IZation Labs

ReElect The Dead, a personal project of my cousin and myself with no direct connections to IZation Labs, is an upcoming political satirical zombie film from Brian Lynch and Lace Williamson. The film stars President Obama and George Bush as a one two punch against a small town spiraling out of control. Filming for the indie project took place towards the end of Summer 2009, and editing is now being done. The final release will be sometime at the beginning of this Summer.

Here’s the link for anyone interested. I’m always updating it with new screenshots or sneak peaks. It just sums up to a good laugh.

-Lace

After reading through a 4 year old story concept I wrote years back, I realized that the key part of the special effects involved in the story was something I always wanted to do in film rather than just on paper. One of the key components in the story, an item which the special effects often revolve around, is an old fountain pen. So that’s what I spent a bit of my day working on today, modeling the main part of the fountain pen. It’s detailed enough to stand up under fair scrutiny when composited into video footage, which is what I was going for. The next step, should I decide to take it, is to texture the model.

I modeled this fountain pen using one that I had laying on my desk as inspiration. Click on it to bring up the full size image.

Cheers!

Lace

The left eye....something strange is going on here..

Alright, not so much candy as it is special effects.. involving the eye. Horrible pun, I admit, but the effect is still interesting to watch considering the relative simplicity involved in this special effects/compositing test. The video at the end of the article will show off the final result.

Using Blender (and, for the first time, compositing nodes), I hand tracked the movement of my eye from some video footage taken using my laptop’s built in webcam at the decent resolution of 960 by 540. The footage was taken while in a moving vehicle, for some added difficulty. Composited over top of the eye is a false retina, which has been animated to match the combined movement of the camera, my head, and my eye. Now that the eye has been tracked I can make any changes or additions to the eye that I want, given some time and effort.

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With the IZL green screen nearly finished, (or at least as ‘finished’ as any DIY project can be), I decided rather than just do some lame speaking in front of the screen kind of test, I would spice things up a bit. Tie this thought in with the recent creation of my look alike Arc Reactor, and we have a decent premise for a simple though effective twenty second green screen test.

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