Special effects

Mini animatronic eyes unit.
Practical mechanic effects.
This is one of the classic special effects
Many special effects I'd mastered are now practically ready for a museum. They're hardly used in films anymore.
It's a shame, actually. Because when I first started, I was really getting into it and even managed to create anatomical eyes 1cm in diameter.

Before 3D computer special effects became available, stop-motion techniques were widely used.
I also delved into this and succeeded in making silicone doll heads. The heads were the size of a chicken egg, and you could experience different facial expressions by turning a screw. The masks were very finely finished and made in such a way that there was no seam in the cast.
I developed a special mold for this.

I used to believe that you could only create something seamless with high-pressure injection molds. But I can prove them wrong with my technique, which also works without CNC milling metal or aluminum molds.
For me, this was quite an expensive undertaking, searching for the perfect molding technique that doesn't create seams. But I'm happy for myself that I succeeded.

Tomatina.
A hybrid special effects animation.
Once created for a short film.
A small cherry tomato is photographed and then edited on the computer. With software to control lip-sync, you could perform different expressions.
2D animation that ultimately looks like 3D

Apple through Glass
At first glance, you might think this image of an apple through the glass has been photoshopped or 3D-edited. But that's not the case. I like to take photos with minimal, if any, use of photoshop or other computer editing.

With the right lighting settings and the necessary environmental effects, you can achieve a lot...

Of course, I've also learned with some software like After Effects.
It's ideal for use not only with films but also for achieving special effects you can't achieve with Photoshop. You can also create nice graphics and some 3D edits and sketches with it.

Another experiment: taking photos from a clay model and transforming it into a 3D object, using a familiar file format like OBJ, etc.
It's quite fun, as such files are also usable in After Effects and other animation software
for an extra vibrant effect.

Macro Hard soldering for stop-motion armatures.
Some parts absolutely need to be soldered to the ball-joint skeleton of a stop-motion figure.
This isn't easy. If you overheat, the ball bearings wear out even faster, causing many problems during film production.
It's understandable that 3D animated films can save a significant amount of work, while stop-motion techniques have become less attractive.In the image below I was working on making a movable stop-motion upper lip and eyebrows.

Special effects created with After Effects, motion tracking on a video clip.
Originally, there was no real smoke or fire, no real bullets,
no film blood or broken glass.

the yellow you see is beeswax and will later be removed from this mold when it is filled and hardened with a filler like the photo on the left of the inner mold

A narrow inner area where preparations are made with thin nylon mats for the final silicone mask. The nylon mats will be placed in the intermediate layer of the silicone mask after filling the mold. Thin wire can then be threaded through them to connect them to an actuator.

Space is provided in the skull to house a small housing for several mini actuators, each connected by a wire to a part of the face. This can then trigger certain emotions in facial expressions.

It wasn't easy to find a suitable silicone that actually felt real,
and of course, looked real.
However, after a lot of practice and learning to mix silicone with a special collor,
I finally found something. Too little dye made it undetectable, and too much made the silicone porous. Meanwhile, the first test silicone masks are already 20 years old, and they still feel great... as if they were made yesterday.

Attach hair to the silicone mask, this is done hair by hair for lifelike results.The small square holes are openings for inserting interchangeable eyes. This allows you to draw a pupil on a series of eyes, each time it's in a different position. For stop-motion, this is a way to play back a series of photos in rapid succession, making the pupil appear to move.

This metal upper lip fixture goes through the cast skull. The lip is clamped in a ball joint and can be moved over it later, once the mask is in place, and will maintain the shape in the desired position.

Forehead view, those little square holes are for the interchangeable eyes, and the holes in the eyebrows also accommodate such parts as the movable metal upper lip