Wampa Fix

One of the last things Adywan will be working on for Empire Strikes Back Revisited is a new Wampa to help unite the look throughout the movie. In the latest entry of our “Change Explain” series, I’ll show you why Ady feels this is necessary.

The first time we see the Wampa’s face, it was a puppet made by Phil Tippet and shot in the United States.

Here’s a picture of his being filmed on the puppeteer’s arm.

The next time we see the Wampa (at least in the Special Edition), is when it’s snacking on Luke’s poor Tauntaun and is disturbed by Luke waking up.

ILM artist Howie Weed created and wore the new Wampa suit in a miniature set.

The shot of the Wampa lunging towards Luke was in the original theatrical edition.

This was a Stuart Freeborn full-sized costume (seen here from an abandoned sequence where we’d see the Wampa dragging Luke and the Tauntaun back to his lair):

The reaction shot of the Wampa after Luke cuts its arm off was added for the Special Edition.

Once again, this was Howie Weed in the suit.

As you can see, the Wampa in the finished film (as seen on the Blu-ray)  has three very different looks for being the same creature. Adywan is building a new puppet he hopes to use to replace some of these shots and remove the others to create a single look for the Wampa.

Don’t even get me started on all the different Wampa looks for the deleted scenes…

-Drew

Dabbling In The Prequels

While I have been waiting for stuff to dry (paints, resin, etc.), I decided to start dabbling with the prequels. So I started with Episode 2 as this one looks the worst out of those films. The whole “orange” look to the film gives it a quite flat quality and really doesn’t help with the CG in the film. So I decided to start a quick and dirty colour grading pass. Geonosis is the worse offender. Yes, the planet does have a red sky (at least in the official version) but iIwant to give this film a more natural colour pallet. Now, as I said, this is a very quick and dirty colour grade only done as a test to see what can be achieved and how the film could look with some added grain, so it matched the OT instead of looking like an older digitally shot movie.

Now, if you want to see a proper comparison just click on the sample here:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/111085

Some more tests:

Top: Revisited First Colour Pass; Bottom: Original Blu-ray

Top: Revisited First Colour Pass; Bottom: Original Blu-ray

Top: Revisited First Colour Pass; Bottom: Original Blu-ray

Plus some footage:

First is the comparison video: (approx 90mb)

And the second is the regraded version in higher bitrate so you can see the added film grain: (approx 270mb)

January 2015 Update

Some news following on from my last post.

Well we have a few new members of the Revisited Crew. Some very talented people have come onboard. I will introduce them all at a later date though. I’m always looking for people with Cg skills, Digital matte skills etc, so there is still plenty of time to come on board.

I can tick a couple of the 1/48 kits off my list. Thanks to Chris, i will soon have a fine molds 1/48 x-wing. And i have a chance on getting a 1/48 scratch build Y-Wing resin kit which is gorgeous and really detailed. I just need to scrape together £200 by the end of the month, so keep your fingers crossed.. I’m still no closer, however, on a b-wing 1/48 kit and an a-wing 1/48 kit. so if anyone knows anyone who is still selling any resin kits at this scale then please do let me know.

EDIT: I HAVE DECIDED TO GO DOWN THE SCRATCH BUILD ROUTE FOR THE A & B-WINGS SO I NO LONGER NEED TO FIND THOSE KITS

I’m back to work finishing off the HiC sculpt tomorrow and will hopefully get it cast in a week or so, so i can get those scenes filmed and out of the way.

I’ll be sticking some stuff on ebay beginning of next month so i can clear a lot of this out to make way for the next batch of stuff and help raise funds for materials to carry on the saga. I’m really running out of room. There will be individual dagobah Trees, Han’s ESB Blaster, Possibly the large AT-AT model amongst other things if i can get that filmed and out of the way in time.

The Plan For The Future

Today it was back to work on Revisited. During the break i began to plan out the direction i will be going for the following films. As you know , i will be working on the remaining films in one go. Madness you say? Well, probably, yes. But it will keep things fresh for me. I won’t get bogged down with one thing.

Models will now be going to a larger scale. Ships will be 1/48 instead of 1/72 as i have been working with on ESB:R. So expect larger scale sets. I recently purchased the Hasbro Millennium falcon playset. This thing is amazing. It’s basically 1/48 scale so will be perfect to work with. A LOT of modifications need to be done to it to bring it up to filming quality, but it will be a damn site easier, and cheaper, than building it from scratch. So,there will be lots of progress reports to look forward to from that build.

I will also need to find some good 1/48 kits of B-Wings, A-Wings but especially Y-Wings. Fine molds did a pretty good 1/48 X-wing but, thanks to them now being discontinued, they’re rocketing in price. It seems i missed out on kits of these scales by some talented builders and don’t really see them available any more. Just my luck. lol.

In the next few months i’ll be doing a casting call for not only costumers who fancy lending a hand but also FX talent. This thing is going to be a HUGE task, so the Revisited team will need all the help it can get and needs to grow to have any chance of accomplishing our goal. With ESB:R hopefully out of the way within the next 6 months, things need to begin to move forward.

Now most of the live action filming will be taking place in the Midlands, UK, with the Endor shoot taking place in California. Over here (UK) there will be a lot of greensreen work for characters to place into, mainly, the prequels. I will need a couple of Sandtroopers and Stormtroopers for definite , but this will be for minor stuff and the shot would only take one day (probably just a few hours TBH). Also shooting here will be the new rebel pilots ( and maybe a TIE pilot too) for the Endor space battle.

There will also be a lot more, but details will surface once ESB:R is complete .

So, if anyone thinks they can help out with FX work, then please contact the Revisited team through private messaging here. And that also goes for anyone who has any 1/48 kits they want to get rid of, anyone who has a Sandtrooper, Stormtrooper costume that is in the UK and can get to the Wolverhampton and can lend a few hours for the shoot. There will be more costumers needed, but again details will emerge closer to the time.

Happy Holidays From The Revisited Team!

Christmas 2014 Clip & Comparison

Podcast Interview

Last week, The Expanded Fandomverse Podcast released their episode featuring an extended interview with Adywan:

You get about 90 minutes with Ady, so be sure to check it out for some behind-the-scenes stories and some glimpses of the future!

Update: Real Paid Work

Yes, updates are scarce to say the least lately, But it’s because i’ve been working my ass off to get this thing completed. But things have been put on hold temporarily. Why? Well i have been offered some paid FX work for a short film, which is going to take me away from the edit only for about a month, maybe less, maybe more. It’s an opportunity i couldn’t pass up. As much as Revisited has been my priority for a long time, you have to remember that i’m doing it for free. I don’t make a penny from it. Every single penny donated goes back into the edit on top of what i have already put into this edit myself.

So, what does this mean for ESB Revisited? Well, as i’m working flat out on the work for this short, it leaves me little or no time to work on the miniatures or anything else. The PC is pretty much tied up 24/7. Now i’m confident that i can get the HiC, Dagobah & Hangar miniatures done by Christmas, but the Wampa will most likely have to wait until after the Christmas break. It may or may not happen this way, so i’m not going to say for definite that it won’t be out this year and why we will no longer give release dates.

Yes, i know that the usual sarcastic comments about how long its taking will now appear, but i don’t care. If i cared about what people complaining think, i would have given up a long time ago and just abandoned the project. But this i NOT going to happen. But my “real” life HAS to come first. But what it does mean is that i won’t be taking such a long break as i had planned after ESB before i start working on the rest of the saga. I’m pretty much just going to take a couple of months off and get straight into it.

I know there will be disappointment and many of you may lose interest in this, but we are so close to the finish line now. It is coming.

-Adywan

Dagobah Trees

Adywan’s current project has been working on making a Dagobah model to replace the matte used in ESB and RotJ, namely the swamp trees.

Updated (8/25/14) with new image!

Here’s a shot of Ady’s trees with vines (he’s going to make some less detailed ones to fill in the spaces).

Thanks to some generous donors, Ady was able to afford a new lens for his camera so he can shoot the new matte.

Here are the mattes he’s replacing (theatrical top, special edition bottom):

Prize Drawing TOMORROW!

Today (July 1) is the last day to be in with a chance of winning one of the models from ESB:R. The draw will be taking place on 2nd july. Don’t forget, for every £5 you donate, that gets you an entry into the draw. So, if you donated say £10, that got you 2 entries, and so on. And for every £25 donated that gets you into the exclusive draw to win the snowspeeder model.

Best of luck 🙂

Oh, and if we get 5 more entries for the snowspeeder draw, i may well post a new clip 😉

You can donate using one of the PayPal buttons on the right side of this site!