The Spaceship Plan

(many pictures below)

Hello! It’s been a minute! I’m sorry about that- I overestimated my ability to record videos in hotel rooms! Actually- I recorded a whole video today before realizing my face was literally covering half the blender interface (that almost never happens), and I’ve tried re-recording a couple times to minimal success, so- I'll get it next weekend instead, and for now, I'm switching gears!

Let’s talk about the spaceship project! Because it’s the result of a lot of long term plans all finally coming together, and I’m pretty excited about it. This post'll be the "how", and later next week I'll post the "why".

I like having long term plans. Or at least long term dreams. Because every once in a while, at a major life junction, you can pick a direction that leads you closer to one of those dreams occurring, and eventually, sometimes, those dreams actually pan out. 

Back in 2016, when I was 29, I bought an old church compound with the goal of turning it into a film studio type place. We’d be able to have a permanent greenscreen stage! And space to build sets! And guest rooms for hosting out of town folks, and a firepit for late night fires! Film folks from Seattle could come out and use it for their projects! 

And it happened! To a degree. It’s been a great home for the past 9 years, and we’ve put on fun shows and parties and filmed lots of random things. The occasional film or music video makes use of the space, and it’s fun! 

But also- 99% of the time I was just sitting in my little office clicking on my computer, and the rest of the compound sat unused. Port Orchard is just too far from Seattle for most folks to want to come out here more than once or twice a year, and for a long while I was doing a lot of stuff with greenscreen, so I never really had to build big practical sets.

Another factor of living on a compound is you imagine everyone will just spontaneously step up and fix whatever needs fixing, and the logistics will handle themselves. This doesn’t really happen, especially since I’m usually living with artists and we’re all usually more preoccupied with our own projects than cleaning overflowing gutters. The reality is somebody has to spend an inordinate amount of their time and energy keeping the whole place running (also- the only reason I was able to afford the compound in the first place was because a lot of it was pretty close to falling apart, which requires an inordinate amount of maintenance). 

And that’s where Lux comes in. We’ve been working together pretty consistently since Project London in- what- 2008? We’ve done a bunch of random vfx gig work together, and for the past few years they’ve been helping me build props for Dynamo Dream. Originally all the work was done out of Lux’s apartment, but a few years ago Lux and Selena moved out to the property, and it’s been working out great!

So that’s the first dream- seeing this space fulfill its potential as a place where we can build whatever we want and tell whatever story we feel like.

The other dream is based on a real dream I’d had as a kid. I was in middle school, trying to make a weird sci-fi film with friends, and in my dream Alex Staheli came up to me and said “Ian- we actually built the spaceship”, and he took me into the backyard and the spaceship we’d designed was actually there in the yard, and it was very exciting, and I was legitimately really disappointed when I woke up.

I’ve always wanted to do a “group of characters traveling around on a spaceship” story- a Millennium Falcon, Firefly, Bebop type thing- and I think mid/late 30s is a perfect stage of life to do it (from a, like, audacity-of-youth/experience-which-comes-with-age tradeoff standpoint? I dunno.) This is still Dynamo Dream, but it’s a parallel story; I’m trying to finish the overall story I’ve been trying to tell since 2008, while also having something you could potentially just watch on its own. The other thread (the Salad Mug/Prepare for Execution story) is still going strong- I have two edited episodes of footage from the Boat Shoot I’m finishing VFX for- but everything always takes longer than I expect, and I’m still trying to crack the code for how to make these episodes in under a year….

Which is why instead of a bunch of greenscreen, the second dream is building a full-sized spaceship set. We’ll still use a bunch of CG, but it’ll be used to enhance the footage instead of, like, fully generate it. 

I’ve been working like crazy on the script for the past few months, and I’m feeling really confident about it! 

THE REVAMP:

One of the first projects was revamping the workspace. Especially in winter, heating the church gets pretty expensive, so subdividing the main space into smaller compartments made a lot of sense. If we split it into two stories, it would also add more floor space, and having a separate room for cutting wood and painting means we don’t have to worry about dust and fumes going everywhere else.

Also despite our best efforts, the space was always just so messy! It drove me crazy. We just had more things than we had places for things to go (if you’re trying to build sci-fi sets out of garbage and found objects, you often have to store a lot of garbage and found objects!), and every time we did a project- which was always- the place would invariably end up trashed.

So Lux mocked up this plan. The top floor would be a new office and costume storage, and the bottom would be a workshop. 

The space was cleared out. 

And the framing went up! 

The stairs were augmented. 

Insulation and drywall was added. 

To the left you can see what will eventually be a new sleeping nook, for if we ever have an abundance of guests. 

Then Lux decided it was time to repaint the entire church interior. 

A very hefty project which involved moving every single object in the church. While we were up there, Lux replaced the old burnt out incandescents with LEDs. This whole process felt amazing; there were cobwebs up there from I’m sure the late 80s. 

There was an unused circuit over the stage, too, so there's now a dedicated light switch for turning on all the greenscreen softboxes.

That’s my office! It’s where I usually make my videos.  The desk has since been set up to do Arduino work for making "functional props".

I like this new staircase junction. Lots of angles. 

Also added this clay accent color! 

And there we go! But now! Organization! 

Lux built new workboxes and shelves! 

The dream is for everything to have a place. 

Lux also ripped up the front of the stage... (the manhole cover in the back leads to the old baptismal- something I'm hoping to get more use out of when combined with the greenscreen!)

And turned it into storage!

This place used to be a church, so it had men’s and women’s restrooms, but we don’t have that many people, so last month we decided to turn one of them into a 3d printing/lasercutting room.

The bathroom was jam-packed full of random stuff we’d collected (mostly pieces Lux had gathered for kitbashing on the spaceship)- so after that was cleared out, there was this:

And then Lux ripped out the wall and toilet, repatched it, painted the whole thing- and now we have this: 

Which is great! And we finally have the resin printer going, which is SO much more detailed than the regular 3d printer. Now we can print custom coins and little technical doodads. Our goal is to have everything characters interact with be handmade for the world- more on that, soon!

And with that, it was time to start building the spaceship! First- the design. 

THE DESIGN

I think this is my first sketch. We wanted something with lots of little nooks, so you could never see the whole thing at once. Sort of a serpentine location with lots of opportunities for interesting camera angles. 

Lux did a more detailed drawing. Some of it has changed, but I’m surprised how much hasn’t! 

And then Lux did an Enhanced sketch.

But what about the exterior? I really like the idea of having the entire exterior design actually lining up with the interior so we could do seamless integration. The front of the ship is going to open up onto the greenscreen stage, so I think we’ll be able to do some wacky stuff! I already have a bunch of ideas! 

I’d always dreamed of working with Ian McQue- an absolutely fantastic illustrator and concept artist. I always love how he gives his whimsical/fantastic designs a grounded feeling: flying boats covered in old nets and men and rust. Our sensibilities are similar in that way- when we see a giant robot, we immediately want to know about the people who keep it running. Where do they sleep at night? Where do they go after work? Where do you buy bolts that big?

He’s working on a new project now, and I got a sneak peak, and it’s amazing. If it ever gets turned into a show (and you can’t read it without the thought crossing your mind), I hope I get to be involved.

But one day he messaged saying he’d wanted to work with me too, and I was like “oh man well I’m designing a spaceship….???” and he totally offered to help! 

He sent over so many ideas. 

And this is where it’s at. I’m still going to augment a few things to make the interior/exterior line up perfect, and there’s a few functional tweaks (the back deck is going to have more Gizmos), but this is the overall look!

And I want to admit: at first I didn’t get it. Ian’s famous for vehicles with wild silhouettes, and this kind of looked like a brick. But I also know that when an artist or designer gets really good at their craft, they start to get more nuanced. 

It didn’t click for me until he showed me one of his inspirations: 

Old 1960s British Rail diesel engines. It IS a brick, designed solely to pull trains as well as it can. Pure utilitarian. And that’s what our ship would be- a  slow, unglamourous background ship you normally wouldn’t pay any attention to. Philosophically, it’s exactly right for the story.

Narratively, it’s a “plugship”- sort of like a tugboat. A small ship with a giant capacitor in back that plugs into larger ships and gives a power boost for interdimensional jumps. Sort of a random support vehicle.  

So now I’m very excited. I’m going to work really hard to try to nail the material; I want it to feel really heavy and tangible (and, again, blend seamlessly with the interior). Ian's the best.

Speaking of the interior…

THE BUILD

Lux did a basic lidar scan of the space, and designed the overall shape to fit within it (it actually had to be designed to fit around the crossbeam in the church). 

And then Lux started the framing! I was out of town when this happened, and even being familiar with the space, it wasn’t until I got home that I realized how big it actually was. That ladder looks like it’s giving a sense of human scale, but each of those rungs is like 2 feet apart. 

This shows the size a bit better. The wall on the right side is going to be the curved hull, and there’s going to be a flyaway version on the opposite side. 

And with more paneling. You can see a car seat up there in what will be the cockpit. 

Since we want to start shooting sooner than later, I’m writing things so every episode introduces an additional room. For the first episode, all we need is the loading bay, so that’s what Lux is finishing first. It has plenty of its own unique challenges, but it’s also supposed to be the “roughest” room, so it’s a nice one for being able to experiment with different putty/painting techniques. 

There’s a hallway that connects the bay to the rest of the ship, and we’re going to set up the pilot’s clothing rack across it, so it just looks like a closet, then in a later episode (once everything beyond it has been actually built) he pushes through like a Narnia situation to reveal there's more ship back there. It’ll be awkward- I love it.

Obviously having the cockpit available as soon as possible would be handy for the story, but it makes a lot more sense to save it for last, so that Lux can use all the techniques learned through trial and error building the rest of the ship.

More paneling! It’s fun to imagine this as a final shot, being able to film through the front door of the ship and seeing a passage leading off to the left, and a ladder leading up on the right. Also the lighting options; having a bit of light coming down from the cockpit, and a bit of light back in the bedroom, while keeping the foreground dark could be a really interesting shot. 

And then the decoration stage- building up some larger forms. Lux has been collecting lots of large weird pieces over the last couple years, and it’s fun to see them finally put to use. At this point in the process it very much feels like a bunch of garbage attached to the walls (cause, you know)- so the trick is trying to see it for the shapes and forms that it’ll be once it’s painted. 

Rounded corners to make it feel a tad less boxy.

And an initial primer pass! The wall on the left is the door that’s going to open and shut- we might end up using a winch?? 

Lux is also doing a putty pass to give it that pitted metal feeling. We’ll see how it interacts with the paint/grime!

And a silver pass. Lux adds this first, then after it dries hits it with the final colored paint so it can be scraped off and reveal the silver underneath to easily add weathering scrapes. 

Lux just finished this two days ago! It’s wild- everything is always bigger than I expect. 

And that gets us caught up to today! The first coat of non-silver paint was going to go up yesterday, which was going to be really exciting (it’s hard to imagine how all of this will look once it’s all one consistent color. Will it look like a bunch of random objects screwed into the wall, or will it suddenly feel like one cohesive space? This is the step in the process where we find out!)- but unfortunately the paint gun seized up, so we’re still waiting to find out!

The trick with this entire process is to make it feel intentional. You’re trying to combine a lot of things (oftentimes literal garbage) and create something that’s greater than the sum of its parts.A lot of this comes down to design. Of the composition of the space, and the camera angle, and the lighting- and I think we’re setting ourselves up for success!

Update: I’ve received this picture from Lux!
 

Update: I’ve received these pictures!

This is EXCELLENT! If it looks this nice before any of the detailing/texturing/grime, we’re in a really good space. It also shows that a lot of the compositions we built into the ship's design could totally work on camera! I also like the color- simultaneously whimsical-but-industrial.

So that's where it's currently at! Let me know if you enjoy this kind of update? I know most folks are here for blender, but I always enjoy showing more of the filmmaking side, too!

Huge huge thanks to Lux for keeping momentum going on this even when I'm out of town! And, more broadly, for putting so much energy into making this place the place we always thought it could be! Lux has also been documenting the process in much more detail over on their youtube channel, if you'd like to check it out!

I'm off on a location scout for the next 5 days- but I'll be back next weekend!!!!!