D & D Monsters: The Rust Monster

Continuing with my collaborative video project with John Hankins, next up is this critter, which is really one of my favourite monsters in the world: The so-ugly-it's-cute rust monster. This creature will strike at your weapons or armour, making them corrode instantly so the monster can feast on the rusted remains.

The image to the left is the rust monster I grew up with; the illustration from the legendary 1977 "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual", complete with wacky propeller at the tip of its tail. The one to the right is the more recent, anatomically believable concept, perfect for a movie creature. Which is why I'm not using it. I'm going with the original version, and am making very few excuses for its cartoonishness when building the puppet.

D & D also released a line of hard plastic miniature monsters, of which I have a few since childhood. Among these is the rust monster. I had it sitting on a shelf next to me while building the rust monster puppet, mainly as inspiration rather than an exact guide.

I sculpted the main body in Monster Clay. This would become a shell cast in two pieces, under which the limbs would be attached. The eyes are plastic albino mammal eyes bought from a taxidermist supply shop.

Here are the two main body pieces cast in latex with a latex/cotton reinforcement. You can see some of the cotton sticking out from under the belly piece.

To add extra sturdiness to the shell parts I mixed the extremely fast-setting OOMOO plastic from Smooth-On, and poured it into the latex skins, creating a very hard interior, but keeping a leathery exterior.
The antenna are aluminum wires wrapped in soft cotton string, and dabbed with tinted latex. I use liquid universal tinting colours to dye my latex. They're a bit pricey, but last forever, as you only need a drop for each batch of latex. The eyes are glued in place with flexible super glue.

I already had an old plaster mould for a wrinkled, muscular tail or tentacle, made for a previous project. I covered a bit of aluminum wire with soft string, soaked that in latex, and pressed it into the plaster mould. I wrapped the latex skin around the tail, and used liquid latex to cover up the seam. The tail propeller (or whatever it's supposed to be) is a piece of cardboard covered in latex.

The limbs are starting to grow out of the rust monster. They're all attached to the plastic inside shell using Friendly Plastic thermoplastic. I've also added a jointed lower jaw with two latex tusks.

Using small bits of soft polyurethane foam the muscles are built up over the legs with flexible Casco contact cement, and then covered with latex skins. The legs are given a thin coat of tinted latex.

Finally, a thin layer of PAX paint (acrylic tube paint and ProsAide No-Tack make-uo glue) is sponged on. This creates a very good surface for Liquitex acrylic airbrush paints. A thin coat of transparent acrylic primer goes on lastly.

And here's the finished rust monster on my animation stage. I'm hoping he'll be a treat to animate!

A Photoshop mash-up of John as the intrepid questing hero, who is apparently unaware that swords and rust monsters are a bad combo!

D & D Monsters: The Owlbear

The strapping gentleman in the photos above is Hawaiian filmmaker/ prop maker/ costume maker/ puppet maker/ mask maker/ stop-motion animator etc John Hankins. Like me he works out of his back yard, creating highly imaginative and entertaining fantasy films on a truly shoestring budget. Check out his YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/castlegardener

John's films are actually a two-person show; his wife Alicia is his ever faithful collaborator and supporter, often appearing in the films alongside John in various guises. I've never met John in person but we've been online buddies for years. It's one of those wonderful situations where, at least in my case, I have found through the Internet what I couldn't find where I live; friends sharing the same feverishly passionate interests, and the opinion that nothing is impossible if you just put your heart into it.

Now we're embarking on our first international collaboration -a humorous and hopefully exciting fantasy short film set in the world of the old-school "Dungeons & Dragons" role playing game. John will be shooting the live-action scenes, as well as providing a hand puppet monster, costumes, backgrounds and almost everything else, and I'll be building and animating the monsters he'll encounter.

Long, long ago, when it seemed that my life held an endless mass of disposable time I became enamoured with role playing games, starting with "Dungeons & Dragons" and following with the Swedish game "Drakar & Demoner" ("Dragons & Demons"), with "Tunnels & Trolls", "Runequest", and a smattering of other games and solo adventure game books consumed along the way. Naturally I also made a couple of games with some friends, which never amounted to much. Now I'm actually there again, with the Swedish children's role playing game "Adventure", for which I'm making illustrations and collectible figures.

This is one of the original D & D monsters, here illustrated in the "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual". It is, of course, an owlbear. Later images of this monster are much more anatomically believable, slickly airbrushed in Photoshop and frankly more fierce-looking. In short, they're much more boring, so this first innocently crude and cartoony drawing is my guide for the owlbear puppet I'm building for the project.

I started off with sculpting the head of the beast in my new favourite material in the world -Monster Maker's Monster Clay. I made the open mouth a solid block of clay to be able to create a one-piece mould for the sculpture. The eyes are glass, and bought some years ago from a Swedish taxidermist supplier. They're some kind of predatory bird's eyes, but I'm no expert on the subject.

Here's the latex cast sitting next to its dental plaster mould. I usually tint the latex for my puppets black or a dark colour to get a good base colour. If the painted-on paint rubs off anywhere I prefer to have a darker colour peeking through under it.

My usual aluminum wire and Friendly Plastic combo for the armature. The yellow finger wire is copper wire encased in soft plastic. The white chest plate is part of a discarded SmoothCast 65D casting. It adds extra support, and a good grab-on section on the puppet when animating.

A mix of variously dense polyurethane foam muscles are glued on with Casco elastic contact cement. The claws are thin cardboard dipped in tinted latex.

And here's the finished brute. The fur is short fake fur, or "teddy" fur, sometimes called "monkey fur". I prefer to make my own feathers, but I've had a small bag of tiny feathers lying around for almost 20 years now, and I figured it would be high time to put them to use. The Monster Manual owlbear looks like he's got a bad toupee on, and I opted for a slightly different look, gluing on the feathers in a semi-circle around the puppet's head using elastic super glue. Liquitex acrylic airbrush colours add a mottled grey pattern to the fur.

Since I didn't have a photo of John in his finished fantasy get-up, my local armoured buddy Martin Merkel stepped in and acted out this staged fight photo with the owlbear. In short, here's how our film is intended to look.

Diving for Deep Ones

Among H P Lovecraft's more popular monsters are the charming "Deep Ones"; the end result for the peculiar people living in the seaside town of Innsmouth. In short, when they reach adult age, they turn into fish monsters and return to the sea. It's all told in "The Shadow Out of Innsmouth", one of Lovecraft's better tales, actually, where the narrator is first horrified by what he sees in Innsmouth, but at the end of the story he reveals he's discovered he's actually a fish-person himself, with gills already growing on his neck, and he returns to the town to join his scaly kin.

US Lovecraft enthusiast and game developer Rolando Gutierrez had me build a bunch of monsters for him a while ago -you can read about that here:
http://loneanimator.blogspot.se/2012/06/monsters-for-lovecraftian-computer-game.html
And here:
http://loneanimator.blogspot.se/2012/08/monsters-for-lovecraftian-computer-game.html

I started with a head and torso sculpture, as I usually do when I make humanoid puppets. This gives me a better overall idea of the other proportions of the character. My first concept was the traditional fish-like deep one, but Rolando preferred a more frog-like design, so off came the crest and the "beard".

The head and the chest was cast as a loose latex skin. When I want to add extra support to the head on a puppet, I usually mix cotton and latex to created a flexible, but tough and leathery layer on the inside of my puppet skins. This time, however, I mixed latex with micro balloons; the white, sand-like substance that you can mix with polyester or epoxy when working on boat and car bodies.  The micro balloons gives the latex a cream-like feel, which is very helpful when you want to thicken latex for certain types of work. Adding chemical thickener usually adds setting time. Using micro balloons lets the latex dry within an ordinary time frame. I'll talk more about this technique in a later blog post.

Here the cotton and polyurethane puppet body has been covered with patches of latex skin, which are tinted green as a base colour. Next, a thin layer of PAX paint (Prosaid prosthetic glue and acrylic paint) is sponged on using a piece of polyurethane foam. The inside of the mouth is a separate latex casting, one I'm often using for insides of round or wide mouths.

And here's the froggie deep one finally finished, using acrylic airbrush colours. I don't know if I'll be animating him yet or just snap some photos. Eventually I'll make my own deep ones, as I suspect I won't be able to stay away from the "Innsmouth" story. They're cool monsters without really being bad guys.