It's practically a rite of passage for young animator/filmmakers: We take our action figures into the backyard and blow them up. We horribly abused our G.I. Joes and Mego action figures for the sake of our art. If you want to call it that. This one was shot on Super8 in 1986.
I would tell you how we did the explosions, but then you'd go out and try it yourself and I'd get the blame for your injuries. So you have to figure it out yourself. But that's part of the rite of passage anyway.
Originally the soundtrack was made up of James Horner's score for Aliens. There would be too many sound effects to record in the only way I could at the time (foley style recording right onto the film using the movie projector). But when I recently digitized the film and cleaned up the visuals as best I could, I went sound-effects-crazy and edited in the effects. I also replaced the music with royalty-free cues from HookSound.
Music:
Bringer of Death Epic Dramatic Hybrid by Damir Agovic
Warp Speed Nazar Rybak
Find at HookSounds: https://www.hooksounds.com/ref/mparks/ using that link to support this channel.