Murderer's Identity Revealed…

The following video evidence, Moon Log #432:21, shows the killer to be a no-handed man.  Also, he has a wire loop head.

Cliff’s Doppelganger was murdered outside of his miniature wood cabin near the forest.  The only eyewitness, a gigantic deer, has yet to be found for questioning.  More as it develops.

Vocal sessions begin… and end!

Steve's happy with our progress!

UPDATE: There’s even a remix to bump in the car.

For about three and a half hours on Saturday, we got all of the voice actors in my dining room to lay down the vocals for SpaceBase: Infinity’s pilot episode.  After filling our stomachs with golabki and pierogies from Cracovia, we went through a table read of the script.  Looks like the final running time will be between 15 and 20 minutes.  Clips below…

Act 3, Scene 4

Act 2, Scene 2

 


Next, we’ll hopefully bring Josh on board (voice of Nat) to help push the project forward.  More sets, maybe some bodies for the characters, and hundreds of hours of small movements and photographs.

Until next time,
-Mike

The Name Invades SpaceBase: Infinity's Communications Satellite, I Guess!

There was craziness this weekend as rock/funk/ridiculous duo The Name hijacked SpaceBase: Infinity’s communications system and rocked the house… or the base, as the case may be.  Watch as Stack Dump and Cliff’s doppleganger grapple with a terrifying barrage of self-sampled mayhem!

As you can see, there are tons of mistakes in all areas – planning, photography, sequencing, editing, rendering… you name it, we messed it up.  Things on our to do / remember list:

  • Make sure when starting a new stop motion project, set the camera recording settings to an HD picture quality and aspect ratio.
  • If characters are going to be talking with their backs to the camera, make them move when they are talking rather than jittering randomly.
  • Adjust any sampled (aka YouTubed) footage to the same aspect ratio as the stop motion stills.
  • Try normalizing (?) the color balance and contrast on all stills before constructing the final scene.
  • Find a render setting that won’t screw up the 3d transformations.

That’s it for now!

-Mike

Meat Without Feet WPOP Release!

Meat Without Feet WPOP
Meat Without Feet: WPOP

It’s that time in an EP’s life when I give up trying to improve the vocals and throw my hands up in disgust.  With that in mind, I present to you: Meat Without Feet‘s latest release: WPOP.  It has some of the cleanest singing and production of anything I’ve done so far, even if I’m never actually happy with it.  WPOP, named after the former radio station located in Newington, CT, contains four new MWF tracks for your listening pleasure.  I don’t know which is the single… how about… the last one!?  Enjoy!

Download [Here] or stream each track:

01 – Introduction

02 – Technology Approaches!

03 – While on Top

04 – The Process

-Mike

The Technology of SpaceBase: Infinity – The Communications Room

Seeing as it is the most expensive and technologically advanced SpaceBase yet, it seems fitting that we take a tour of some of the latest gismos and gadgets available to its crew.  In this installment, we’ll focus on the Communications Room.

The Comm Room is of a fairly simple design, featuring at its center the communications window.  A top of the line Organic MicroCrystal Display augments the clear polyfiber window in order to render a WQSXGA (3200 x 2048) resolution image.  Streaming video calls are piped in through a specially constructed satellite array orbiting the moon.

Comm Control Panel

A conference with SpaceBase: Beta or SpaceBase: Omega is as simple as navigating the HC6 interface on the comm room control panel using gestures, touch, or voice.  The latest HC6 OS has been specially designed by the software engineers at SUMO Inc. subsidiary InterTech.  The GUI allows for dynamic manipulation of data, video streams, and lunch delivery orders.

Around the room are controls for a variety of SB:I’s systems.  A pressure valve allows for emergency aquafication should computer AI subsystem fail-safes ironically fail to activate.

Safety Valve
Safety Valve

Door and security hatch controls respond to touch, voice, and motion using InterTech’s HC4 mobile OS.  To leave or enter a room, simply walk up to the threshold to open the doors.  Alternatively, you may touch the panel or simply say, “Computer, open door.”  Door panels also hold up to 2000 hours of music purchased from the proprietary Inter-Tunes store.

Door Control Panel

Finally, each room of SB:I is equipped with a euxygen system sensor.  Malxygen readings are taken once every four minutes and compared with the central scrubber system in the basement.  Hazard indicators will sound if malxygen reaches unsafe levels.

Euxygen Panel

More animation tests next week?  Maybe!

-Mike

Set Design Begins!

So we further delved into our non-existant arts and crafts background by starting work on the sets for SpaceBase:Infinity. As you can see from these pics, the Comm Room is starting to take shape. First came the color scheme:

As you can see, the walls were clearly more suited to be grey, in order to contrast the star-field we will show through the windows. And that brings us to SB:I The Making Of, Pt. 2…


I worked on scavenging parts for props/decor:

While Mike rediscovered his knack for high school trigonometry:

And look, we even caught Stack Dump hard at work crunching numbers as well!

-Steve & Mike

 

Computerizing the Mouths

Last week, we spent three hours recording about 350 frames of animation for the “Quick fox” bit.  After some quick calculations, we realized that at 15 fps and ~20 minutes in length, the pilot episode of SpaceBase: Infinity would take us about 155 hours to animate.  If we average four hours per week, it would take us all the way through the end of 2012 to complete this first episode.  And keep in mind we haven’t even starting voice recording sessions yet… or made bodies for our characters’ heads… or built the sets… or purchased materials to build the sets…

And so, the corner-cutting begins.  Feast your eyes on computer generated mouths!

-Mike

Is it a Dog or a Fox: SBI Attempts Mouth Animation…

Prior to rocking out to Minstrels and Company, we plunged into the depths of mouth-animation ocean, devoured no fewer than five fried cod balls (get your mind out of the gutter,) and were visited by the phantom hands.

Phantom Hands: Artist's Approximation

In this 22 second scene, we have Cliff and Nat.  Distressed and out of breath, Nat is trying to tell Cliff that something is once again wrong with the dog.  As it turns out, a quick fox has jumped over him!  See if you you can count how many phantom hands were able to hide themselves during “recording” and then show up only when we try to render the whole scene!

-Mike

The Making of SpaceBase:Infinity – part 1

Sunday was another productive day for the SGP crew!

We managed to create the head designs for all of the characters. However, due to our lack of baking skillz, we left the heads in a little too long and some came out with cracks. We were able to patch them so not all is lost, plus now that we have the general ideas in tangible form it shouldn’t be too bad to fashion some replacement heads.

Throughout the day we did some filming and threw together the beginnings of our protracted making of documentary. Or maybe its a video blog (VLOG??). However you say it, I’m sure it will provide the masses with insights into our meticulous creative process.



Here are some work in process pictures for the heads:

-Steve