The Lonesomest Ranger

[largento]

With 2018 starting, it's time for me to make another short and it looks like I'm doing a parody of the Lone Ranger. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time now. I've reached the point that I'm really just making these for myself, so I'm not worried about trying to find an audience anymore. :-)

 

I've got an enormous amount of work ahead of me, but I think it's going to be fun creating stuff for the Old West. Here's some of the progress so far...

 

 

 

 

 

[Rodney]

Nice. Great idea.

You know I'll be here in the audience.

 

 

I've a feeling westerns are due for a comeback soon so you may be ahead of the power curve.

[robcat2075]

Fine looking work, Mark!

[itsjustme]

Great stuff, Mark!

[steve392]

Good looking character and I really like the renders good stuff Mark

[Fuchur]

Looks really great .

 

Best regards

*Fuchur*

[detbear]

Very Cool Mark. Looks great!!

[John Bigboote]

I'll keep an eye on this... old-western time-period stories are a favorite... really loved 'million ways to die in the west' with Seth MacFarlane and currently watching 'Godless' mini-series... saloons and whorehouses! You could have a hotel/barbershop called 'Bed, Bath, and be -----.'

[robcat2075]

Mark,

 

in Post #29 in this thread is a video that covers how to get A:M's EXR depth buffer into After Effects as we were wondering about at Live Answer Time today...

https://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=43473&p=377728

[largento]

Thanks, Robert. Sounds like the fix I'm looking for.

[largento]

 

Some more progress...

[Rodney]

hehe! Nice!

Silver never looked better.

[itsjustme]

Nice!

[John Bigboote]

Great horse... a horse like that makes me think you have some silly or outlandish locomotion planned for his walk, gallop etc.... something that defies logical horsemanship. My eye is drawrn to the bottom of his torso where the predictable roundness flattens-out... don't know if it is good or bad.

[largento]

A bit of an update. Working on "Stubtoe." Finally found the hook I wanted for the script and am writing it.

 

[Rodney]

Nice likenesses.

 

"Stubtoe"

 

 

Okay, that officially has me curious.

 

 

I can't help but note that your rendering could (at least theoretically) be reduced significantly by this being in black and white (grayscale).

[largento]

Thanks, Rodney.

 

Didn't think it would be mysterious...

 

Tonto=Stubtoe

 

:-)

[Rodney]

No... I got THAT part.

I'm just saying with a name like 'Stubtoe'...

[Wildsided]

You could have Tonto be Canadian and call him Toronto-nto

[largento]

Jay Silverheels actually was Canadian. He got the nickname when he was a Lacrosse player. They called him Silverheels Smith.

[largento]

I've had more freelance work than normal for the last few weeks, which has curtailed some of my movie energy, but last night, I decided to tackle installing the 2008 rig into the LR model.

 

When I first seriously began working with A:M in 2007, by far the biggest obstacle for me was rigging. It scared the pants off of me. I struggled with it greatly and the install rigs seemed far too daunting to even attempt. I made a deal with Mark S. to rig my Wannabe Pirates characters and he did a terrific job of it.

 

Since then, I've largely gotten by with simple rigging, but the cumulative effect of all those attempts is I now looked at the installation of the 2008 rig as something not so scary and indeed, I actually felt confident while I was doing it.

 

So, if you're in the place I was and rigging is an obstacle to you, don't worry, with perseverance, you'll get it.

 

It took me around 3 hours, but I wasn't in a hurry and I gotta' say, it's nice having a full rig at my disposal again.

 

[largento]

[Shelton]

Great job Mark!! Looking forward to all this.

[John Bigboote]

Looking good! I like the Canadian Tonto idea... Dan- make it Tontoronto! I see you went with the 2008 rig, does it have a good feet-to-the-floor binding system?

[largento]

Thanks, guys! Matt, not sure what you mean by feet-to-the-floor binding system, but there is a sample model in the install folder that you can test out to see if you like it. I don't think there's a setting to stick the feet to the floor, but they are set not to pass below 0 on the y-axis, so the knees will bend if you try to push the model downward. My Wannabe Pirates models were rigged with the 2008 rig, so it's familiar to me.

[largento]

The villain of the piece!

 

Butch Cavendish was played on the TV series by Glenn Strange who also played the Frankenstein monster in House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula and Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.

 

 

[Rodney]

That guy is obviously up to no good.

He's even got a black hat. Dastardly.

He definitely looks the part... and I'm sure I've seen him before.. maybe on Bonanza!

 

Looking very good Mark!

 

Aside: This is probably by design or maybe it's just the angle... his forearms look overly long.

Maybe it's because his knees are bent and that makes his lower legs look shorter?

The lighter color from the forearm to hand on left arm might be placing extra emphasis there also.

If he's got a boot gun any extra length in the arms would certainly help him get to shootin' faster.

Press on. Press on!

[largento]

He definitely looks the part... and I'm sure I've seen him before.. maybe on Bonanza!

 

 

 

Strange played the bartender on Gunsmoke for 12 years.

[Wildsided]

I was gonna suggest giving him a dick dastardly curly moustache, but then remembered he was more varmint than a dastardly gentleman.

[Rodney]

Strange played the bartender on Gunsmoke for 12 years.

 

 

Ah! Yes, that's the ticket!

Sorry to see he's gone to the dark side.

He always seemed like such a good guy.

 

 

Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein

 

That was a great movie.

I need to watch that one again ASAP.

That and Abbot and Costello go to Mars... or was it the moon...

They don't make 'em like that anymore.

[largento]

 

It was Abbott & Costello Go to Mars, but they don't actually go to Mars, they go to Venus. I loved the Abbott & Costello monster movies when I was young.

[largento]

I've gone down a bit of a rabbit hole, but I'm having fun immersing myself in Lone Ranger stuff.

 

I found some interesting stuff about the transition from radio to TV. The worry was that the TV show would come off seeming small and limited because the radio show could do virtually anything they wanted to do. Herds of buffalos, trains, calvary, etc. just required some clever sound effects and narration.

 

As an attempt of limiting the radio program, the 1948 storylines found the Lone Ranger and Tonto sticking around one town. This went in tow with a marketing promotion called "The Lone Ranger Frontier Town." The four individual sections of the map could be purchased for a Cheerios box top and a dime. They came with pop-out buildings and landmarks that could be assembled and placed on the map. Additional buildings were available from the backs of 9 special boxes of Cheerios.

 

The completed town was 52"x40" (each section being 26"x20") and kids could use it to visually see the locations on the radio program.

 

 

This extended to the TV show, whose first three episodes (shot together as an origin story, that could have been released as a movie if the pilot wasn't picked up) retold the Frontier Town storyline and featured many of the same names and locations.

 

I thought it would be fun to try to recreate the model in 3D and use it as an inside joke in my parody. It's turned into an enormous amount of work. :-)

 

In the real world, it would have been much easier to put together the pop-out models that came with the maps. The kid didn't have to cut them out. Doing it digitally, it's a pain, because they required bleed on the print (to account for shifts on the press) and the trimlines and fold lines are in most cases invisible. Not to mention, the images I've found of the sheets are fairly small. The Cheerio box images were a good bit easier, since cut lines and fold lines were clearly marked on them.

 

I think I started on Friday, but even after working on it all weekend and yesterday, I've barely made a dent in it! I've placed all of the models from the Cheerios boxes (28 of them) and completed the pop-out models from the northeast section (another 11 models), but I still have the pop-out models for the other three sections.

 

I can only imagine how cool something like this would have been for a kid in 1948 ...assuming they had someplace they could put it. :-)

 

Anyway, here's my progress so far...

 

 

 

[Wildsided]

That's mint Mark. Are you going to get super Meta and have the model town in the town that is itself a model of the model town?

[largento]

Thanks, Dan. That was definitely the initial idea.

 

The idea being to show them using the map to make their plans and having a bunch of parody Cheerio boxes around, like the badguy sent off for it and put it together himself.

 

I think for the actual movie, I'll have to make a sort of condensed comic version of it, because the actual Frontier Town map is crazy complicated and spread out. :-)

 

I'm still going to finish the real one, though, because I think it's cool to have a 3D version of it. It'll be fun to do a kind of flyaround/turnstile of it when it's completed. I'm assuming there aren't very many "complete" real ones that people can look at.

[Rodney]

That's great stuff Mark!

 

I'd think that might have garner some interest outside of normal channels as well.

[largento]

That's great stuff Mark!

 

I'd think that might have garner some interest outside of normal channels as well.

 

Thanks, Rodney! I posted about it on the Official Lone Ranger Fan Club Facebook page and got a "wow" reaction from Dawn Moore, Clayton Moore's daughter.

[largento]

Augh! Had a freelance job that beat me up for a few weeks, but I'm back in the saddle!

 

Just throwing this out there to see if anyone had a good argument either way.

 

My original plan was to do this in black and white. The Lone Ranger television program was black and white and even though the final season was shot in color, it only aired in black and white.

 

It's kind of weird, but though there were 221 total episodes shot, only 104 were put into syndication after the show ended. As best I can tell they didn't include the 39 color episodes, the 52 episodes with John Hart as the Lone Ranger and the first 26 episodes. The color episodes wouldn't resurface until 1973, when they were edited together as "Lone Ranger Movies" and syndicated separately. It wasn't until the 1980s that the rest of the episodes were made part of syndication.

 

But I can't help but think color would be more vibrant, more enticing.

 

Currently, I can't render in color to show a comparison, but does anyone have a strong opinion? Should it be in Black & White? There are shortcuts that come with doing it in b&w and it would more look like the show. Or should I do it in Color? Nobody wants to see b&w anymore and it would make it more appealing to kids.

 

Thoughts?

[Rodney]

Of course, you must do... both.

How that shift from color to black and white would depend on how it best fits into your story.

The most obvious approach to that would be a vignette at the beginning and end in color with the middle in black and white but I suspect color could be used in a better way.

 

There are a lot of potential approaches and most wouldn't work well.

But if you think of color as a character in and of itself that will surely help.

I don't know enough about the plot of the story to make an educated guess.

 

Importantly, I do think you should render the whole thing in color... even if you end up presenting the final film in black and white.

It's easier to make a color presentation black and white than to make a black and white presentation color.

So if you ever need to have elements of it in color....

 

(I do like the black and white look!)

[largento]

I don't think this really lends itself to switching colors, unless there was some sort of framing device and I'm not really sold on that.

 

I do think there's a good reason to do it in b&w if it's going to be seen that way. A big issue with b&w is contrast and just converting color to b&w doesn't always get you the results you expected.

 

That said, color is far more appealing and my movies have seemed to have great appeal to young kids who respond much better to color.

 

I can see a value in going either way.

 

It's just a thought, though and I have some time before I have to commit.

 

[Wildsided]

Why not do best of both worlds (sort of) and go sepia? Then you at least have a range of orange and brown to play with. Or you could go Sin City with it and be black and white except for dramatic splashes of colour.

[largento]

Thanks, Dan! I think the Sin City suggestion answered my question, because my immediate thought was that it would be neat to do a Sin City parody, but that would be the only time to do that look, because I'd want the look to match.

 

I do want the look to match, so I think black and white is the way to go.

 

BUT... I could always do the poster in color. :-)

[robcat2075]

I remember it as a black and white show and think that would be appropriate.

 

Are you going to do it in 4:3?

[largento]

I thought about that when I did Amutt Time and decided to go with widescreen. It's a little weird seeing it that way, but not as annoying as having to watch 4:3, which would mean many people would stretch it out on their widescreen TVs, completely distorting everything. :-)

[largento]

 

 

[robcat2075]

That looks better than the show.

[John Bigboote]

I really like the look you have there... maybe populate it with some boulders and foliage here and there... Here is a grass model I use over-n-over if you would like to throw it in there. I want a credit.

Grass.mdl

[largento]

Thanks, Matt.

 

If I do, I'll come up with a credit like "Weed Supplier" :-)

 

That was kind of thrown together. I once again used my "only tree." That is the only tree I used in the Wobbling Dead. Drop it down where you can't see the trunk and it becomes bushes. :-)

 

A beauty thing about doing it in black and white is that ground texture could literally be anything.

 

Robert, there's some mystery surrounding the show's quality. I came across a story that was published a few days before production started on the show and it was touting that the show was going to be filmed on 35mm even if they had to provide 16mm versions of it to the television stations. ABC's "Telemen" were going to watch the dailies via a connection to a television, so they could see how the show looked and offer their "expert advice." :-) Unfortunately, only the 16mm films that were part of syndication have been used for video release and they were chopped versions of the originals. Given how poorly the property has been treated over the last few decades, I don't know if there's any chance that the original negatives exist and if they are even salvageable. If they did shoot the show on 35mm and the negatives were preserved, they could release a great looking version of the episodes, but there's no will or profit margin to make that happen. The only ray of hope is that it's currently owned by Universal Pictures, so they'd at least have the means to keep those reels if they are still around.

[Rodney]

Nice setup and render Mark!

If I could I'd put in a order for couple new seasons of your product.

 

The Lone Ranger might work better as an animated show anyway.

Although.... I keep expecting to see Disney/Marvel release all their classic cowboys "Kid Colt Outlaw", "Two Gun Kid", "Rawhide Kid" etc. any day now.

(Lots of 'kids' in those western comics!)

 

Years ago I spent some time drawing up some cartoon sketches of a few of those characters because I wanted to pitch the idea to Marvel.