Swedish film editor and CG FX creator Christoffer Åström contacted me about building and animating a cartoony devil for a music video featuring US band "Angry Johnny and the Killbillys". It's supposed to be a tiny imp, haunting the video's protagonist, and hounding him into doing dastardly deeds. Is the devil real, or is it just in his head; who knows!
I started off with sculpting the head to get an
interesting expression, defining the character. This puppet was going
to be about the scale of the “real” devil, and slightly bigger
than my usual puppets. Plastic balls stood in for the eventual
finished eyes.
As I usually do I sculpted the front half of the
puppet's torso, allowing me to have control over the most visible
part of the puppet. This whole piece is cast as a loose latex skin,
into which I can add padding, eyes, and the head armature.
The horns were actually the first thing I did, as you
might've figured out from that first image. I did one horn sculpture
in Chavant clay, based on the wild mountain Ibex goat. The sculpture
was encased in soft silicone (DragonSkin FX), and removed, pretty
intact, actually, after the silicon mould had set.
Two horns were cast in black-tinted SmoothCast 325.
No news here for those of you who usually frequent my blog; I've been using
the same materials for years, and as long as they work for me I see
no reason to change to something else.
The hooves and the teeth and gums of the devil were
also sculpted in clay and cast in plastic. For the teeth I used a
different plastic; the slightly more flexible, and therefore more
durable, SmoothCast 65D.
SmoothCast 325 can be a bit brittle when casting
minute detail, like miniature teeth, for example, and the 65 D
variant doesn't have that problem. It also cures solid white, which
of course is the perfect base colour for teeth.
I did a slightly different armature this time around.
Instead of using two or more tightly braided medium-thick aluminum
wires I used very thick aluminum wire as it was. The “bone”
sections of the armature were, per my usual method, covered with
Friendly Plastic thermoplastic, but I also added long nails with the
heads cut off. This meant the wire had to go exactly where I forced
it. It bent, and it stopped with virtually no jiggle at all. You want
as little jiggle as possible when you animate. This is the way I'll
be building all my armatures from now on, even smaller ones.
The protruding rods on the back are screws embedded
in Friendly Plastic. They're there simply to act as a sturdy piece I
can grab hold of when animating. The cast cloven hooves were added to
the armature, with wingnut tie-downs in the bottom.
The padding of the body was constructed out of
variously soft and denser pieces of polyurethane foam, following a
human muscle diagram. Here and there latex-soaked cotton was added to
accent bonier parts, such as the hand and the legs.
Here's the cast torso latex skin, with Friendly
plastic holding together different parts on the inside, such as the
horns, the teeth and the aluminum jaw wires. There are also wires for
the upper lip and the eyebrows. I've glued pieces of foam to certain
areas to help fill out the skin in the best possible way.
The eyes were simply made from white plastic balls
painted with hobby paints and glued into the eye sockets. The
inspiration for these orbs were the eyes of Paul Blaisdell's
low-budget monsters from various 1950's and 60's films. Blaisdell's
monsters were always a tad crude, but his designs really grab you.
His monster eyes were bloodshot and bulging. My original
intention was to have moveable eyes, but the slit pupil design proved
to be tough to keep in proper alignment. These static eyes will do
the trick.
The padded body was covered with patches of cast
latex skin, taken from flat plaster moulds. Liquid latex was used as
a bonding agent.
I decided to put a fish-fin-like fringe along the
puppet's arms. This detail was inspired by medieval art, showing
devils with such protrutions here and there on their bodies. The bony
outgrowths were simply made by dipping cotton in latex and rolling it
between my fingers into a pointy shape. After all these pieces were
stuck to the arms, I pressed very soft modelling clay against the
arm, embedding the cotton “needles” about halfway, and then
painting tinted latex over it.
The finished patched skin on the puppet was given a
dry rub of tinted latex, and then subtle detailing with acrylic
airbrush paints.
And here's the finished bad boy, with some fake fur added to his feet and private parts, and a slight paintjob on his horns and hooves. Well, not quite
finished, as he'll be wielding a trident pitchfork too (of course).
When that's made I'm probably off animating. I shall report on the
progress when the project is up and running.
