Any die hard stop-motion fan can see that this is a recreation of Ray Harryhausen's perhaps most famous puppet character; the cyclops from "7th Voyage of Sinbad". Making accurate recreations is NOT my best talent, but I hope I got most of the details right. This will be the last job I undertake of this sort. I much more enjoy creating original, if derivative, characters.
I've already made two posts about this project some years earlier, but I'll try to summarise what I've talked about before. The cyclops started life as a chavant clay bust. This was the part of the puppet I felt I needed to have the biggest control over, while the rest could be built up using my preferred construction techniques.
This puppet, like most of my puppets, is built up using layers of soft polyurethane foam covered with bits of latex skin. The hooves are cast in SmoothCast plastic from a silicone mould of a clay sculpture. Apparently I never took a photo of the armature, but it's my usual aluminum/Friendly Plastic concoction. The eye is a plastic ball with a Photoshopped iris printed on paper and glued to the ball. The eyeball was dipped in Crystal Clear casting resin and hung upside down to set, and create a transparent lens over the iris.
The finished cyclops, with fake fur for its legs, latex teeth and claws, and a latex/cotton club built up over a piece of wooden dowel. The horn is built up with melted white Friendly Plastic. A light paint job of drybrushed PAX paint guilds the lily. The plan is to send the cyclops off to his new master before Christmas.
