View Full Version : ThumbWars and others-SFX, Or HOW DEY DO DAT?


Jeff Patnaude
January 31st, 2005, 10:38 AM
I recently purchased "Thumbwars" and "Thumbtanic" on DVD.
It's a lot of fun.
I have my own ideas, but thought I'd ask others out there that may have seen any of his "thumb" series...
How did they do the eyes and mouth?
seperate camera, yeah, okay. Split screen..yeah...
Was it After Effects? Looks like the eyes and mouth were tracked to the thumbs.

Anyone out there have insider info?

Thanks,

Jeff Patnaude

Rob Lohman
February 3rd, 2005, 04:10 AM
After a bit of googling:

http://www.theochannel.com/InsaneO/Thumbs/thumbwars/
(production -> behind the scenes)

http://www.paradoxproductions.com/thumbtanic.html

That's the best I could do in a short time. Looks like a pretty large
crew who made it all, so they probably had access to all kinds of
special effects software.

Also most discs in the thumb series (Thumb Wars, Thumbtanic,
The Blair Thumb Project) seem to have commentaries on the DVD's,
so that might explain stuff as well.

There's even a thumb collection box: http://www.playusa.com/playusa.asp?page=title&r=R1&title=111338

Jeff Patnaude
February 3rd, 2005, 11:52 AM
Thanks Rob,
I had our animator look at some of the clips on the O Entertainment website.
What he said was that with something like After Effeccts Pro, you can put a spot on the thumb, and have it track along a clip. And then adding the elements of the eyes and mouth, say maybe by using a camera shot of an actor doing the lines and split into two tracks. This would loose the nose and enlarge the eyes/mouth parts andd retain the expressions. A little color corection would help soft-matting the elements. onto the skin colored charactor.

Funny stuff.

Thanks again,

Jeff Patnaude