AGrippppping

You know what, that last blog entry I just made, I was holding out. I'm gonna just go for it a little bit here and give it all to you guys. No business facade or anything I'm gonna keep it real. This blog and my business meant a lot to me 5 years ago when I started this Blog and it still does and I have been working A LOT! in some crazy ways for the last long while since I made a blog post. So lets just jump right in but lets give you a little in between too so its personal.

This, is my Vacuum Form Machine that I built. As some people know I have been dreaming of doing these two shows since I was in high school and the shows are, it turns out, kind of ambitious in what they call for. So I have been doing whatever I can in between running my grip company to build the stuff I dreamed of for my show. 

This is my Vacuum Form Machine, I built this in the garage here. Cut the wood on a table saw, I bought that aluminum sheet and drilled it. I actually have invested a lot in having a super awesome mobile art/creature making shop that rivals even my Grip company and is actually a part of my grip company.

 Heres another look at the Vacuum Form machine. It has a vacuum inside. I had to learn wiring to build this.

 The frame I had welded at one of the equipment places I go to but since then I am set to start learning welding and I should have a welding set up very soon.

 This is an example of one of the creatures I am building for my show. Creatures like this I am gearing up to be able to provide to productions.

 This is an airbrush collection. These are Paasche single action air brushes that we'll use to paint mostly silicone rubber appliances and skin.

 I use these Husky Container cases. You see 6 here but I actually have 16 of these now all filled to the brim with stuff for my mobile creature shop.

 I know I'm showing you some gear and bragging on what I have going but it took a lot just to learn how to do what I am doing and then acquire the tools. One of the first things we started building was Marvin the Medical Robot. Greg Lazcano and I were shooting at an emergency room in San Bernadino and we saw these cool medical machines and Greg said "you could make a robot out of that just add arms" so I talked to one of the Doctors, and she got me this broken machine. And we started to add arms. It is a process. I think I have more pictures of this later in the blog here.

 This is a process trailer that we used in a shoot recently. I key gripped this and I am now set up to work process trailers any time. In fact I built a special kit just for this. Just ask me about it.

 I have been working with Aluminum a lot lately and I built this Kino Flo Square "ring light". This thing works really great and this one piece of equipment can get a shot in a music video. In other words out of all the thousands of dollars of lighting equipment we bring out, with just this one you can turn everything off and BOOM, you have "a shot".

 Here is a behind the scenes picture of a recent shoot for Pilates. We used a lot of my equipment on this and it was a lot of fun. Vanessa Williams was in it and we made her look beautiful. I learned a lot about this DP's techniques of doing beauty lighting.

 I have gotten REALLY into electronics and I have learned how to use an Arduino and step motors & servos. One of my Grips, Aaron Pong, I have gotten into electronics and I have a lot of projects coming along down the line that we are going to build and work on.

 This is a behind the scenes shot of a cool video we did for Nordic Track where we filmed this amazing dance crew, dance on treadmills in preparation for America's Got Talent. This was so fun to shoot and really cool.

 This is my Spec Sheets book. I got this book and I have filled it with papers I printed with my AVisual company logo and the name of what I am going to design. Almost every day that I can I sit at my desk and draw schematics of the things I want to build. I ended up taking all of the classes at The Stan Winston School online over the course of 6 months and that is really where my education started for Fabrication. One of the things I learned there was that you really can't build anything unless you first draw it. I could never draw but since I learned about vanishing lines and about mechanical pencil's and these nice erasers, I have been able to draw. As I go through my journey of building things I start to acquire catalogs that have very specialized parts in them and I can now interpret the drawings and even recreate my own to describe what it is that I want to build. And now that I am designing things, I am already reaping the benefits of actually being able to build them. It is something that amazes me and actually does make me feel a sense of pride sometimes because I really never thought I could do what I am doing and my dreams are coming true. I think that you have so many dreams when you are younger in life and you honestly don't know what is going to happen but what I have learned from life is that ANYTHING you can get to happen, is a blessing. You could have the biggest plans in the world, you could write all of these stories that involve one of your best friends being the star actor. And you can even go out and film some things with that friend in preparation for bigger things.

But then, something can happen that you never expect because this is life. What happened was my friend passed away. All of the things that I had hoped to film with him for our show, are no longer able to be done. However, things, even like a book of spec sheets, are a blessing. You really have to be thankful for whatever you CAN do. It is so magical to work towards things but then to be able to look back and say "well what did we really do" and to see the actual work that you were able to do. I am trying to share with you now just a sliver of the behind the scenes work and honestly I don't know what will make it to the screen but I think it will be so good when it does make it to the screen. And I will be thankful for whatever happens.

Haha okay I got a little deep there. Sorry, it happens. But uh this is just a catalog of Gears and mechanical stuff that I have been scouring!

And you know what that Logo IS its AGrip! You know about AGrip! You should Hire AGrip because oh man on the day of your shoot and a day or two in prep your shoot is ALL we think about! My calendars in the office are filled with plans and to do lists but on the date of your shoot all it says in RED dry erase, is that I'm 100% working on YOUR PROJECT.

 Here is a pot set up that I rigged for the Arduino. I thought it was pretty cool.

 This is is a thing I came up with. I wanted badly to learn electronics but I know that I, like many other people suffer from (or benefit from) ADD. I need to control my mind. I set a goal of studying electronics at 100% concentration for 100 hours. I prepare my work area and then I set a timer on my phone for 1 hour; until that timer goes off, I focus on learning electronics. This has helped a lot. On this picture you can also see another set of bubbles. I set a goal of studying Gearing for 5 hours. So far I am up to 28 hours on Electronics. I have actually taken some what of a break from Electronics because I learned enough in order to move over to another area of fabrication and then I will need to come BACK to electronics probably in about 2 weeks.

 Okay THIS, is "Greeble" my teacher Fon Davis said so. What this is is a shower brush thing that you hook a brush up to and it shakes in the shower.. My grip and Electrician Aaron Pong brought it over when we were working on Electronics for a day. Things like this we can break apart, learn from and then also use them in props in the future. If anybody has ANY broken electronics, please, let me know. I'll either come get them or also maybe not come and get them!

 This is a preliminary spec sheet for my Waldo Unit. These are two cases that stack. Today actually I went down and looked at the parts for this in preparation for the build. It has monitors in it, wireless video, wireless signal to control movement of creatures.

 This is Eric Ballew on the Left and Aaron Pong on the right. Here we are in my garage working on electronics. Eric is helping me a lot with the cabling, and lots of electronic tasks. This guy is smart. Aaron, he's Chinese, so he is kicking ass on these electronics. We really learned a lot on this day.

 This picture is a picture of Aluminum. UM..... Well I learned how to use a Milling Machine and I am set up to start financing a Milling Machine when I want to. I have plans to open a shop in Valencia and build lots of different equipment including Grip equipment.

 This is part of my tool kit. I run double drills. always wear a tool belt no matter what I do and I always put on my headlamp and wear Eye protection. This 1 bag is filled to the brim with MANY of the tools that are mentioned in the Stan Winston Classes and honestly I feel an immense sense of pride and greatfulness that I was able to acquire these tools.

Okay This is kind of, obviously a blog about my company AGrip and AVisual.. But i've been sharing some stuff and honestly who knows when I will write another one of these.. At this point one of the main people reading this is probably just gonna be me in another 5 years. That or some crazy girl thats stalking me (sorry hun) (..... don't know who she might be tho..)

Anyways, well this is actually sad you know but this picture below.. That is Ray Rich. Ray Rich was a director that I worked with quite a bit. I think I hit him up in about 2012 maybe 2013 and I worked with him probably 15 times.. He would also rent equipment from me. He came to my house several times. I talked to this guy quite a bit and though I wouldn't consider him one of those friends you call up to go get a beer with, the truth is, I would consider him that type of friend its just that we never did that because we had a work relationship. But he was good to me and.. something bad happened to him. Well it is May 27th and Ray actually went missing just a couple days before I shot a video that he hired me for to shoot with his Mentor.

The first time I ever talked to Ray he told me all about this Director called Mr. Boomtown. I mean Ray was almost like obsessed with the guy he was such a big fan and he went on and on about how he was gonna be working with Boom Town and how he was gonna get me working with Boom town.

Well finally around February 6th or so, Ray hit me up and man was he excited because he was hiring me with my full kit to work with Boom Town. Well I was excited too but I don't get my hopes up about things like that because shoots get pushed and cancelled all the time but I did think wow thats pretty cool we're finally gonna work with Boom Town. Well, I thought Ray was gonna call me before the shoot and tell me all kinds of stuff that probably wasn't really that important but just get us psyched for the shoot but he never called and I thought that was weird. On the day of the shoot I showed up to this house in Compton and I was kind of Early but this make up artist girl was there and I didn't want her to stand out there by herself so I got out of my truck and pulled out an apple box and got her one too and we sat there and chatted and I was just waiting for Ray to walk up. My grips got there, and then, Boomtown Himself got there and we greeted. But then, Boom Town said "hey I have to tell you something; so, Ray.. he went Missing! I talked to his mom, yeah he's missing"

Well it is now May 27 and Ray is still Missing. I don't know why but for some reason I just KNEW he had been killed. It is very sad. Honestly I have not been sad about this because I have had a hard time really.. I don't know.. Earlier I was speaking about the death of my friend Alexander Avila who was probably one of my best friends that I have and he passed away 9 months ago, so Ray goes missing 6 months later; my mind is, or was, kind of consumed with this, death. It doesn't exactly seem real. By the way this picture in the poster, that was a music video that my crew Lit up for Ray. That is Fabian the DP behind Ray. I remember texting Ray about this video and telling him that he did a really good job on it. 

Like I said, this guy was good to me and he is a person from my life who I won't forget. He had a lot of hopes and dreams.. just like I do, you can see the work I put in to what I do and you can kind of realize, oh he's doing that because of his dreams; well Ray is a person that had dreams like that and he told me all about them and so when I think about life and how, some things kind of just happen and some things kind of just remain dreams, I think of Ray. It really is a tragedy because he could have achieved so much more. I'm at least happy that for that one day my crew and myself went hard on his video he was directing. With Ray, it is hard to have closure because he is "missing". Ray would always text me "roger" because I texted him "roger" one time.. lol. Also I would sometimes accuse him of playing for the Knicks and being J.R. Smith. 

Alright don't get emotional..

 Blog! Okay, blog, this is one of the Husky Containers that I have and I labeled this "Greeble". I figure, if something isn't worthy of a container then you shouldn't even have it at all. Greeble in a way kind of is "junk" but theres something special about it because you can tell when you are looking at something interesting enough to potentially be part of a prop later. So this container is just for me to throw pieces into that could be rummaged through later and added to a prop. We will see how this works out!

 These are these other Husky Containers, I kind of like this kind because they are pretty rugged but modular. The top one is just for Grip Rigging gear, small parts that go to my car mounts and speed rail rigs. All that awesome stuff. The next one is filled to the brim with Electronics stuff. The next one is filled with special small materials for building props and fabricating things.

 This is a really cool store my friend Vincent and I went to called Reynolds Materials. Man they have great stuff. Vincent came to town for 2 days and everytime that guy and I get together which is usually in like two day stretches, the WHOLE TIME we focus 100% on learning and making our show. This store was on the way out of town for Vincent so the day before we recapped all our studies on sculpting and molding and we ordered everything online that we would need. In fact as we speak Vincent is Carving a beautiful Chicken to be the Genius Chicken whose just a genius as far as chickens go, for our show. I am very excited about that. I talked to Vincent today and he knows he is a great sculptor but you know I don't know if he'll read this but I detected something in his voice because; well, I don't know how to describe it but I think he is so excited to sculpt this chicken that he is scared because he wants it to be perfect. So he's in battle right now but man he is such a funny guy, whatever he sculpts is gonna be great! lol. I can't wait to see it.

 This is a behind the scenes shot of a music video that I did for RSM creative last week. This was a lot of fun to work on. This is our second video for this female artist. She is a really nice young lady. I think this video will come out really good.

 Another behind the scenes shot of the same video.

  Another behind the scenes shot of the same video.

 Heres my desk where I do my designs.

 This is a clay cutting board that I built for Vincent. I sealed the wood with Clear Coat. It has 3/4" aluminum bar on one side and 3/8" aluminum on the other side so that you can cut a sheet of clay to one of those thicknesses. The 3/8" side is the side we will use when we lay up clay inside of the molds in order to make the Skin for the creatures.

 This is a lazy susan that I built with an Armature holder mounted to it. I thought about this armature holder a lot. I wanted the strongest thing with the least parts and most articulation. I think that might be it.. I see other people using black pipe and that looks good too but the people who use that aren't Grips and I THINK.. this might be better!

What I did was I took this Husky Container and I just built this sculpting stuff I learned about from the Stan Winston DVD's and I through everything sculpting related into that container. Then, I drove it to where Vincent's family stays in LA for work and I loaded it onto one of their trucks and they took it back to our home town and dropped it at Vincent's house. I wanted him to have as much gear as I could get him so he could focus on sculpting and just get as strait into it as possible.

 And this, is a first generation frame for our Animatronic Chicken! It now has 2 legs on it and it is on an armature holder. I am going to drop this off for Aaron so that he can practice animating the walk. I am also going to build another one. I am working on frames, thats my job. We will see what Aaron can do, I don't expect him to fully code and do the electronics right off the bat I will probably end up doing it myself but down the line I am going to need his help or somebody else so that we can build these creatures because we're gonna make a lot of movies and TV shows that rival the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies and Ghost Busters too.