Money Shot

Great stories, be they in book, movie, animation or any other form, are constructed around great moments. Hollywood understands that if Sarah Conner has a happy long waitress life and evil robots keep their chrome asses in the shitty future, then there is nothing to discuss. If Schwarzenegger shows up on a motorcycle to give that waitress an abortion with a shotgun, now we have some disbelief worth suspending. Everything that happens on film exists to set up and enhance the cool parts, and the cool parts tend to be someone fucking up the parts that preceded them. Whether Dalton is being forced to rip a man's throat out or Marsellus Wallace is receiving an unorthodox prostate examination, engaging stories have to do with individuals responding to the death and destruction of normalcy. In American cinematic tradition, this usually translates to literal death and destruction, often in the form of violent explosions.

I have reached the first of several ambitious sequences I have planned for BEEBO part 12. It is a complete departure from anything that has ever occurred in the series, utilizing 3D animation and VFX compositing to make a particularly grotesque and shocking moment into something...particularly grotesque and shocking. As much as I’ve looked forward to executing the complicated shot, I have been stuck here for some time. In order to get the ball rolling, I have begun by creating traditional pre-production artwork. Since I’m doing all this myself (and it’s fucking Beebo) it probably isn’t fully necessary that I plan this out to the degree that I am. In a way I see it as a form of procrastination, but pre-production is an immense help if you truely want to make something that lives up to your intentions. It lets you plan, test, correct, experiment and evolve before the real execution. Plus you end up with some lovely concept imagery to flash around.

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​The character (nameless, I’ve just been calling him Arena Fight Slave) is going to be modeled, rigged, animated and rendered with some secondary dynamic simulations (the blood geyser, torn flesh and miscellaneous viscera). I have a rough idea of what I want to do and I may incorporate some compositing trickery to make up for anything that I either can’t figure out or that my machine can’t process.

I’m pretty happy with the way this is all lining up but there is a lot of shit to do. I've worked out a schedule based on some conservative estimations on how long this shit might reasonably take me to do.  The way I've figured it, I should be done with this sequence by the end of Summer.  Then by October I should be onto page 3 of the screenplay.  Page 3 of 8.