DIY Foam Oven – Part II

As of yesterday, the "foam oven of doom" has had it's first successful trial run!

It ran for a total of 3 hours without catching fire or exploding, or something going horribly horribly wrong. 

Overall, I'm quite pleased with its performance.

Now for the tech stuff -- after a lot of testing, I found that with an 1,100 watt hot plate, I needed to set it to 'high' rather than the low or medium settings that I originally intended. Reason being -- the interval in which the heat cycles from on, then off, and on again, is too far apart (approx. 12min on low, 8 on medium) to maintain a constant temp. 'High' on the other hand, has a cycle of about 5 minutes, give or take.

With the plate going at such furious temperatures, I realized that the oven would need to be vented so that the heat would stay at an appropriate 160˚ – 190˚F range. 

I ended up cutting a 2 inch hole in the top for heat to escape (fig. 1). And repositioned the fan so that it sucked air in from the outside of the oven (fig. 2).

This arrangement not only facilitated convection, but also kept the oven temperature cycling steadily from a high of 190˚F to a low of 160˚F, and up again. 

This means the moulds were averaging 175˚F. 

I monitored all this with a cheap digital probe thermometer -- the probe itself was poked through the top of the oven close to the center for a general reading.

Finally, I finished it off with an old oven rack sourced from a junk shop (fig. 3). It didn't fit perfectly at first, so I had my uncle cut it down with a grinder. It was installed with 8 1.75in screws -- 4 on each side -- the rack can now support 20+ pounds with ease.

As you can see, a foam oven wasn't the 'easy weekend project' that I thought it would be. It's a ton of work, and problem solving, and testing.

But if this test is any indication, it could turn out to be quite useful. 

Just as an aside: I continually monitored this thing while it was running. And I noticed that the longer it ran, the "gap" in the temperature cycle started to close -- originally 160˚ – 190˚F eventually turned to 170˚ – 192˚F… after 3 hours mind you.

So, on a long enough timeline, I imagine the oven would get hotter than the 'foam-zone' -- obviously, not by a lot, but enough that I might have to make a minor adjustment to the vent system.

Overall, though, it seems to be shockingly consistent for a homemade hotbox.  

DIY Foam Oven

In times past, I've talked about casting puppets in foam latex. I've shown molds and sculpts, and even puppets that have failed miserably -- But I've never talked much about my actual foam running process.
So here it goes.
Up till now, I've always baked foam in a little twelve by twelve (by twelve) inch convection oven that looks something like this -- minus the pizza, of course.

I got it on sale from a local grocery store for $40, and have used and abused it for the better part of eight years -- it was basically "the little oven that could." 

Now, what it had in economical durability it obviously lacked in size. Thus, I have always struggled to make puppets, and the molds that hold them, small enough to fit that cramped space. I've molded things in pieces, severing head from torso -- I've molded things bent into "S" or "C" shapes, all to cut-down the overall volume of the piece (sometimes to the puppets' detriment). 

So after many years like this, I've finally run out of options. I was forced to either, price-out a new

industrial size oven (which is incredibly expensive) or build one from scratch.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, the FOAM OVEN OF DOOM!

It's not quite finished, as I'm sure you can tell -- as it stands now, it's in the "testing" phase. 

TECHNICAL STUFF: I made this from scrap plywood that I found around the house, thus, the overall size of the oven was dictated by the size of the board I used. However, under normal circumstances (that is without shoestring budget constraints) one would want to build their oven as large as possible so as not to impose size restrictions on future molds. 

That being said, I settled for interior dimensions of: 21" x 21" x 21". This will allow for a maximum mold size of one inch under the aforementioned dimensions (yes, "aforementioned dimensions" say that five times real fast).

After the boards were cut and assembled, I lined the inside with half-inch foil insulation that I got from the hardware store -- cost $9 – $11 depending where you get it -- And taped all the corners with foil tape -- $7.98.

The heat source will be a 1,100 watt hot plate -- cost $11.99.

Remember, a foam oven needs to accomplish two primary goals, 1) maintain a low heat setting of 160-180˚F.  and 2) distribute that heat evenly -- so you need a fan.

This was the first fan I bought… it melted on the first test and now I need another one. 

So always remember, cheap plastic fans MELT IN OVENS!!

For the next test, I'm going to reposition the fan away from the heat, instead of sucking it in. Which, if you all can learn from my mistake, more power to you -- what I've learned so far, is that it doesn't seem to matter what direction the fan is faced, if it's blowing left, or right, or down, or even straight across the surface of the hot plate, just so long as the air inside the oven moves around.

And for the last of the technical stuff -- I managed to get my hands on a few old oven racks. It's obvious what those will be used for -- but what I'm finding, is that the distance between the heat source and the mould is going to be a little tight; at about 7 -10 inches above the hot plate. Again, under normal circumstances, you'd probably want something like a foot, maybe a 16 inches, just so the mould isn't under so much direct heat.

Once everything is working, I'll be connecting the fan and hot plate to a power strip so they can be started simultaneously. 

Total (approximate) cost: $50. 

And if you add the $12 for hinges and misc. hardware -- $62.

Of course there were two fans in my case, so that would be: $77.

But as I said at the start, I already had some scrap wood, so that reduced my cost by about $13. 

New Short...

…coming soon…

Yes, it would appear that I'm in the process of finishing my first ever LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM!
I'm about 85% finished with the editing and am moving on with sound and music.
There will be a little animation in this as well -- can't give too much away, but I've been working on the armature and will be posting pics of the new foam oven that I have to build very soon.
With any luck, you'll be seeing the final cut on Youtube and Vimeo in just a short while. In the meantime, enjoy this little screen-grab of one of the finished scenes.

Stay tuned!

B.T.S. Baby

Here's a brief video showing the basic effects in "F for Formula".
Formula VFX Breakdown from Santino Vitale on Vimeo.
As you can see, all the effects were processed in After Effects -- extras like the arm holding the bear and spit-up were left out of the video for sake of time (and also, because I assumed them rather self-explanatory).
The film grain came from an online grain pack which you can find here at HolyGrain.
I'm quite pleased with the way it performs (all functioning though use of blending modes) it's quick and extremely customizable for the price -- though if I had more money to throw around, I'd definitely consider Cinegrain for it's wider variety of looks... or even Film Looks which at first glance, seems just as varied but for half the cost.
Anyway, product placement aside (I wish I got paid every time I said "After Effects") I'm pleased to report that I'll be submitting Orson to some film festivals here soon.
More info on that as it goes.
Also, I'll be moving forward on some new projects...... just as soon as I figure out what they are.

That's all for now.

Orson Finished -- "F For Formula"

After three months of puppet and prop making, 43 hours of animation, and about three weeks of post work (all working around the ol' day job) -- it's finally finished!

"F For Formula" a tribute/spoof of the classic "Yes, Always" tape:



You can also watch it on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/149995595

Behind the scenes soon to come.
WOOT

Orson Now In Post

 Yes, that's right folks, animation is finished and I'm about half done with post.
As with most of my work, I tend to make a heck of a lot of work for myself later, by not doing much actual 'on set' work at the time of shooting (like how I opted to shoot entirely on green screen instead of building a set, as a result, I've ended up with a tangle of garbage masks that squirm like a bucket of maggots with restless leg syndrome).

Sure maggots don't have legs, but you get the idea.
Anyway, this method of madness may seem counter productive to some, but I can say with absolute confidence that it does have many benefits.
One that sticks out above all others -- flicker removal.
I've never really had much trouble with flicker. At least not crazy, flashing flicker. I always had the subtle stuff, the stuff you really only see in the shadows. And the big advantage to shooting green screen, is that once the background is keyed out and replaced, the puppet is the only thing in the shot that has it, so it's easy to fix.

Now, as I said, I never used to have that much trouble with it before, but since my upgrade to a DSLR, flicker has presented itself kinda like this:


via GIPHY

So, what was I to do? Well, since flicker was contained to Orson only, I was able to isolate his layer and manually adjust the exposure to to compensate.
This worked fairly well for the big flashes, but the pulsing flicker was still present and quite undesirable.
After checking around the Stop-Mo forum, I found this thread on the subject. They all referenced  several different products, some cheap, some horribly expensive -- and everyone had a personal favorite.
So I wrote down the top three and started downloading all the free trials I could find.
None of them worked.
So, I searched some more and finally found this product from Digital Anarchy.

And may I just say what a lovely product FlickerFree is. It's good... It's really really good.
In combination with exposure adjustment to help the big lightning bolts, FlickerFree basically saved Orson's little life.
Now, the price is $149, and I'm cheap, so I still think it's a bit pricey. But for what you're getting, it is definitely worth it.
By the way, I would've posted a comparison video, to show shots before and after flicker reduction, but I'll be covering that as well as compositing, and other things in a short BTS video that I'm planning on releasing after the finished short.

Just a random pic of my workspace. As you can see, it's organized in a way that only appears to be messy. I used to keep all my production notes on hundreds of little pieces of paper that would inevitably get lost. Now I just write on every flat surface like a crazy person (or a mean-spirited toddler). And just so you know what a professional I am, that is NOT a chalkboard table, it's just a regular black table -- but that is a bistro marker, so it all kind of balances out.

Orson just looks on disapprovingly.

61 Seconds Down

…And about fifty (give or take) to go.

I'm happy about it, though, Orson is less enthusiastic -- he's been getting far more exercise than he bargained for. 

I'll admit, it has been taking much longer than originally anticipated. However, given the fact that I've only been able to animate during my off days, I'd say it's going pretty well. I did 23 seconds in 7 hours a couple weeks ago. And I managed 13 seconds in about 6 today.

Soon I'll be finished with the animation and it's off to post! I've been having a heck of a time with flicker and I imagine a great deal of After Effects time will be spent correcting the issue. 

I hope to have a 'short something' posted very soon.