The Mythical Show Intro

Production Design & Fabrication

Rhett & Link 2013

Rhett & Link's Mythical Show takes me deep inside the Forgotten Cave of Desolation...

MAKING OF: http://vimeo.com/66525770 Everything you see was built / crafted by hand then animated practically and photographed. The Cave = Lots of melted wax Tear drop = Water Balloon Molten lava = Torched pie crust Lava = Cream of wheat....and gravel The Tree = Thin chicken wire wrapped in fabric, painted to look like bark, and lots of moss. The Title = Carved directly out of a tree stump found on the side of the road. Created for the opening of The Mythical Show with Rhett and Link: http://bit.ly/160oAp4 Client | Rhett and Link Production Company | Digital Twigs Creative Director, Animator | Ryan Wehner Production Designer | Mike Pasley Director of Photography | Andrew Tomayko & Chris Vanderwall Swing | Jonas Studer Production Assistant | Mike Kasper Art Department: Mike Pasley, Jonas Studer, Mark Davis, and Grant Hyde Sound Design, Music Composer | White Noise Lab Voice Over | Mick Wingert Stop motion software: Dragon Frame Motion control: Dynamic Perception Processed in: Lightroom 4 Composited in: After Effects CS6

The Process...

ORIGINAL: http://vimeo.com/64684810 Music: "Yugck" by Pool Cosby (http://poolcosby.bandcamp.com) Everything you see was built / crafted by hand then animated practically and photographed. The Cave = Lots of melted wax Tear drop = Water Balloon Molten lava = Torched pie crust Lava = Cream of wheat....and gravel The Tree = Thin chicken wire wrapped in fabric, painted to look like bark, and lots of moss. The Title = Carved directly out of a tree stump found on the side of the road. Client | Rhett and Link Production Company | Digital Twigs Creative Director, Animator | Ryan Wehner Production Designer | Mike Pasley Director of Photography | Andrew Tomayko & Chris Vanderwall Swing | Jonas Studer Production Assistant | Mike Kasper Art Department: Mike Pasley, Jonas Studer, Mark Davis, and Grant Hyde Sound Design, Music Composer | White Noise Lab Voice Over | Mick Wingert Stop motion software: Dragon Frame Motion control: Dynamic Perception Processed in: Lightroom 4 Composited in: After Effects CS6

It's always tight to work with Digital Twigs. This time it was stalac-tite...

No group of dudes are more fun to work with than the Digital Twigs team. And I'm not just saying that because they're my best friends. Check out the behind the scenes video to see what all the hype is about...

Waxing Geological...

I fell in love during this project. With wax...

 

Do you know how stalagmites and stalactites form? They build up, drip by drip over like zillions of years. It's slooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwww......

Way longer than the 2 weeks I had to make the main set piece of The Mythical Show intro. I needed something faster, but with the same quality created by a liquid building up over time.

Wax jam!

 

Wax is amazing, but tricky to work with. It's a hot mess, literally. If the wax is too hot when you pour it, it doesn't cool fast enough and runs all over the place. If it's too cool, it chunks up and starts to solidify before you can pour it. It's gotta be baby bear to get the right texture, cooling as it runs across a surface, building up layer upon layer. I recommend using a infrared thermometer if you work with wax. Very accurate and hella futuristic.

To give the wax something to build up on I started with a heavy wire mesh to get the shape I wanted. Working with the wire was like playing patty-cake with Edward Scissorhands, except with more small cuts. I built a wooden frame around the stab-happy wire mesh tube and then lined it with buckram. The buckram has a tight enough mesh to hold the wax instead of letting it run out.

I sprinkled tiny shiny rocks (the name of my elementary school rock band) on the cooling wax to give it some glisten. Many messy hours later it was spelunking-worthy; perfect for tiny adventures.

I had a hard time parting with this piece. It seemed good enough to turn into an awesome coffee table or a strange cabinet that opened into a tiny cave. I like falling in love with the things I get to make. It's the magic ingredient that's sometimes overlooked. Without it, I'm just working all the time.