Zombies Ahead

10:54AM Thursday Feb 05, 2009
Jim Suhr

COLLINSVILLE, Illinois - Pranksters in at least three states are messing with electronic road signs meant to warn motorists of possible traffic problems by putting drivers on notice about Nazi zombies and raptors. And highway safety officials aren't amused.

The latest breach came on Tuesday during the morning rush hour near Collinsville, Illinois, where hackers changed a sign along southbound Interstate 255 to read, "DAILY LANE CLOSURES DUE TO ZOMBIES."

A day earlier in Indiana's Hamilton County, the electronic message on a board in Carmel's construction zone warned drivers of "RAPTORS AHEAD - CAUTION."

And signs in Austin, Texas, recently flashed: "NAZI ZOMBIES! RUN!!!" and "ZOMBIES IN AREA! RUN."

Officials in Illinois are concerned the rewritten signs distract motorists from heeding legitimate hazards down the road. The hacked sign on Tuesday originally warned drivers of crews replacing guardrails.

"We understood it was a hoax, but at the same time those boards are there for a reason," said Joe Gasaway, an Illinois Department of Transportation supervisory field engineer. "We don't want (drivers) being distracted by a funny sign."

Authorities haven't figured out how pranksters access the signs. Gasaway believes the Illinois sign was changed remotely, and Austin Public Works spokeswoman Sara Hartley suspected the hackers there cut a padlock to get into the signs' computers.

Some websites, such as Jalopnik.com, have published tutorials titled "How to Hack an Electronic Road Sign" as a way to alert security holes to traffic-safety officials. Jalopnik urges its readership of 2.6 million a month not to put its lesson to practice.

"Hacking generally is about showing where there are holes in security systems, and I think this is a great example of that," the site's editor-in-chief, Ray Wert, said. "I'm sure there are all sorts of ways to use that information in a way that's inappropriate, but we're trying to make clear this is an issue that needs to be confronted by traffic safety and transportation officials."

Wert said he had no immediate plans to take down Jalopnik's how-to guide.

In Illinois, tampering with an official traffic control device is a misdemeanour punishable by up to a US$250 fine - half what a culprit might have to pay in Texas if caught. If convicted in Indiana, a culprit faces up to a year in jail and $5,000 in fines.

- AP

News Story Link 1

News Story Link 2

Zombie Hunt Clip Updated

Zombie Hunt Clip updated with MKX300 footage.



Go to YouTube and watch it in HD.

New Video Blog

New Video blog is up.

http://www.monstercops.com/page.php?page=Vlog

We'll be casting for zombies and vampires soon. so stay tuned for that.

Peace.

- P

Still Working It

It was hectic as usual over the holidays, but we managed to get some shooting in for Monster Cops. Coming up I hope to have at least one more full episode and 3 minisodes for your consumption in the next few months. Of course the day job fills in alot of time and there is much commercial work to be done before we can go off and play Monster Cops again. There is a VLOG coming soon to show you what some of us have been up to. Here's a small taste in freeze frame form.


Greenly (Danielle Motley) with a gun. Not that she actually ever holds a gun in any of the episodes, this is actually just Danielle trying to kill Brandon.



AS posted previously, this is a frame from the graphics work for the MKX300 Weapons POV.



Brandon and Chris share a tender moment. What can I say, it's a Bromance.



Danielle tries to remember her lines, as Brandon is in the background ordering a pizza.



Me working on the next prop gun.


More stuff coming soon, so please stay tuned. And thanks to everyone showing us much Monster Cops love, keep those comments and emails coming. We love to read the feedback. You guys rock!

Watch This One Too ....

I cut together another video entry for the Aspire contest to go along with my last "Aliens and Cow Lips" Video. This time I've gotten my fellow Monster Cops involved, Brandon White and Chris Plouffe.



Go to the YouTube page: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIu9CBaO0Ko
Please spread it around, rate it high, and watch it alot, oh yes and leave a comment.

Help Us Out

This video needs views.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Anq2rVoBLbM


Written, Drawn, Animated, Scored, and Edited by Patrick A. Prejusa.

For Aspire's Netbook Contest. High Ratings, High View Count helps this one win by January 20th.  So please check it out and spread it around.

Visual FX Work

Working on some VFX  here's a frame from the POV of the MKX300.  Targets scanned and ID'd.

XC20 PROBE CAMERA POV

Visual FX Test. Here we see the POV of the XC20 Umanned Aerial Vehicle. The XC20 is a new prototype camera with Thermal and Nightvision Capability and Onboard Creature Scan. 17 seconds of the XC20 observing Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellars. 1322-B.

Sfumato

For many Sfumato is the Italian term for a painting technique which overlays translucent layers of colour to create perceptions of depth, volume and form.

Sounds like movie making.

Da Vinci himself described sfumato as "without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke or beyond the focus plane"

Certainly this can relate to movie making.

I know the word Sfumato from Michael J. Gelb's book How To Think Like Leonardo DaVinci. There he lists Sfumato as one of Da Vinci's 7 principals. "A Willingness to embrace ambiguity, paradox, and uncertainty."

Now that definitely sounds like movie making to me.


Sfumato, for me, has evolved from just an art technique, into a way of life. To embrace uncertainty. As stated in Gelb's book, to literally go up in smoke. The artistic technique refers to using brush strokes to blend tones together. No harsh lines means a more realistic blend of colors, giving you a better expression of realism. The best example is the Mona Lisa. If we didn't know any better we'd almost think it was a photograph. The paint blended together to recreate reality.

In a way this is what I'm trying to achieve with Monster Cops. It's pretty easy to paint vampires and zombies with harsh lines. Monsters in general lend themselves to a more comic book type world, where the art work can be expressive in it's well defined lines. Just the idea of a Vampire or a Chupacabra does not blend in well with reality. It sticks out, because it's not the norm.

But with Monster Cops I'm trying to blur those lines in order to create a perception of depth. In order to recreate reality. It's practice with each episode, with each shoot. The question always being, how would this play out in reality. If we were REALLY dealing with zombies, vampries, werewolves, etc., how would this secret government agency react? How would we see it on video realistically? What is the most realistic way we can achieve this with the budget we have?

It is practice. It is trial and error. And I'm learning. The first Monster Cops project was The Midnight Special. With it I felt close to the look and feel I wanted, but not really there. With the Shadow Company episode I feel we hit the mark slightly. A good start, but we can do better. I do feel we're on the right track. In the end it is about the essence of your story. What is it we are trying to achieve with Monster Cops? What exactly is that vision?

It's a realistic look into a group of Government Monster Killers. The action, the thrills, and the horror of the investigation and the hunt for creatures of the night, mixed with humor and pathos.

In other words, Cops meets The Office meets Blair Witch meets Monster Squad,

An action, comedy, reality tv show, with realistic depth.

And how do we achieve that depth? How do we blur those lines to recreate reality? By embracing ambiguity, paradox, and uncertainty.

Yup, that's definitely movie making.


Working on the scripts for the next few episodes. Shooting starts back up this Saturday, but with the cold weather, we are relegated to indoor shots. We'll see how it works out. I'm confident we'll have one more episode up before January.

Most likely going to add a cast and crew call page soon.


Ambiguity, paradox, and uncertainty? Where are you guys? Come here, gimme a hug.

August to October

New Monster Cops Production Update on the Video Blog.

Check it out HERE.

Shadow Company Episode is Live!!!

The 24 minute episode, MONSTER COPS: SHADOW COMPANY is now ONLINE for all to see. Check it out at Monstercops.com





CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE EPISODE NOW!

DIY NECRONOMICON The Video

And here it is finally. For those of you that have been asking me for one. All 6 of you. Make your very own Necronomicon Ex Mortis, BOOK OF THE DEAD.

Edit:

It's now being featured on INSTRUCTABLES.

Necronomicon: Book Of The Dead. DIY Version

I can comfortably say that I've gotten at least one thing done on my list. I made my very own Necronomicon. Or to be exact, Necronomicon Ex Mortis. The horror geek in me has to specify that if I say Necronomicon then I'm refrencing H.P. Lovecraft's Necronomicon. When I'm actually leaning more towards the Book Of The Dead featured in Sam Raimi's Evil Dead Trilogy.

Legend has it that it was written by the Dark Ones. Necronomicon ex
Mortis, roughly translated, "Book of the Dead". The book served as a passageway to the evil worlds beyond. It was written long ago. When the seas ran red with blood. It was this blood that was used to ink the book. In the year 1300 AD, the book disappeared.

For the current Monster Cops Episode I wanted to refrence Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn, seeing as how I love the Evil Dead movies and this particular episode is titled Monster Cops: Dead By Dawn. The plot itself doesn't actually have much to do with the Evil Dead mythos, but I wanted to make a nod to it. The Monster Cops breach a very evil vampire lair and I wanted them to come across some evil objects. So why not have one of those objects be a Necronomicon? Plus I though it would be fun to build one.

The Necronomicon has actually changed appearance throughout each Evil Dead film. Here's what some of them look liked.

The Necronomicon Ex Mortis from the very first low budget film Evil Dead. This lower budget version looks pretty creepy to me, but I was always much fonder of the look they used in the sequel.


Here's a frame from Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn.


A closer look at the version from Evil Dead 2. The budget obviously went up on the prop making. I do love this look quite a bit and is the look I was leaning towards when creating my own.


And this is the version in Army Of Darkness (Evil Dead 3). The prop making budget went all the way up this time around thanks to Universal Studios. Still holding to eerieness but looked alot more subtle with much better quality.


The limited edition DVD's of Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 came in really cool looking Necronomicon covers. But even they somewhat differ from any of the above designs of the book.



And here's the first pic of mine.

Wasn't going for exactness, but I wanted to stay with the same feel as the Evil Dead trilogy. I wanted the eyes on mine to be much angrier. This didn't actually cost me much to make since I had all the materials already. The base of it is a cardboard box duct taped together to form the actual cover and spine. The wrinkles in the skin were made from masking tape and duct tape. The eyes, nose, and mouth were formed with long rolled up pieces of duct tape then sealed down with masking tape. Then I painted it with acrylic, using black for the inside of the eyes and mouth, and the rest painted with brown mixed in with some cadium red.

Right now I'm sealing the whole thing down with Mod Podge sealer to give it some strength and so the paint won't run, just in case it ever gets wet (have you ever been on one of our sets?) I'm going to finish the back, and then fill the middle in with actual pages of monster drawings and images just as soon as Mr. Brandon White finishes them.

I'll post a video tutorial as soon as it's finished. This will actually only make an appearance in the current episode for about 10 seconds, but I think it will lend alot to the feel of this episode.

EDIT: 10/22/08
Video Is Done.



EDIT: 6/1/10
I had re-edited this for Indy Mogul and had successfully become a finalist to be the next host of Backyard FX. Didn't get the job, but the exposure was great, and I had fun doing it. Here's that version.