"blog, blog, blog!"

okey dokey.

really quickly:

"THE DEFENDERS OF STAN" episode 17 was shot in one day, i believe, with a few reshoots spilling into a second. it was all in one location, so there weren't many exciting things to take photos of, or props to build.

because of that, i only have a small handful of production stills.

SO, here they be.



this was the basic setup for the whole shoot. we got a fun LED light panel earlier, and got to really use it here, to sort of mimic the cool-tinted light that comes off of a computer monitor when someone is on their webcam.

Stan receives a traffic ticket for being a douchebag. this is actually MY traffic ticket...for being a douchebag.


two of my favorite bits, together at last: the fake Stan beard (originally from episode 12...we had to dig through a lot of boxes to find it), and the Stan blog mask.


Ultra-Stan, Stan-Stan, Stan-on-a-stick.

AAAAAAAAAND, below, you can download and make your very own Stan mask!

Seriously...do it. print it. make a video blog and post it as a response to episode 17...that would be awesome.




i'll have episode 18 stuff up soon.

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STAN 14 props

so here some props of note from The Defenders Of Stan episode 14. by "some," i mean "the only," and by "of note," i mean "that we bothered to take pictures of."

Harry The Herring loves his cereal. Nothing says production value like kinkos and gluesticks. i realize now how weird it is that i gave a fish eyebrows.


as Stan flies, in Captain Ultra's body, to Ultra's place of business, the League Of Extraordinary Justice, we get a glimpse of this sign which i modeled in Cinema4d. it makes me smile, though i'm sure it gets overlooked. those are the best kinds of effects: the ones nobody ever sees.


****EDIT****


i totally forgot about these, so i've added them to this post rather than a whole new blog post.These are the cigarettes that Stan, in Captain Ultra's body, unsuccessfully endorses. Ultra brand Ultra Lights. now, for any of you that are smokers, everyone knows that whether you're talking about $6.00 Nat Sherman's to $2.15 USA's (i'm from VA, so prices may seem low), EVERY single box says "20 Class A Cigarettes." i just find it amusing that the cheapest of the cheap, the ones that you KNOW are giving you instant cancer and taste like the bottom of a week old ashtray from waffle house, STILL say "Class A."

which just leads me to think: "what would a Class B cigarette be like?" surely, it's whatever is making Stan hack up his lungs and his lunch. Maybe just ground glass and sand and turkish blend burlap reside in Class B cigarettes along with hypodermic needles and sars. who knows. but i'm sure its this lack of care and quality in a product that Captain Ultra would sign off on.

STAN 13 props

we've only really got a few things to post for props this month, because, besides the chess board, there wasn't really much we used.


after Captain Ultra lands in Stan's kitchen, he gets a brew out of the fridge, revealing a shopping list. "hey, what should we put on the fridge?" "oh, i got it." **grabs marker, comedy ensues**


i take absolutely no credit or blame for this. in interest of time and "that's not funny," we ended up cutting a bit where Stan is sitting at the chess board panicking because he's losing to Captain Ultra, while Ultra is making dirty rhymes on the fridge. lyrics to a new Captain Ultra single maybe?


as will hines pointed out at the last screening, we really made a few holiday cards based on the one that is seen in our Holiday Episode, The Gift Of The Magi(c Cards) in lieu of a comic book cover. this is was also on the fridge.


this could really be filed under "special effects" rather than props. but it's a 3d model of some jelly that i threw together for the bit where Captain Ultra is tossing things out of a cabinet toward Stan. if anyone cares about this kinda stuff, i'll explain. 1. We shot the scene with me pretending to toss the jelly, panning across the room, and ending at the wall. Then i motion tracked the camera movement, modeled the jelly, and composited in After Effects.

i WILL get some fun deleted scenes from episode 12, that i still have to compress, one of these days.

STAN 12 props: part 3 of 3

so this is a little different.

this post deals with props that were digitally created. and since there are only really two i'm gonna discuss, this will be brief.

so this is our SCBS Evening News correspondent, Dan Raptor. And i know: Dan Rather quit. but we couldnt pass up using "raptor." anyway, we needed a background for our anchor, so i put together the "set" from above, loosely based on the picture below. (loosely=poorly)


why would someone take a picture of a tv?!


so as the episode goes on, Captain Ultra gets more and more "America"ed out. so we decided he'd have his own version of the flag. the above is the first 3d model i ever built from scratch. (impressive, i know) but i'm pretty happy with the way it came out.


here is a detail, since it gets lost in tiny internet video.




and here is the whole thing without the Ultra logo obscuring it.

STAN 12 props: part 2 of 3

hey everyone, we've been really busy working on a few new projects as well as getting Stan 13 done, and i'm a douche and am just now getting to all this stuff. so, besides the newspaper, this post deals with all of the props we built for this episode.




so, according to meredith who enjoys smart things (yeah...i know), in the documentary "the war room," which follows bill clinton campaigning, james carville wrote a bunch of stuff on a whiteboard, and in efforts to make Stan's living room look more "campaign headquarters"ey, we made our own version and then took a terrible photo of it. enjoy!


so early on, austin called dibs on putting this together: this is our balloon drop for the end of the episode. now, it's pretty technical, as i'm sure you can see, and i don't wanna give away all of our trade secrets, but here we have professor bragg at work, with his blue lab assistant, re-rigging his invention.


the printed materials for the campaigning were really fun to put together. i liked that we could be meta for a second and put the series web addy on the signs.


both Stan and Captain Ultra had campaign stickers for everyone. and if you look closely to see them you will strain your eyes and sue us because i'm not sure you can even tell.


i'm not sure if he called it or was short-strawed this, but meredith hand-painted these banners to put up in the campaign nerve center, and the paint was still wet as we hung them up. we're like that. we wait til the last possible second to do anything. because it's more fun if it's stressful. they now decorate mer's office.


okay. so obviously we didnt make this, but our friend dyna asked about it, so here's a close up. i spent DAYS trying to find something like this (honestly i wanted something that covered the whole head and the wearers face pops through the front, but i figured that i'd take what i could get). this was purchased from megachess.com and are apparently intended for some group of idiots with nothing better to do to set up a giant chess board and have kids strap these things on and act as the pieces while two other nimrods live out some weird 'gamemaster' fantasy. why, you ask? because chess simply isn't fucking big enough. and everyone knows that games aren't worth playing if they involve any less than 34 people.

yep.

STAN 12 props: part 1 of 3

As we make more and more web shows, one simple rule occurs to me: do it right the first time so you don't have to go back and do it again OR have to spend a life time in post fixing mistakes.

this "rule" has often lead us to do MORE work than we need to prior to a shoot, to sell a shot, because if youve done your job right people won't question it. they accept it.

it's this sort of overcompensation that lead me to do this: a full newspaper front page, complete with articles that no one would ever read. why? because i wanted people to accept it, rather than getting distracted by the crappy looking special effect, or poorly glued together newspaper, i wanted to make one that actually looked real.

a lot of crazy research went into this. not only from a design and typography point of view, but also in terms of production. obviously, my first reaction was that i wanted to do a short run of these on actual newsprint, and then hand out the extra 99 that we wouldnt need at the screening. needless to say this didn't go over too well with our bank account, plus nowhere would be able to turn it around fast enough for us.so our second thought was buying newsprint, folding it over and printing one half, then the other. note to the reader trying to fake a newspaper: do. not. do. this. it's stupid and messed up our printer pretty bad and didn't work.long story short: large scale printing at a nationwide printing chain. it costs an arm and a leg, but it's nice to not have to shoot around anything or hide the glue or tape, etc.

photo of the top half.


and a photo of the bottom half, that CAN be seen in the episode, but only for a moment, and upside down.

below are copies of the design file (click for larger)






next time, more practical props.

STAN holiday behind the scenes stuffy-do

let me first start out by saying "happy holidays" and "thank you for watching our The Defenders Of Stan Holiday Special!" We all really appreciate it. Remember to share it with someone who has never seen it before this holiday season.

So here are some production stills from the episode, along with a THE BiG HONKIN' first: an effects breakdown video.

productions stills:

Mike Bass weaseling his way out of painting his hands blue by wearing gloves. we'll get you next time, Gadget! next time.


the mantle at Stan's new place.


Mike, still putting on gloves. I'm not sure if that's Austin's leg or my leg in the bottom, but it gives this shot a very "casting couch" feel.


The official Shakespeare bust replica from the "Batman" tv series. we didn't have this for episode 8, unfortunately, but we'd like to thank our friend Wendy from WB for sending this to us. We try to work it into as many episodes as we can.


Stan's stocking. The glitter paint was still wet...and got everywhere. i tried to make it as reminiscent of the Stan logo, going so far as to print out the letters and tracing them.


a blue Super Santa. Evil children, take flight!


Captain Ultra's stocking. i love how it's too long to see all of it in the episode.


In printing this out for the episode, i realized how confused people must have been when words contained both 'k's and 'f's in olden times, because the letters look almost identical. fucf that.

This is the "before" and "after" shot's of my favorite comic panel for the holiday episode intro. nothing says Merry Christmas like Santa getting decked in the face.

AND, here is the video of the "before" and "after" footage for the track into Stan's new house. its extra nerdy!



higher res quicktime available here

happy holidays, everyone!

back stage pass to a gold medal

so for anyone interested, this is what about $150, two hours in kinkos (stupid jamming printers), and a long time ironing on iron-ons looks like...





and this is what it looks like when $150, two hours in kinkos (stupid jamming printers), and a long time ironing on iron-ons is on fire.



pretty sad, huh? i got so exciting makin all this schwag that i ended up writing a whole thing for the back of the book that you never even see.

yeah. i am lame.

here is a detail of the back.






and here are some production stills.


thanks to everyone that voted for us. it makes us feel right at home, even though we're the outsiders.