Friday, August 8, 2008

Just CGI It!

Last month I was wondering how I was going to achieve my desired broken windshield special effect.

I visited PJ's Trick Shop in Arlington Heights after learning they had broken glass gags for sale.

Hmm, it looks a little too "jokey"


Not very big...


Well, let's try and put it on the car. Please note that the following pics are of my rear window, as the windshield this morning was covered in morning dew. When I tested this out a couple weeks ago, I used my windshield, but neglected to take a picture.


Yes, not big at all. And the creases in the plastic look more like cracks than the cracks themselves.


You want a closer picture of this?


I still had another option. I had a discarded cracked windshield from an auto glass store. I took it from where it was leaning against my garage and set it on the ground for the night. You may or not may know this, but windshields are curved. When I came out the following morning, the weight of the curved glass not resting on the ground had snapped the windshield into two pieces. I pulled on the windshield a bit and got a small shard of glass stuck in my finger. YOWCH.

I was a little glad that the windshield was unusable. I had not wanted to try and lay it on the rental car.

So, as Freida Bee had suggested in a comment on my previous windshield post, we'll probably add the cracks in digitally.

Here's a pic my friend Lance quickly whipped up for me as an example:


Wow, what *can't* CGI do?

Don't like your job? CGI it!
Don't like your family? CGI it!
Don't like your president? CGI it!

9 comments:

Doc said...

I read somewhere that before the days of CGI, film crews would use a powerful airgun to shoot large balls of vasoline against the glass to create the cracks.

Doc

Splotchy said...

NOW you tell me.

We have a perfectly fine vaseline ball airgun in our attic that I could have used.

Dale said...

My whole blog is CGI'd.

Timothy Donavan Russell said...

I still think you should have used the fake-baseball-stuck-in-windshield gag and had them crash into a baseball factory.

Randal Graves said...

Wow, I used to prefer the old school special effects to all this fancy computerizin', but a new President AND family?

Falwless said...

Hahahahaha, I think you shoulda used the jokey broken glass.

Seriously, how sorry is that little gag? Wow.

Freida Bee said...

Awesome!

domboy said...

I regularly retouch people in my mind while I'm talking to them. This is the first time I've said it out loud.

Anonymous said...

Does the guy on the gag window package look worried because of the broken glass or because his head is on fire? That's right, I ask the hard questions.