The Doll Forum

Mr Franz, my hats tipped to you sir! Very nice work.

maddmatter70 wrote:Mr Franz, my hats tipped to you sir! Very nice work.

Thanks! Us tired old producers have to amuse ourselves somehow.

Your videos are wonderful, Mr Franz. I think my favorites so far are Lil Elvis in Concert and Have You Seen Chic Chic - both pretty mesmerizing and I can only imagine the time that goes into producing them. Also really like the Star Trek piece. How did you get the word "Strip" to appear on the anti-textile phaser?

Shadowplay2 wrote:Your videos are wonderful, Mr Franz. I think my favorites so far are Lil Elvis in Concert and Have You Seen Chic Chic - both pretty mesmerizing and I can only imagine the time that goes into producing them. Also really like the Star Trek piece. How did you get the word "Strip" to appear on the anti-textile phaser?

Thanks, Shadowplay! Almost all of the vids on my channel started out as GIFs for the Cat C photo challenge. Turning them into videos is just a matter of loading them into my video editor, adding a sound track and tweaking things here and there. Length of production varies greatly. I've spent as little as an hour start to finish and as much as several days on the more complicated pieces.

The Star Trek parody was one of the more complex efforts, combining elements of stop motion, green screen, computer graphics and animation. I use no sophisticated software though, just basic things available to most people. The graphic on the phaser screen for instance was done with the text editor included in the paint program installed on most Windows PCs. Use that for my green screening as well. I'm a bit old school when it comes to FX and still do most of my work manually.

The tools may be basic but that's quite a skill set you have, Mr Franz. I watch your videos and am reminded of the better short animation videos that used to run on Saturday Night Live back in the day. Really enriches the experience of perusing TDF.

Shadowplay2 wrote:The tools may be basic but that's quite a skill set you have, Mr Franz. I watch your videos and am reminded of the better short animation videos that used to run on Saturday Night Live back in the day. Really enriches the experience of perusing TDF.

Well thanks again. I remember those, back when SNL was actually funny.. or at least when I was young enough to appreciate it the humor!

The clip below was my first attempt at blending animation with live action video. We were making a Si-Fi parody and needed some little green men. I originally tried using Poser, but couldn't quite master it. So I actually ended up creating them with the Sims2 matrix. Sadly, we never finished the film. Production got put on hold while we worked on other projects and we ended up closing shop a few years later without ever having completed it.

Mr Franz, you have such a unique and great sense of humor.
I always enjoy your posts.

justintime wrote:Mr Franz, you have such a unique and great sense of humor.
I always enjoy your posts.

Thank you kindly!

What a gem! Cracked me up, the co-pilot's first reference to outrunning meteors, her voice dripping with sarcasm. Wonderful visual effects and yes, that one would fit right into a SNL episode, circa 1982. It's easily as good as anything from that show back then - held my rapt attention from start to finish. I'm going to dip into your video collection more often, and whenever I need a laugh.

Shadowplay2 wrote:What a gem! Cracked me up, the co-pilot's first reference to outrunning meteors, her voice dripping with sarcasm. Wonderful visual effects and yes, that one would fit right into a SNL episode, circa 1982. It's easily as good as anything from that show back then - held my rapt attention from start to finish. I'm going to dip into your video collection more often, and whenever I need a laugh.

Thanks so much! If you liked that, you should have saw the scene where they combined a walk behind lawn mover with a toilet to make a car! Sadly, the video footage was lost in the shuffle when we shut down. All that's left is this pre-production still. I still remember Flopnorps line when he first encountered the toilet. "Hey look... it's a Fartmaster 200! Haven't seen one of those in years."
Incidentally, my long standing history of using whatever I find lying around as a prop shows in that clip. Their flying saucer is a 1960 Corvair hubcap!

Nice! I love this channel.

xlliu wrote:Nice! I love this channel.

Thank you, sir!

Lol interesting and creative!

FrontierFox wrote: ↑Mon Feb 05, 2024 5:48 am Lol interesting and creative!

Thanks!