Ronaldo has been busy creating the 1:6 scale Hammond RT-3 Two-Manual Console with Leslie 122 Cabinet, used by Rick Wright of Pink Floyd.
Here’s the back of this iconic organ. I will fit it with some UV vacuum tube lights.
And here’s the back of the speaker cabinet. The speakers actually spin around at different rates, to produce that distinctive sound. It’ll get some of the same vacuum tubes of course.
Here’s the first tube. The glass is a perfect fit! I only had green fishing line on hand but this is proof that a more detailed internal structure will glow and breathe. Shown here powered at 4V. The size is 7mm diameter and 32mm long.
Here is it powered at 12V. I will install eight of these inside Ronaldo’s two HIWATT amplifier heads.
Here are the unpowered placeholder bulbs Ronaldo is using.
Today I decided to mod two of my characters. Here I’m replacing The Bridgekeeper’s good eye with a UV bulb.
The trick is to drill a small pilot hole through the eye, angled just right to miss the brain stem. Then from the back, I drilled progressively larger holes until the 5mm bulb would fit, right up to where his eyeball would be, but not breaking the skin.
And here’s the test at 12V. It’ll look better in the dark, dialed down to 4V. And I hope it casts the same ultraviolet lens flares.
These lights (including nine vacuum tubes) will be controlled via this 24-channel constant voltage DMX decoder. This is a different type of decoder than I used on the drum kit. This one is meant for “dumb” lights. Lights that can dim only in response to their power level. That way they too can throb and breathe with the music or with the dialogue.
Then it was time to lock down Zoot & Dingo. Their costumes got some padding to make them look (barefoot and) pregnant. This is because the pregnant “Phicen” bodies I ordered from China turned out to be counterfeit JAIOU DOLL bodies, so I sent them back and opened a case on eBay.
And it’s time to take the backings off their pyramid headstones while also making sure the earrings stay in place, in turn keeping their pill hats on their heads while I animate them.
So here’s how they look now. Next, I disassembled those copper microphones and mounted a 5mm UV LED bulb inside the mics. The idea here is that instead of 1:1 audio cables, these 1:6 instruments will have lighting cables. You can see the glow on Dingo’s face. My DMX program will synchronize that lighting intensity with whatever they’re singing.
The mics can be handheld too, which gives me opportunities to aim the lights differently.
And lastly, Tim the Enchanter gets a UV light too, in the tip of the wooden staff that he famously uses to cast fireballs, for sport. This was pretty tricky too. Lots of progressively larger drill bits, trying to keep them straight and true. Since my bits were only three inches long, the wires emerge from the staff near Tim’s hand — which is okay. For this prop and back of The Bridgekeeper’s head, I painted the visible wires various shades of brown to blend in.
Notice the stage monitors at Tim and King Arthur’s feet? My son Steven 3D printed those for me. Doesn’t that texture look great? Today’s his birthday!
Happy birthday, Monkey Boy!
Ronaldo is starting with the Fender Rhodes Stage 73/88 Mark I Electric Piano and the EMS Synthi Hi-Fli Guitar Synthesizer. Looking good so far!
Meanwhile, today I received two sets of LED lights from Amazon and eBay:
First up is the N-scale LED, intended for model train roadways and parking lots. But here, with a 1/64″ hole, a drop of super glue, and a 3V AA battery pack — they make fine 1:6 scale piano lights. (This is just one of my cheap miniature keyboards.)
Next is the 5mm UV LED, lit up here by my 12V power supply. These dim nicely too, simply by lowering the voltage. I should receive the tiny glass test tubes next week to prototype some glowing vacuum tubes for our amps and the Hammond organ.
One of the best features of 70s music is the warm tones produced by analog instruments and amplifiers. That warmth was made possible by the use of vacuum tubes.
When electrons flow through a vacuum, carrying “musically” charged samples from an instrument or a microphone, the amplified signal distorts in a way that is more pleasant to the human ear than via digital circuits. That is, the frequencies are handled more naturally in an analog circuit versus in a digital circuit where those frequency values are quantized at a certain interval, clipped (rounded) to the nearest numeric value, amplified, and then converted back into an analog signal that can actually move a speaker membrane. As much as digital technology has advanced since the 70s and 80s, a trained human ear can still tell the difference, and that difference boils down to two flavors of distortion: Warm & Cool
A big challenge in reproducing such equipment in 1:6 scale is how to replicate those vacuum tubes visually. Not just to sit there, but to light up, glow and even breathe with the music.
So here’s my engineering solution:
I found these little glass test tubes (or vials) on Etsy. The glass part is 7.8mm OD, 5.2mm ID, and 32mm long. I had to order them from China. Ten for less than $20. Shipping take long long time.
Stren Original Monofilament Fishing Line
That’s less than $30 worth of parts. The idea is to mount the 5mm OD (outside diameter) LEDs wherever there’s a vacuum tube in the equipment. Now those LEDS are only 8.5mm tall, so that’s not tall enough for a typical vacuum tube. So, we’ll cut a piece of the clear rigid tubing to about 1 inch, and then fit it over the LED. That should work snugly because the ID (inside diameter) of this particular tubing is 5mm.
And the pièce de résistance is that we’ll cut some clear blue fluorescent monofilament (fishing line), fold it over a few times, and insert it into the clear tube. Then seal the top of the tube shut, or maybe plug it or cap it.
Now, when powered up, the UV light will illuminate the glow-in-the-dark fishing line and it should look just like a vacuum tube, also illuminating any neighboring photoreactive materials.
I just made a significant investment ($1690) in my current animation project. I commissioned Brazilian master craftsman Ronaldo Lopes Teixeira to build the following 1:6 scale keyboards and synthesizers used by Richard Wright on Pink Floyd’s classic album, The Dark Side of the Moon:
Ronaldo will also for the first time build two new custom miniatures, used by David Gilmour:
While these props will take up to six weeks to get here, I have to enlarge the set on my animation stage and figure out how to light them.
Fortunately I found a set of N-scale model train LED lights that I can modify as piano lights, using a standard 3V power supply or 2 AA batteries. I’m also looking for ways to make 1:6 scale vacuum tubes that glow and breathe a little.
Today’s project is a daunting one. This is the beautiful 1:6 scale desk hand built by Mihail, my carpenter friend in Ukraine. Check out his Furniture for Dolls side gig on Etsy for some amazing craftsmanship. I’m expecting there to be a wealth of 1:1 scale carpentry work there, once Putin is defeated. 🇺🇦
The idea here is to light up a bunch of props sitting atop the desk. So to make room for 12mm diameter LED Pixel Bulbs, I need to drill 1/2” holes in the desktop at strategic places, so as not to obstruct the drawers with the back ends of the bulbs, plus all the wiring.
Why use 12mm bulbs and not 5mm? Well, 12mm is the smallest LED bulb available today that has an IC built in. That chip enables it to be individually addressable as a pixel. The smaller bulbs can only be controlled in groups on a string or in a strip.
In the case of these little phones, the bulbs need to poke through at an angle, and the wires are stiff. So drilling holes through thin plastic, through pot metal, through 1/8” clear acrylic, and through a 3/8” basswood desktop is a rather delicate operation. Especially with dull bits and no drill press. Ace Hardware, by the way, charges way too much for drill bits.
Here’s proof of concept with none of the wires cut, routed and jacked yet. That beer stein only has water in it. The amber hue comes solely from its uplight. The cash register is subtle, but in the dark its translucent features glow nicely. The fake ice under the glass caviar dish is my favorite. The caviar is actually tiny translucent pink glass beads.
I spent the next day cutting and splicing wires using dozens of heat shrink butt splices and three-wire JST connectors, for modularity and to make installation even possible while leaving the drawers functional. No easy trick there, in such tight quarters. There’s got to be an easier way…
The design wound up with six lights up top, and two spares strategically tucked away for possible expansion. Then each of the six large drawers has a bulb mounted into its back panel on 12mm retaining clips, so that I can open the drawers and light up stashes of gold or diamonds or whatever.
So that’s 12-14 bulbs total, consuming 36-42 DMX channels given that each bulb has individually addressable data channels for RGB.
So how does DMX control these LED Pixel Bulbs? Well, to make white light, you send 100% to the red, green and blue channels, using the bulb’s assigned channel range (3 channels per bulb, in sequential RGB order). If you want, say, a shade of yellow, you send equal values to red and green, and set blue to zero.
When a couple more parts arrive today, I’ll daisy chain the desk’s DMX group after the drum kit’s group, which consumes 27-36 channels for nine bulbs and three spares.
So my DMX-512 universe will look like this:
Dragonframe, my stop motion animation software, allows you to program DMX lighting sequences that sync with your animation frame-by-frame. So yes, this “power desk” will be pulsing with musical energy, along with my custom drum kit. And that’s the magic — the special effect no one will expect.
And here’s the final product with all the wires routed and jacked. Level of Difficulty compared to other things I’ve done? 7.5
Can’t wait to see it in the next test shot!
Today my new Samsung Odyssey Ark 55-inch Curved 4K UHD monitor was delivered, a day early. I got it on sale at Amazon for $1999. This is marketed as a gaming display, and it got slammed in the reviews for its inability to display more than one HDMI source at a time. But that’s not a concern here.
While it can be pivoted into cockpit mode as shown, most of the time I’ll use it in landscape mode as a virtual backdrop for my POSERS sets. Dragonframe allows me to synchronize any video with the frames I shoot, and that video can be displayed on any external display. That means no more crappy green screens for me, casting that unavoidable green taint on my characters.
POSERS is all about the photons, so it’s only original photons from here on.
On Tuesday after breakfast and a swim, we walked back through D’Mall and shopped a little. We had a couple beers at a midget bar called the Hobbit Tavern, then settled in for a pizza at the Red Coconut.
For some reason I decided not to phone home. I’m sure Olivia will understand. 😉
These are the famous Paraw Sail boats. They’re catamarans so you sit in nets and skim over the ocean. That sounds like great fun but I couldn’t convince Eric to do it. So I’ll save that experience for when Olivia comes here.
This was our last full day here, so I was determined to put my drone up at sunset. I had asked at the bar but even the manager (Gerry) didn’t seem to know the law, and couldn’t give me access to the hotel’s roof. He said it was “prohibited” but we thought he meant at the hotel.
You see, I had also scoured the Philippines CPAA website before I left. That’s their equivalent of the FAA in the US. And every indication was that drones are okay here as long as you don’t fly within 100 feet of crowds, more than 400 feet altitude and less than 10 kilometers from an airports. There are signs all over White Beach listing what you can’t do, but there’s not a single sign prohibiting drones.
You know where this is going…
I walked all the way back south to the secluded cove I had scoped out the previous day. I didn’t want to make a nuisance of myself so I waited until all the patrols were out of sight. Then I launched from the sand about five minutes before sunset, knowing that one battery was worth at least 20 minutes of 4K video.
I won’t be able to watch it until I get home, but I’m sure it’s spectacular. Even though the sunset wasn’t as dramatic as last night, I flew over several sail boats at just over 100 feet.
The next thing I know, a local Filipino “sentinel” approached me, took photos and made a call. Within five minutes I was surrounded by four local cops and a tall PNP (Philippine National Police) guard wielding an M-16 machine gun.
“Sir, did you know flying a drone is prohibited on Boracay?”
“No, I wasn’t aware.” I explained that I had researched this before my trip and it all looked okay without the need for a recreational permit. But they weren’t having any of it. The interpreter explained that I was within 8 kilometers of an airport (doubtful) and there was a local ordinance passed in 2017. She produced the law on paper and I wasn’t about to argue.
Usually, if you are in restricted airspace for any reason, your drone’s GPS system will disable flight. But naturally the Philippines wouldn’t be part of a system that advanced. They’re still struggling with clean drinking water.
So yeah, this was pretty much my worst nightmare. Not so much because of the legal ambiguity, but because I’m suddenly trying to land my aircraft amid a swarm of people with guns who keep demanding my ID. But at least I had the fortune of being the dumb American tourist.
Once landed, I apologized profusely and asked, “Is there a fine I can pay you?”
“Yes, they will give you a citation and you will pay ₱2,500 to them,” the interpretor said. “You will then go to the Police Station in the morning and the Mayor will give you a receipt.”
“That’s okay, I don’t need a receipt. And I fly home tomorrow morning anyway,” I said, hoping that’s all it really was. When they wrote down my Oregon driver’s license info and asked for my hotel and room number I started getting nervous. I was concerned this might be an “apprehension” but then she said, “Don’t worry, sir. They will bring your receipt to the hotel for you.” I nodded in agreement but my intention was to remain scarce in the morning.
Fortunately I had the cash on me. They allowed me to stow my gear properly and didn’t confiscate anything. And because the fine amounted to just $47.57 US, I now have a great story to share on the Mavic Pro drone forum — and 20 minutes of awesome video I presume. It’s also possible I caught the swarm of cops on video. In fact if I hadn’t been so frazzled I might have thought to aim my camera at them on landing.
It was a long walk down to that secluded cove so I still can’t believe how quickly they tracked me down. Nor how professional they were in enforcing their local law. I had halfway expected them to shoot Scenario One out of the sky! 😉
Next time I might bring one of these Bionic Bird drones.
Look for a video link here next week, once I have time to edit my life of international crime. 🙂
Returning to my filmmaker roots well ahead of retirement age, Scenario RETROfilm’s little indie animation shop is progressing nicely with Olivia’s help and support. Here are our key technical investments:
Everything revolves around Dragonframe‘s amazing stop motion software and communication protocols. Compared to back when I did stop motion in the early 80s, the process is infinitely easier today. For example, Dragonframe has an “onionskin” feature which lets you superimpose the previous frame over the current frame in order to check your puppet moves. So you get immediate feedback instead of waiting a week to get your Super 8mm film back from a Kodak lab.
Believe it or not, most stop motion is shot on DSLR cameras — not video (or film) cameras. This bundle was the best value which still meets all of Dragonframe’s requirements, as it communicates best with Canon EOS bodies. That includes the ability to display a live digital view on a Mac through the lens, and the ability to control every aspect of the exposure for every frame. This camera can produce 4K RAW images, which Dragonframe then strings together in sequence at whatever frame rate you want. That’s typically 24 fps, which means a 10-second scene is 240 frames and a 10-minute film is 14,400 frames.
The only modification I made was to swap out the Canon primary lens with a Nikon manual aperture lens. That way Dragonframe can take control of the aperture and eliminate any chance of flicker between frames. This is a known problem and a long-established solution among animators.
This is a 4-axis motion control rig sold by eMotimo in San Diego. It’s basically a robot that can smoothly repeat complex camera moves across a scene, producing the parallax shots that today’s short-attention-span-challenged audiences expect. The eMotimo Spectrum ST4 is the only head that talks directly to Dragonframe and can scrub through a shot in real time. That is a godsend to animators. That means if you screw something up in the middle of a scene that has taken hours to animate, you can simply undo those frames and the camera will move back to the precise position it was in. This rig is also great for time lapse shots and even live, unassisted interview shots. Not pictured is its remote control: An off-the-shelf PlayStation 4 DualShock controller. Simply brilliant. Kudos to eMotimo’s team, led by founder Brian Burling. He personally sold me this system.
The slider will rest atop this adjustable platform made by VIVO (the same company that made the retractable TV ceiling mount in my RETROvan).
I’ll cut a rounded top myself out of 2’x8’x3/4″ cherry plywood. Then I can mount all kinds of equipment to it, like a power strip, drawer, keyboard shelf and even my iMac itself via a VESA bracket. This is much better than having one or two tripods sprawled out next to your set, as tripping hazards.
Overhead we have some cool studio track lights, fitted with LED bulbs (both daylight and warm). We’ll supplement these with other articulated desk lamps and in-set lighting as needed.
So yeah, we’ve been pretty busy writing scripts, acquiring props and building sets — inbetween our day jobs of course. I’ll post some photos of them later. Generally we’re working in 2x2x4-foot modules using 1/2″ plywood. Three such sets are currently under construction and they look amazing. Each set will simply move to a larger desktop (under those studio lights) for shooting, in production order.
