Oooh, my brain is all sleepy and blurry this morning.
I don't even remember what I did Thursday and Friday, though I'm sure I went dancing Friday and visited odd Friday (www.oddfriday.com).
This weekend was a blur of activity, the beginning of the madness that is this movie production. Though I can only imagine what Aaron is going through -- not enough budget, barely enough actors, no cinematographer yet, not enough makeup crew, and so forth. On second thought, I know exactly what he is going through; this sounds a lot like Haunted Trails 2004... only the movie is more complex and has slightly higher stakes (I think).
I was able to do a variety of interesting things over the weekend, other than planning the work out in great detail (mmm, dependency graphs) and shopping for tools and supplies.
For the first time, I cast clay into molds for re-sculpting. That was cool. The clay I found (NSP Plasteline Medium) is awesome! From an awesome company (www.chavant.com). They sent me a comprehensive sampler pack of clays for only $10 S&H... very nice. Then I bought 50lbs of clay. A good deal for them, I'm sure.
I did discover, to my regret, that Armadillo Clay is a distributor of Chavant, even though they are not listed on the website. Visiting Armadillo to get hydrostone (a hard plaster) I saw they carried the NSP -- a no-sulfur variety that I expected to be kinda obscure. I told Armadillo they weren't listed, so maybe they will get on Chavant's case.
Lessee... I tested several blood bases, all of which had interesting characteristics, though I really don't like the strawberry syrup blood. Ick, fake strawberry, and the seeds clogged my syringe.
I built up a valve manifold and "nail board" to manage up to six bullet hits in sequence.
Hmmm... my original bullet hit mechanism used a 260 balloon (www.tmeyers.com) to seal the tube and provide a blowout. I found that for large loads, the blood accumulated in the expanded balloon and, on rupture, just fell to the ground. So I used cling wrap around the load tube hole instead; it blew out just fine under the pressure I'm using and it didn't stretch to create a blood-blister.
I did have to seal the wrap with petroleum jelly, though, so it wouldn't leak. No big deal. I also found that if I reduced the air pressure to 20psi or so, I get more of a "squirt" than a blast, so that's useful information. Unfortunately, the pneumatic valves I use require at least 30psi to operate. But if I need a squirt, I can always use the manual valve again.
We need a way to get bullet hits on boards and trees, and the best way to do that is to shoot "dust" at the target. One way to do THAT is to get a paintball gun and some black-shell / white-paint balls for it. Then, using a syringe, suck the paint out and then replace it with... something else.
Instead, however, I hooked the compressor up to a 28" tube and loaded it with a large gelatine capsule from the health store, which was in turn loaded with blood, graphite, petroleum jelly, and a variety of other materials I wanted to test.
A shot of air and out if flies! Either rupturing or, more often, opening on contact. Poof of dust! Splash of blood! So that worked okay.
I'm sure there was more, but I don't remember anymore.