Interior Bio Lab. This was a secret government lab where the talking guinea pigs were developed. It centers on a "Habitrail" where our heroes live and train. It was all made of discarded cases and cargo modules. And a LOT of junk.
Interior Bio Lab. View showing training simulator and wind tunnel. Yes, a wind tunnel. There was a bionic fly...
Interior Bio Lab. Reverse view.
Interior Bio Lab. This is the opposite side of the Habitrail and includes the human portion of the lab.
Interior Bio Lab. The human portion of the lab. This was built in an old warehouse on 6th Street in Los Angeles which is the usual location for secret government labs in Hollywood. No kidding, you see this place all the time.
This was a chunk of fuselage that eventually became our pint-sized guinea pig gym in the lab. Each of these modules was a tiny set in and of itself and had to stand up to being filmed at close quarters.
Another view of the future gym.
Finished Bio-Lab critter gym.
Finished Bio-Lab critter gym.
Interior Biop-Lab, Habitrail. Darwin's home massing model. Darwin is the point of view character for the show and this is where he lives in the Bio-Lab. It was made from a military cargo pod. Modeled in SketchUp.
Interior Biop-Lab, Habitrail. Darwin's home working set. The cargo pod is the green plastic and aluminum outer structure. The rest is kitbashed from dead tech and salvage. We elaborated as we went since we found stuff while digging for other stuff.
Interior Biop-Lab, Habitrail. Darwin's home working set close up. The cargo pod is the green plastic walls in the background.
Interior Biop-Lab, Habitrail. Simulator Pod. This had to be built because so much had to wild. It is a simulator for a tiny motorcycle built from game console parts and stereo components.
Modeled in SketchUp.
Interior Biop-Lab, Habitrail. Simulator and wind tunnel. Remember, there is a bionic fly (don't ask). He trains in the wind tunnel. The actual wind tunnel was kitbashed from plex tubing and a ventilator fan. Modeled in SketchUp.
Interior Biop-Lab, Habitrail. Wind tunnel. I measured and modeled each piece of real-world kitbash and figured the unit out by building it in SketchUp first. We added gak to the basic unit as it was built.
Interior Biop-Lab, Habitrail. Simulator, working set. The screens were practical, also the little motorcycle in the middle (my first experience with 3D printing). That had to move and shake too. Basically, our guinea pig was the only CG thing in the set.
Interior Biop-Lab, Habitrail. Simulator, working set.
Interior Biop-Lab, Habitrail. Wind tunnel, working set.
Interior Biop-Lab, Habitrail. Speckles' lab, working set. Freckles was our intelligent mole, cum mad scientist. He also turns out to be the villain. He is a tech genius and this is his workspace.
Interior Biop-Lab, Habitrail. Speckles' lab, working set. This was built inside an aircraft cargo pod turned on its side.
Interior Biop-Lab, Human Lab. Speckles' workstation, working set. The 3D-printed console's center section and screen were replaced by CG inserts so our mole could interact with them. The rest was as-is.
This oversized cabbage case became our pop-up workstation for the human part of the lab. We sawed it up, reinforced it, added an interior to hide the reinforcements, and fabricated the jacks and pistons to hold the roof.
Interior Biop-Lab, Human Lab. Workstation concept. I measured the case and mocked it up in SketchUp before turning it over to my set designer to make drawings.
Interior Biop-Lab, Human Lab. Workstation concept. Yes, we dressed the interiors. So much was fabricated we needed a way to figure out what needed to be built and what could be bought.
Interior Biop-Lab, Human Lab. Workstation, finished set.
Interior Biop-Lab, Human Lab. Workstation, interior concept, and dressing.
Interior Biop-Lab, Human Lab. Workstation interior finished set.
Interior Biop-Lab, Human Lab. Clean room, concept #1. There is a walk and talk in the film, set in a clean room that has been mothballed. I include a number of the unused concept renders for this. Modeled in SketchUp.
Interior Biop-Lab, Human Lab. Clean room, concept #1. We started with the idea that the clean room should look like a, well, clean room...
Interior Biop-Lab, Human Lab. Clean room, concept #2. Ok, so the clean room DOESN'T look like a clean room. That was too boxy. This unit would have had structural support columns underneath. The legs would be dummy units to keep down costs.Modeled in Sket
Interior Biop-Lab, Human Lab. Clean room, concept. Another view of the same. Modeled in SketchUp.
Interior Biop-Lab, Human Lab. Clean room, concept #3. At one point the walk-and-talk sequence got longer, so this is an extended version of the cleanroom. When they saw how much it cost, THAT went away. Modeled in SketchUp.
Interior Bio-Lab, Human Lab. Clean room, final concept. Boxy works when it's cheap...
Welcome to Hollywood.
Interior Biop-Lab, Human Lab. Clean room exterior. Finished set.
Interior Biop-Lab, Human Lab. Clean room Interior final concept. Modeled in SketchUp.
Interior Biop-Lab, Human Lab. Clean room Interior working set.
Interior Biop-Lab, Human Lab. Clean room Interior final concept. Modeled in SketchUp.
The script called for training machines for the critters and one was a bunch of stomping feet the guinea pigs had to negotiate. This was the only machine that made it in the end and we put it in the clean room. Modeled in SketchUp.
Interior Biop-Lab, Human Lab. Clean room Interior working set. The walking machine is on the right. Yes, it worked on camera and it was pretty hysterical.
Interior Sabre Mansion Basement and Supercomputer. Preliminary massing model. Mr. Sabre is the supposed bad guy. He is an industrialist who makes smart appliances that reconfigure themselves into lethal robots. Modeled in SketchUp.
Interior Sabre Mansion Basement and Supercomputer. Preliminary massing model. The computer room is on the left, the tubes are a greywater filter, and the boxes are power inverters for the wind turbines and solar arrays on the roof. Modeled in SketchUp.
Interior Sabre Mansion Basement and Supercomputer. Preliminary massing model. The filter is on the right, the inverters are on the left, and the computer room is ahead. Green energy and electric cars were a big part of the show. Modeled in SketchUp.
Interior Sabre Mansion Basement and Supercomputer. Preliminary massing model. Reverse shot looking toward the basement entry. Spoiler alert, this all gets blown to smithereens by a tiiiiny claymore mine.
Interior Sabre Mansion Basement and Supercomputer. Preliminary massing model, POV shot. Modeled in SketchUp.
Interior Sabre Mansion Basement and Supercomputer. Preliminary massing model POV shot. The thin line in the foreground is the trip-wire for the claymore. Our heroes lure a Terminator appliance to trip the claymore and blow the basement up.
Interior Sabre Mansion Basement and Supercomputer. Work breakdown. The budget got cut in the first month (SOP for Disney) so, for the rest of the project everyone fought over money. We broke down each set by department responsibility to avert bloodshed.
Interior Sabre Mansion Basement and Supercomputer. Finished set. Roughly a POV looking toward the entrance.
Interior Sabre Mansion Basement and Supercomputer. Finished set. Roughly a POV looking toward the computer room. The big red thing is the computer. Speckles, the real bad guy, has a secret control room in the computer. Whole other set.
Interior Sabre Mansion Basement and Supercomputer. A screen grab from the show with the robot in place. The thin horizontal line in the FG is the tripwire. The guinea pigs and the robot are CG. DUH.
Interior Sabre Mansion Demolished Basement. Preliminary massing model. The same set, but we changed out a wall for one with a hole in it and redressed it with junk and ruined concrete units made from foam. Modeled in SketchUp.
Interior Sabre Mansion Demolished Basement. Preliminary massing model looking toward the computer. We changed out the windows for the computer room with broken glass. Modeled in SketchUp.
Interior Sabre Mansion Demolished Basement. Wilding and FX plan. This set still had to be shot, and even with a Techno Crane pieces had to move out of the way. A large part of my work was figuring out who did what and how things came apart or worked. Mode
Interior Sabre Mansion Demolished Basement. Finished set. All the concrete is foam. DUH.
Interior Sabre Mansion Demolished Basement. Finished set. All that work for a pile of junk.
Interior Sabre Mansion Basement Supercomputer. Preliminary concept #1. This was based on what was then Cray's latest design. It became the springboard from which we developed the actual computer. Modeled in SketchUp rendered in Vue.
Interior Sabre Mansion Basement Supercomputer. Preliminary concept #2. This was based on SGI's latest. Modeled in SketchUp rendered in Vue.
Interior Sabre Mansion Basement Supercomputer. Preliminary concept #3. A take based on a module from IBM's massive Big Blue. Modeled in SketchUp rendered in Vue.
Interior Sabre Mansion Basement Supercomputer. Preliminary concept #4. This is what the Cray morphed into. Modeled in SketchUp rendered in Vue.
Interior Sabre Mansion Basement Supercomputer. Preliminary concept #4a. By this time, the signature color for Saber Industries Products had changed into Ferrari red, so I rerendered and this is what we stuck with. Modeled in SketchUp rendered in Vue.
Interior Sabre Mansion Basement Supercomputer working set. The chrome strips are adhesive-backed, chrome finish, automotive trim from Pep Boys ($20.00 a roll)!
Exterior, LEO, SabreSat. Preliminary concept model. This was the satelite that helped control the terminator appliances. As far as I know, VFX just took my model and retextured it for the film, it was that good a match. Modeled in SketchUp.
Exterior, LEO, SabreSat. Preliminary concept model. Underside. My first pass was kind of flat, since most satelites don't have much fule storage, but the director wanted something deeper. This was the version he liked.
Modeled in SketchUp.
Exterior, LEO, SabreSat. Preliminary concept model. Detail. Modeled in SketchUp.
Exterior, LEO, SabreSat. Concept illustration. The director saw this version and asked for the deeper version shown above. Modeled in SketchUp, rendered in Vue.
Interior Mobile Command Center. Working set, intact. This set sat on a motion base AND was rigged to crush. And it had to do a reset in 24 hours.
Interior Mobile Command Center. Working set, intact. I roughed this out, gave it to my set designer and spent the rest of my time working all the mechanics with SFX and stunts. Shown with pyro boxes open for loading.
Interior Mobile Command Center. Working set, crushed. The back doors had to pop open on cue as the set was lifted by a huge robot and crushed. All at the same time. When I finished this I crawled into bed for a week.
What happens when Jerry Bruckheimer makes a kid’s film (Not a joke. Really.)? G-Force was a feature film described by our director as “Bionic Guinee pigs saving the world from terminator appliances.” That is a completely un-sarcastic description of the story. Honest. It is also completely accurate. I was hired as the number three man in the art department and it was the biggest thing I had yet done as an art director. I was the guy responsible for “tech”. Any gadget, vehicle, or FX set landed in my lap. The mechanical and digital effects were the easy part. Many of our sets were scaled for creatures only six inches high. Not only did we kit bash them out of re-tasked junk but anything we built or painted had to hold up being shot from three inches away with a macro lens. No cheating allowed. That was the hard part. I spent a lot of time digging through junk piles and holding up dead tech saying things like ‘This looks like a supercomputer built by a mole, right?’
