Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1485934
adjustments similar to a stock ticker. So, as I began working with Illustrator Jamie Rama conceiving Troy's black-market weapon room, Graphic Artist Wendy Stokes did an incredible job designing the look of both the Fang Five Chart and the Fang Index. A Union for Vampire Hunters Envisioned as an off-the-grid, Men in Black headquarters quietly operating in the basement of a non-descript strip mall, the Vampire Hunters Union Local 8711 jumped off the page as an environment, pardon the pun, one could really sink their teeth into. This important underworld society would serve as the unexpected backbone of the story and the exact affiliation the film's hero despised the most…lest he be bound by a set of strict guidelines and union rules when he Is out on a hunt! A maverick like Bud certainly can't work like that, right? Well, when there is nowhere left to turn, Bud's good friend, Big John (Snoop Dogg), puts his neck on the line, literally, and vouches for him to be re-instated despite his many prior, unsettled infractions. As a continuing theme of hiding in plain sight, the original script called for the union entrance to be through a strip mall dry cleaner. So, on Roscoe Boulevard in Panorama City, on my Google Earth scour of the Valley, I found Swiss Dry Cleaners, which would become the script's union front and eventually be aptly named the Round-Up Dry Cleaners. With the exterior LA location defined, the search moved to Atlanta for an interior set which needed to speak to a Mad Men era of time gone by. JJ liked the idea that the union was this mundane corporate headquarters where the blue-collar workers of the Valley moonlighting as vampire hunters would both hang out and accept their roll call assignments through a central operations board monitoring vampire activity throughout the city. After an exhaustive search, location manager, Kyle Hinshaw showed me photos of the Yaarab Shrine Center in downtown Atlanta. It was easy to see this caught-in-time green carpeted world of wood-paneled walls, terrazzo flooring and harsh fluorescent lighting would serve as an appropriate set of bones to build a mundane yet distinct looking union hall. As Wendy began designing the A. ROUND-UP DRY CLEANERS EXTERIOR. ILLUSTRATION BY JAMIE RAMA DONE IN SKETCHUP AND PHOTOSHOP. B. ROUND-UP DRY CLEANERS SIGNAGE. EXTERIOR GRAPHIC LAYOUT BY WENDY STOKES. C. ROUND-UP DRY CLEANERS SIGNAGE. SET PHOTO. D. VAMPIRE HUNTERS UNION HALL. ILLUSTRATION BY PARALLAX STUDIOS CONCEPT PAINT OVER A MATTERPORT SCAN. E. SEEGER'S OFFICE. ILLUSTRATION BY PARALLAX STUDIOS CONCEPT PAINT OVER A MATTERPORT SCAN. F. SEEGER'S OFFICE. SET PHOTO. G. UNION BANNERS. GRAPHIC DESIGN BY WENDY STOKES. THIS SHOWS 3 STAGES OF BANNERS OVER THE YEARS. H. VAMPIRE HUNTERS UNION HALL. PRODUCTION STILL. A B C