Character Profiles

Drafting the Story

     Basically, I really liked the idea of doing picifcs. After reading several (most notably GR Crosscut’s) I became determined to do some arc-based stories that would incorporate humor, action and a dash of seriousness (or at least, whatever I could pass off as those things.)

     I went through a bunch of drafts, some of which I’d gone as far as saying "Ok, I’ll take the pictures for THIS one…" Finally, I decided on a title that would grab people’s attention (hopefully not the CIA’s attention, but I digress) and a story that would work well on it’s own as a contained series of events. I also wanted to foreshadow some things I had planned for future story arcs, so WMD was tied in with those. I also wanted to fit an epic battle in there too, which brings us to…

The Basement Battle

     I’ve noted that massive battles aren’t really done in picfics, so I made sure that I’d incorporate one in some way into whatever arc I decided to write. At first, I pictured a massive air and ground battle taking place; while that would have been positively awesome, there were a number of problems that prevented that from happening.

     Firstly, it would have required a lot of photoshopping. The sheer amount of it would slow down the production time, so that was a problem, particularly when it came to air battles. Each Transformer or Lego ship would have to be shot in front of a blue screen so they could be placed into frames later on. An aerial battle would have looked awesome, and I had one all planned out (there’s a reason we don’t see Omega Supreme on the ground in robot mode during the final version.)

     Then there was the little matter of the Lego forces having only one model of mech. For there to be a massive ground battle, it would also take large amounts of blue screen work, which I ended up finding out was more than alittle time consuming. Still, it was necessary to the story, and I couldn’t entirely chicken out on all the work, otherwise there’d be no massive battle. So, the decision was made to cut the aerial battle from the script and go with the fight on the ground. 25 Transformers were used, including Energon Megatron. It took roughly an hour to properly setup.

Taking the Pictures and Editing

     Taking pictures with my camera sucks; there’s no other way of putting it. If even the absolute slightest vibration touches the camera, then the picture goes all fuzzy and has to be retaken again. I use a professional photographer’s tripod to take most of the establishing shots, but due to where some of the scenes take place, I sometimes have to set the camera on the "floor" relative to whatever it is I’m taking the picture of, or sometimes bolstered up on a steady platform of Lego bricks. This is where most of the problems happen, since I can’t screw my camera into a Lego brick platform like I can with the tripod.

     Another tough problem was lighting. My camera can take good pictures in most kinda of light, but due to the colour of the walls in the basement, if I use normal incandescent or halogen lights, everything turns orangey yellow. I invested in a fluorescent work light, and that shows everything in bright, true colours. I still need to edit most pictures for brightness and contrast, but it’s not a major problem and normally takes less than 30 seconds to fix.

     Aside from fixing minor blurring and brightness problems, a lot of special effects have to be added in, otherwise you just end up with a bunch of Transformers and Lego mechs pointing at each other. All this is done with line and painting tools, and then running each laser blast or explosion through a filter. Blue screen shots are pretty much self-explanatory, but I don’t actually use a "blue" screen; instead I have a piece of fuzzy black matboard that I place objects I need to photograph in front of. When the picture is uploaded, all I need to do is cut out the object in PhotoShop.