Mike Tharme, Continuing the Snowball.

When I first conceived Wildlife on Mars, I had envisioned the story being narrated from start to finish by a David Attenborough style of voice, but as time went on between 2004-2005 I swayed away from having a full narration, think that all documentaries that use this formula often work best with content that tell stories of human or animal stories. Such as numerous BBC Wildlife documentary's and the Walking with Dinosaurs series. Frozen Planet (2011) Walking With Dinosaurs (1999) So I decided to opt for a "silent" film. After watching back a few years later I found that although I knew what was going on, I felt it was a little jarring to be throw into a "alien" world with no explanation as to where the film was set or what people were exactly looking at? After graduating and studying other documentaries and films I started to see a pattern that films and animations dealing with fantasy or science fiction would use narration at the start of the fi...

When I originally started planning the designs of a martian landscape I wanted to make the plant life a mix between something that was recognizable but obviously alien in its initial look. I wanted to keep the trees the same but dressing them to look slightly different, but the actual smaller vegetation for flowering plants, fungus and bushes. I start searching around for something that would be suitable that was readily available and easy to get hold of, so ordering things off the internet wasn't really a option. I looked at artificial flowers but sadly only a handful of what I found would be suitable for, however I did find the potpourri contained some interesting plant material that works both as familiar and alien plant life. A few years ago I had a Skype call with a Mars expert Prof. Lewis Dartnell  about what could Mars be like if it was a habitable planet? He theorised that if Mars had developed into a sustainable planet with echo systems and environments, it would be v...

The up to date process with some written descriptions of my Xenotyrannus armature.   Rex armature blueprints  1cm 3mm double joint    1cm 3mm double joint  Experimental foot and toe mech  Rex armature under construction   Rex armature under construction  successful fabrication of one of the Rex's feet One of the 3mm rex arms, this is cannibalizing one of the smaller hand paddles that was originally on the 2015 incarnation of the X-Rex armature.   Rex armature under construction   Rex armature cleaned and ready for the Manchester Animation  Festival Tackling the issue of turning the original 2015 sculpt of the Rex skull into a much smaller variant for the newer armature. I'll be using a photographic process that captures up to 50 photos from around the object to create a 3D model for 3D printing.  new skull has been delivered and is now...

Throughout Ray's career, his creatures always had human counterparts to act off or with, none of his pictures was ever truly a human-less feature, so none of his creatures were required to talk to "describe" to audiences story details or scenes, even Bubo the Owl "dialog" was translated through Harry Hamlin. Ray's Brontosaurus during filming of Evolution of the World In the 1940's, Ray did begin work on a project which was going by the title "Evolution of the World" but was abandoned after seeing Disney's Fantasia. I often wondered while working on my own project what Ray had planned to do with this film had he actually completed it? Would it have been something like Fantasia with a music score and animal sounds or would it have been something more closer to a dinosaur wildlife documentary. Sadly we'll never truly know, but I do hope my own film may give a glimmer of insight on what it could have been like. When discussing my...

I've made a bit of a realization about my puppet sizes, I've been working to the wrong scale the whole time...well not quite wrong, but wrong for the purpose of my animation. Allow me to explain a little better. During the early planning stages, I've been studying all of the books on Harryhausen models, mainly The Art of Ray Harryhausen and the 2012 publication of Ray Harryhausen's Fantasy Scrapbook. In my observations, I've realized something, something so important it could have resulted in a very costly production. My project is referencing Ray's unfinished project "Evolution of the World" but, none of the photos of the puppets from this project have dimensions to show their scale, however, Ray's later projects, such as One Million Years B.C and The Valley of Gwangi, has the relevant information regarding such details. So I've been using those as my puppet scale reference points in how big and wide these puppets should be, becaus...

Priour to recieving my armature parts from animation toolkit I started to look into Ray Harryhausen's designs of his own ceratopsian dinosaurs. Studying both his original Triceratops armature from the 1930's and the plans from his One Million Years B.C design. It was quite interesting to compare the two together, seeing how much Ray has learned since his early days of armature engineering to his peak of his career work.  "Evolution of the World" Triceratops armature. I noticed major changes between the two designs, the first one obviously been the number of joints in the puppets. In Evolution the are numerous joints sharing the same ball joint and the use of ribs to keep the core hollow, which also appear to be fixed in position; whilst the One Million Triceratops has lost the ribs and uses a much "sleeker" design, this could display the lessons learned from Ray's earlier attempts or that the particular method of armature building was more cumbers...

I am very pleased to announce the arrival of my Anibuild armature parts from Animation Toolkit, which are based in the Manchester area. I am extremely grateful to also say that Animation Toolkit are sponsoring the construction of these armatures, an offer I am very humbled by and indebted to. Animation Toolkit have been a real friend to me since 2012 when they announced their Ray Harryhausen Armacreature kit, as well as all the opportunities they have offered me over the years, from assisting the build of  250+ armatures for the Chuck Steel: Night of the Trampires feature film to making a custom Dragon armature to display the construction possibilities with their parts. I'll be publishing a future post about the construction of these armature. Here I want to talk a little bit more about the parts I have ordered, starting with the Ball joints, Chest & Hip plates and finishing on the Paddles and Rods. I hope for those of you who have seen their site and are thinking ...