mythraic stone deadline is quickly approaching!

JO

Getting there

Today I dedicated to finishing up all the mechanics in the top of the machine. There was a few specific things that need to happen with this machine, and one in particular had left me kind of stumped. The request was simple, but figuring out a practical way that tied into the machine didn't come easy at first. But I solved it today. It kind of came out of nowhere. So I drew what I needed in Aspire, sent it to our Techno cnc and had the final pieces for the puzzle. The image on the left is the vector file I created, and the one on the right is what the simulation of the final cut pieces will look like.

So between making the last elements, cutting all the shafts to length, making all the bushings and spacers, as well as the locking collars for the gears, the whole day was gone. If you had come in in the morning, then again at 5, it really would have looked like nothing was done. However, a lot really did get done!
Tomorrow I get to finish the harrow/winch situation and add a new pulley idea I had for it.
If the weather's nice out, Jody will start the weathering on the pylons. It can be a little messy, so outside with her it is.

Soon.......soon we will be painting rust!

JO

I'm running out of Death titles

Today was a little slower than I would have liked. Between the dog not pulling his weight,(see last post) and engineering new gears for in the top of the unit, I didn't get much actual fabricating done. Jody got the concrete pylons coated with the first of many paint techniques to come.

This is definitely one of those jobs I would have never taken on as Prop shop WITHOUT our Techno cnc.
As there are a LOT of gears and mechanical things happening on the top of this unit, I find it a little hard to wrap my head around how it will all work when it's done. This, for me, is one of those jobs that I will build the first set of mechanics, get them all happening, and then design the next set of mechanics to it. With using Techno cnc routers and Aspire, I can easily pull up the last set of drawing we machined, and add to it after getting a feel for the real world dimensions when they're placed into the machine. Something next to impossible the old school way.

This is where we are now in the drawing stage. The whole design is supposed to look overly complicated and somewhat inefficient. When the machine is done, we will have a 12 volt ATV winch lifting the harrow, and a second motor driving the rest of the gears the whole time the machine is "running". It's gonna look great when it's all rusty and old and moving. I have decided tonight that I will drive a set of pulley's off the main motor, which will belt their way down to the harrow, so it looks like all the gears at the top are driving the tattoo needles in the harrow. I really like this machine, and it certainly is a design challenge!

 Once we cut all the shafts to length, and add the appropriate bushing/spacers, it will all be pretty sweet looking.
 JO

Well we got the coating on the concrete pylons today! Woo-Hoo! While we were doing that, our Techno was busy quickly cutting out more gears and brackets for inside the top of the machine.

As the gears get put on the machine, I find new spots that could benefit from more gears, which means more brackets to hold them. As all the gears are just for show, and really only turn each other, I have some degree of flexibility. Except for the fact that I want to drive them with as little motors as possible, preferably just one.

 Although WE were hard at it, some of us just didn't seem to have the same sense of urgency I did. I thought if I tied a broom to him, he would feel like a part of the team, but I was mistaken. Tomorrow we can move onto painting the bases and pull together some of the other elements. As soon as our Techno is free, I can get the foam on it for the Mythraic stone sculpture. That would be nice.


JO

More death

Today went well on the death machine. Mike was in again today, and that really sped things up. Mike's an easy going fellow, and we have a fair amount in common, which really makes the day go by quick. We were able to finish the support legs and get more rivets on. The harrow got assembled with the arms that it hangs from. This is the part that will have the animated tattoo needles going up and down. We didn't get the concrete parging on the pylons done, We'll probably start on that tomorrow. When I started the design, I found a cnc file for a mechanical iris on the Vectric website (I don't remember who posted it, but if they let me know, I will credit them). This is where your punishment will be fed into the machine with old school punch tape. It's a pretty cool design, and should look great on the front of the machine. the whole time we're building, all I can think about for is getting to the texture and painting stage. This is where it all comes to life!      

JO

Death cometh fast

I know, another riveting title! I WILL NEVER get tired of the Death references. Well we started making headway with the jumble of un-named parts today. We were able to start assembling the upper portion, as well as the "metal" leg supports.

 It did take me a while to sort out some of the support edges, but I got it finally.. We also had to remake one side of the harrow, as I put the laminated plate on backwards, and as it was 1/4" MDF it gave up the struggle with a "snap". I also got all the column bases cut out as well.

 All in all it was a very productive day. I am quite excited about starting up again in the morning. I am very fortunate that I get to work on all kinds of neat projects for a living. It keeps it interesting, especially because I get bored so easily. Tomorrow, we will work on parging the compound 90 onto the column bases, transforming them from MDF into cast concrete.


JO

Death can be a little complicated in the beginning

Or at least all the parts for it are! I finally got to cutting some of the bits and pieces for the Death machine today, and I hope it all comes back to me when we start to assemble. There are a lot of pieces that don't differ all that much from each other. When I nested all the parts in Aspire, I had grand plans of keeping the pieces that went together in some sort of grouping. That approach quickly went the way of the dodo as I would sneak a piece from there and put it in here, to get the best sheet yield. Almost all of the structure is going to be 1/2" MDF, due to the cost vs quantity of all the parts. Our Techno made SUPER short work of cutting it all out. No more than 18 min per sheet. I could have easily halved that, but I can be a bit of a baby when it comes to cutting sheet parts, playing it safe, rather than pushing feed speeds on the Techno to hard. I ran all the parts with 2 passes. The first one was at .4" and the last was .5" As I dont have a vacuum hold down yet ( but the router came all plumbed for it) I have to resort to screwing my sheets down. As a lot of the parts were skinny strips, I have found that taking a deep first pass, leaving only a small amount for the final pass, results in less pulling on the part by the cutter. I also have found that running a parallel cutting bit over using a spiral cutter creates a better edge on the MDF parts.

JO

The Death Machine Lives!

I have been furiously designing all the components for our Death Machine. I thought I would get tired of using the term Death Machine, but it still makes me laugh. Death Machine................Death Machine. We had our meeting on Tuesday to go over some of the concerns( you know, concerns with a Death Machine) and we are good to go! The great thing about this job is that we have a few "key" components that have to be met, but the rest is up to us. I really enjoy designing on the fly, as some things really do come out better I think. I have been doing all of my vector work in Corel for this job. I could have easily done this in Aspire, but as I started out using Corel back at version 8, I find it suits my workflow on this sort of thing. I am in the process of migrating fully to Aspire, but old habits die hard I guess. I can hardly wait to fire up our Techno cnc and start filling the dust collector. This job definately has all the great features in one job. From doing the creative design and the technical drawings, to the artistic parts like texture rusting and concrete weathering, this project will be fun until the end. I think the best part of all is that they might use a location down the street for filming. Nice................up at 6:55, on set at 7!

The Death Machine

We have been slowly working on a couple of projects here at Oxenham Design. Both are in the design stages and are for 2 separate movies. So the next bunch of posts will bounce back and forth. The first one we are fabricating is a Death Machine! This machine will be influenced heavily by the Steam-punk movement. In a nutshell, this old rusted machine has it's victims strapped down and slowly tattoos them to death. There will be a harrow that has 100's of tattoo needles that slowly tattoo your crime onto your body, until you FEEL your sentence in your soul. That sounds like something I got to have. We started the initial designs in the 3d modelling program Sketch-up, which is great for quickly massing an idea out. The next few weeks will be spent figuring out what exactly is going to move and how. At the end of the movie, this machine needs to "break down" and collapse on it's victim. This will also be a big design challenge, having it look like it's breaking down, but still staying quite safe. Safety is always first priority. There will be lots of rusted gears and pipes, my favorite. Below is the initial design concept, and you can see the harrow in the middle. I think we are going to have the tattoo needles attached to a simple crank-shaft design. This should allow an entire row of needles move off of 1 drive unit.

At this point in the design, the components don't really need to function. It's more about massing and design. After the final approval, we can get started. I can hardly wait to have a Death Machine just outside the office.


JO