Night of the Creeps on DVD finally.

Finally, after years of waiting, “Night of the Creeps” has made it to DVD release. The 1986 horror / sci fi film, written and directed by Fred Dekker, has been a somewhat hidden away cult classic. My son, Nathan, and I found it at Wal-Mart for about $15.00. It has the cemetery ending Dekker originally planned for the film.

DVD cover art.

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“V-The Final Battle” mothership

This is one of my favorite shots of the Mothership from “V-The Final Battle.”  This was a gorgeous model constructed by famed model maker, Greg Jein.  It was about 30 inches across and made of cast resin with neon internal lighting.

The composite was done “in-the-camera” on the original negative for best quality. The move was programmed with a repeating motion controlled camera rig.  To make this shot work we had to be able to repeat the camera & saucer move over and over to capture the model, lights, matte, earth and stars. Read the rest of this entry »

“V-The Final Battle”

Here are two more shots from “V-The Final Battle.”   The saucer was an approx.  30″ model constructed by Greg Jein. It was composited with the live action using two rear projection images with matte painting blends by David Stipes.

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Here comes another remake!

My son, Nathan, sent this to me with the following comment:

“Not sure how I feel about this yet…”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsZelpXj-CE

Well, here comes another remake!  Before the new “V” gets here I thought I would put up a few pix from the original.

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Conspiracy bugs

Animating the “bugs” for the episode, “Conspiracy” was my first work on Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Visual Effects Supervisor, Dan Curry, brought the job to David Stipes Productions, Inc. in April of 1988. The property master, Alan Sims, had commissioned another company to create the bug.  They had done a fine sculpting job but I realized we would have to re-build it for the stop motion animation.

The creature was cast in a dense silicone material and was very stiff. The legs were small nubs that were not long enough to reach the floor to propel the creature along.  We set about re-sculpting the creature and giving it longer legs and defining the body segments a bit more.  A plaster mold was made and fitted with a simple wire armature and the creature was cast in rubber.

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