When You're An Addams!

The newest Addams Family video is on it's way! The new total running time is 8 minutes and it will be out Oct. 21st instead of the 14th. It still features the same songs listed in the previous post. I have already started shooting the video and I think it gives a little more personality from each character than the theme song did. Especially Gomez, Wednesday and Morticia. I hope you all like it!

WHEN YOU'RE AN ADDAMS -OCT. 21

SEQUEL ANNOUNCEMENT!

Hello Everyone!

In December 2010, my family and I went to New York City for our 7th time to see The Addams Family Musical on Broadway. It was very funny, but not my favorite show I have ever seen. But I did like some of the songs in the show. So, for the 2011 season, I decided to add a video inspired by the musical. The video will be called "When You're an Addams", which is the opening song of the musical. The video will feature the songs:
"When You're An Addams"
"Just Around the Corner"
"One Normal Night"
"Move Toward the Darkness"

There will be the classic Addams characters from my original video as well as some new ones! The running time of the video is 10 minutes and it will be out October 14, 2011. Can't wait for everyone to see it!

Filming and Updates

I kind of forgot to post this! In my mind Addams Family was done and I forgot about the blog! So, on Sunday 10/10/10 I filmed the video. It was pretty basic, just moved the characters, took a picture, moved the characters, took a picture. Nothing really drastic happened, luckily. I used the 4 sets, but because it is such a short video, they were on and off quick! The video turned out very good and had the right look. Then I saved it and imported it to iMovie and enhanced the color and turned the first half black and white. So, I hope you all enjoyed it! Here is the link to the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkzyGG2iOVQ

Here is some updates and news:

I have decided to do a Thanksgiving video in November. It was a last minute decision, which is VERY unlike me because I have my videos planned over a year ahead of time. The video will be "I Will Survive" and it will be out November 10th.

Next up is that I have recently announced the 2011 Setlist:

UPDATE APRIL 2011

Surprise Video- May
Disney Celebration
Summer Movie- Winner Announced on Nov. 1st
Muppet Medley
When Your An Addams Medley
Frosty the Snowman- 20 minute special
Christmas Video- TBA


It says that the Summer Movie will be announced November 1st, but I will just announce it right now on my blog. My Summer 2011 Movie is (drumroll please)..


The Hunchback of Notre Dame!


Thanks to all who voted!


UPDATE: The Little Mermaid is the new movie. 


And here is the Christmas 2010 setlist:


We're A Couple of Misfits
Blue Christmas
No More Toymakers to the King
You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch
Santa Claus is Coming to Town




Also, some of you know last year, my last Christmas video was "Trim Up The Tree", which was ALL of my characters in one video. The song was copyrighted just a few days after I uploaded it, and my account was suspended. So this year I have decided to re-release it under a new song, which will be off Mariah Carey's new christmas album (which will be out November 2nd). I will listen to the album and decided which song to use. 


So that is basically it for updates! 


Thanks for reading my blog and I hope you enjoyed "The Addams Family"! 


This blog is now closed. 

Sets and Props!

Now that all the characters are done, I can start the sets! Usually, I do the sets and then the characters, but I was so anxious to start the characters, I switched it around. There are 4 sets in the video.

1. The Addams Mansion from the outside (Opening of the TV Show)
2. The inside (Count Von Count's Set from Sesame Street)
3. A Grand Staircase in the Housed
4. The Graveyard

I started with the first set, the mansion. For the Sets I bought Light Gray, Dark Gray and black paper. I used a light gray piece for the sky. I took a fan paint brush and lightly painted dark gray areas on the Light Gray paper. Then I started drawing the mansion on the dark gray paper with a pencil and a ruler. Once I was done drawing and checked it over, I traced it in sharpie. The house took me about 45 minutes to make. Then I glued the house on the background and added 2 black scary trees.

The next set was the Grand Staircase. I used a dark gray background and light gray paper for the stairs. The set was a darker replica of my Beauty and the Beast set from Disney Extravaganza (May 2010). **This is not the first time I have made a replica of one of my sets. In Hercules, one of Hades' sets is a Forrest with black trees and a path. This was set up the same way as Pocahontas's Autumn set in Disney Extravaganza** I cut out the stairs and glued them onto the set. Then I used the same fabric for the curtains as I used on Grandmama. Then I used the spiderweb fabric I used on Morticia as the scarps on top of the stairs. This gave it a spooky effect.

The last set I made was the Graveyard. I made a bunch of hills with a sharpie and drew some trees. Then I cut out gray tombstones for the graveyard.

**** HIDDEN ITEMS: The tombstones have the actual names of the actors/actresses who played the characters on the TV show. I only put the ones who are dead though. The Man who played Gomez (John Astin), Cousin Itt (Felix Silla), Wednesday (Lisa Loring) and Pugsley (Ken Weatherwax) are still alive. But the rest have passed away, so I put their name, birth year and death year on each tombstone. One person, however was a joke. Debbie Jellinsky (played by Joan Cusak) and is a psycho black widow in the Addams Family Values. She marries men and then kills them for there money and repeats the process. In the movie, she marries Fester and because he is an Addams, no matter how many times she tries to "accidentally" kill him, he never dies. Her plans end up backfiring and she ends up being electrocuted. 

I bought a wooden tree at Joann's and painted it black. I also bought a small tombstone to put on the floor of the set. It looked very good all together!

So all the sets were done. Now props. There were not many props for this video. I made Morticia some roses she could snip the heads off, a lightbulb for Fester, a cauldron for Grandmama, and a a few other Halloween things. That was it! I was ready to film the movie!

The next post will be here tomorrow! The video will be out on YouTube tomorrow as well!!!!

Finishing the Characters!

This weekend for my school district was a 4 day weekend. We had off on Friday for Superintendent's Conference Day, and Monday for Columbus Day. It was also homecoming weekend, so I was very busy with homecoming activities. During the the week (October 3-9) I finished up the last 3 characters.

The first character I made was Gomez. Gomez is the husband of Morticia and the father of Wednesday. Pugsley and Pubert. he wears a pinstripe suit and has black hair and a mustache. I started by making his suit. I cut out the fabric and wrapped it around his body and cut out a triangle on the area that would go on his chest. I glued the fabric on and made a tie out of black fabric. Then I wrapped his legs and wire arms in the pinstripe fabric. I painted his shoes and hair black and his face and hands flesh colored. Once the head was dry I painted on his pace with a toothpick and a sharpie. I attached all the parts and he was done!



Gomez's Body

 Next character was Grandmama. I looked at the picture of her from the Tv show and didn't think it would transfer to a clay character well. So I went to Charles Addams' cartoons. I thought his Grandmama was ugly (shown below). So I was on my own. I used the cartoons for her basic body clothes and shape. I used a purple clear spider web fabric for her shall and black underneath. After the head was dry I began making her face, I made her eyes small black dots with white dots, which made her look cute. Then I made her smile right underneath her nose. She looked perfect! Then I found the perfect frizzy white yarn in my box and I glued it to her head and she was done!

The Ugly Grandmama



My Grandmama (before her arms were added)

 Finally, the last character was Lurch. I used black fabirc for his suit and did the same steps as Gomez. In the movies, Lurch is a pale greenish color, so I mixed the flesh paint, light green, and gray together and painted his head and hands. Once his head was dry, I painted on his face. Lurch was very difficult to recreate. I did not get the face quite right. It was ok though. Then I added his hair, which was gray and black string. I attached all of his body parts and Lurch was done.

Lurch's Body and Head

The characters were done! All I had left was sets and props.

2 more posts are left in this blog! One will be about the sets and props, and the other will be about shooting.

The posts will be up this week and the video premieres on Saturday October 16th!

Wednesday on a Friday?

Last Friday I made Wednesday Addams (Morticia and gGomez's daughter). Even though her name is Wednesday, i made her on a Friday, buts that's okay because her full name is Wednesday Friday Addams. LOL! She is a fairly simple character and I started her off by painting her hands and face skin colored and her legs and shoes black. I wanted her to look cute, so I didn't want to paint her face like a realistic human face, I wanted her to look more like the Charles Addams cartoons. That is exactly what I did. I made her have small black eyes thin black hair. She wears a back dress and I simply just used black fabric and put buttons on with white paint and a toothpick. Then I attached her arms and Wednesday was done!

Wednesday in Painting Stages

Next I made Thing. This was the easiest of all the characters because Thing is just a disembodied hand! I just painted the clay hand skin colored and glued him a a base and he was done!

Next was Pubert. In the 2nd post it explains that Pubert was the baby of Morticia in the 1993 Addams Family Values movie. He was also a simple character, I painted his body gray because that is the color of his baby clothes and his head and hands skin colored! After it was dry, I painted on his face, mustache and hair. Then I took a sharpie and made the buttons and spider on his clothes. Pubert was done!



The last character I will talk about today is Puglsey. Puglsey is the son of Morticia and Gomez and the brother of Wednesday. He is fat and always wears a white and black striped shirt. I wanted to make him look cute like Wednesday, so I used Charles Addams' cartoons to model him. But I don't like Charles Addams' hair on Puglsey. So I used the hair from the show. My dad and I could not find any black and white striped fabric with small enough stripes to work for Pugsley, so i got white and used a sharpie to stripe it.He was done!

Pugsley's body.

That is basically all I will say today! I uploaded the Trailer on to youtube yesterday where you can see some of the characters that I have made!

Characters left to do: Gomez, Lurch, Grandmama.

Morticia and More!

I have busily working on The Addams Family because I want to get it out as early as possible. I have learned from experience that it is not a good idea to release a holiday video on that holiday! For example, I released "Here Comes Peter Cottontail" on Easter day in 2009. The video barley got any views because people look up Easter songs in the first few weeks before Easter, not after. So it was up for one day and the next day everyone is over Easter and the video dies down and waits til next year. On Easter day 2010, Peter Cottontail got lots of views in the first couple weeks before Easter and then on Easter Day it got 3,000 views. The day after it got 200. So views drop dramatically after the holiday. I wanted The Addams Family to get a few good weeks before Halloween.

First I started off making all the clay characters out of Model Magic clay.

Top from left to right: Wednesday, Cousin Itt, Baby What, Thing, Fester, Gomez, Morticia (see next paragraph)
Bottom Row: Grandmama's Head, Pubert, Lurch's Head, Pugsley

I started by making Morticia. Morticia's dress is very iconic and i needed to get it perfect. For the most part, in the past, I have made dresses  that are very large and poofy at the bottom. Dresses like Belle, Tiana and Giselle are like this. It was very different making such a tight dress. I wrapped the dress in different ways than usual and folded and glued it down differently too. The very bottom of the dress has a circular area of frils and I cut out just that for the bottom. In the TV show, it took the actress 2 hours to get out of her costume. First she had to get the wig and makeup of her face. Then they took the frils off the bottom of her dress and unzipped it all the way up. It was very difficult to get out of and even more difficult to walk around in! I used a type of velvet to make her dress and I think it looked great! I painted her skin very light flesh color and made her arms out of wire. I attached a spider web fabric to her sleeves. The next day I added her hair. I used black yarn because I knew it would look good because I used it on Pocahontas. It looked very long and straight, which is how hers looks! Next I painted on the eyes with a toothpick. I looked at a picture of the movie version (Played by Angelica Houston) for the face.  She was done and I thought she looked great!

Morticia's Dress

Next I worked on Uncle Fester. He is a pretty simple character compared to Morticia. I started off by making his clothes. I cut out a black shall and glued it onto his body. Then I cut a strip of brown fun fur for his collar. Body done! Then I painted his face the pale skin color. Once it dried I made his eyebrows with a black sharpie. Then I painted dark purple circles around his eyes because Fester has deep,sunken-in eyes. Once that dried I painted on the eyes and made his smile. I wrapped his arms in the black fabric and attached everything and thought he was done. I put him next to Morticia and he was so small! His head was below her armpit!  So I showed him to my mom, who agreed he was too small. But she said that she remembered in the show, you could see his shoes. I looked back at Charles Addams cartoons and the pictures of the show and she was right! I quickly made short legs and feet out of clay and put them aside to dry.

Fester's Body

Finally I made Cousin Itt. Cousin Itt is one of my favorite characters, and in my head he was one of the easiest. I was wrong. I bought blond doll hair and started gluing it on with a hot glue gun. Naturally, there was wig hair everywhere. It was a mess. I would put a blob of glue on the top of his head and put the hair on it, but of course it stook up and I had to press it down, which caused me to burn my fingers on the hot glue. I got half way done and the hair was too thin. You could see the white model magic underneath and I would have to put another layer of hair on him. The plastic wig hair was melting and it was such a mess. I ripped it off his head, grabbed the whole pile of hair and threw it out. Starting over. I realized that the wig hair wasn't gonna work. I went through my craft box and found the perfect ball of yarn. I used it for Hera's hair in Hercules. The failure wig was bleach blond and straight. Cousin Itt's hair is more brownish- blond and wavy. This string was way better and looked even better. The one problem was I would cut about 10 pieces of hair, put a blob of glue on his head and then let it dry. These blobs started to add up and there was about 6 layers and the blob on top of his became a mountain of clear hot glue and it looked bad. I cut the blob off and made a new smaller blob and stuck all the hair to it quickly before it dried. Then I shoved his black bowler hat on his head and pressed down on it show the blob was compressed. It turned out pretty good and I put him aside.



The last thing I will write today is the making of Baby What. In the previous post, it explains who he is. I was about 2 1/2 cm tall and obviously the string and glue would be to difficult to to do on that small of a body. So I mixed paints together to make the right color and painted him. Once it was dry I used a brown sharpie to make hair strands. Finally I used baby pink paint to paint on his pacifier. He was done!

Baby What

 

Characters Done: Moriticia, Fester (except for feet), Cousin Itt, Baby What