Woodland Lurkers

The idea for Woodland Lurkers came about when I thought about doing a film about strange forest creatures that we've never heard of, that hide in the deepest areas of the woods. Originally, I would only have made one critter, but I came up with a bunch of them, so the menagerie grew. I even added yet another one when I had finished editing the film. Let's go through our fauna.

The first creature you see, or glimpse, is a Bigfoot-like figure that towers over the forest.

I reused an older puppet, the hulking creature from "The Path Through the Marsh," and if you're interested in how that puppet was built, check out my blog post HERE! 

I call this little fellow "spud guy", since, well, he looks like a potato. He was built up without me using any parts sculpted in clay and cast in plaster molds.

This is the very basic armature for the character. 2 mm aluminum wires were used for the arms and legs, with Polymorph thermoplastic (the white blobs) used to hold them all together. The upper lip is made from a steel wire wrapped in yarn and is rigid. The jaw is a 3 mm aluminum wire wrapped in soft yarn, and is flexible for animation. 

The midsection is totally rigid and made from a wooden tongue depressor reinforced with a large 

stainless steel nail and thermoplastic. 3 mm threaded bolts are attached to the feet using super glue and baking soda.

EVA foam was used for most of the padding, making the body solid but lightweight. Below the jaw and around the neck, I added a bit of soft polyurethane foam (not yet attached in this photo) to make the opening of the jaw easy. Hot melt glue was used to attach the bits of EVA foam.

Soft yarn was wrapped around the arms and legs, which were then dabbed with latex.

The torso was also wrapped in soft yarn to smooth out the slightly blocky shapes of the EVA foam.

The body and head were built up using cotton dipped in tinted latex. I used a pointy sculpting tool (a dental tool, actually) to create the wrinkles and other shapes by simply pressing down with the tool in the cotton and moving around the material.

The throat was covered with a patch of wrinkly latex skin cast in a texture mold.

The fingers were made by wrapping yarn around a toothpick, dabbing the yarn with tinted latex, and then slipping the yarn off the toothpick when the latex had cured. The fingers were attached to the cotton/latex hands using liquid latex as a glue.

The eyes were made from two small plastic pearls, with irises cast with UV resin.

The puppet was painted by dabbing tinted latex over it with a sponge. Various colors were applied with this method in thin layers to create a mottled look. 

Acrylic airbrush colors were used to add highlights here and there.

Teeth and nails were just blobs of latex tinted white applied to the puppet using a toothpick.

The tuft of hair on the head is from an old fur winter hat, from which I have cut bits over the years for a few of my puppets.

The living tree stump is a staple critter among Swedish illustrators of children's stories. Trees and stumps with eyes and faces add color to many books throughout the 20th century. Swedish illustrator Gustaf Tenggren worked on Disney's Snow White and created a bunch of truly monstrous trees for the flight through the woods. I grew up with the staring storybook trees and have been thinking about how to add the concept to one of my films. 

The main part of the body, the actual trunk, was made from a piece of thick, rolled-up EVA foam. I cut two holes for the irregularly placed eyes, which were made from two plastic pearls, and also inserted two 1 mm aluminum wires to work as eyelids.

Two blobs of silicone clay pressed down around the backsides of the eyes hold the plastic pearls in place, allowing them to swivel when poked on the outside of the trunk. Thermoplastic was applied over the silicone to lock it down. More plastic was used to line the insides of the trunk, making it very sturdy.

The trunk creature has three limbs for walking, made from folded 1,5 mm aluminum wires. I used this smaller gauge to make the feet as small as possible. Using 3 mm threaded nuts as tie-downs, the wires were attached with a mix of superglue and baking soda. Thick, soft yarn was wrapped around the wires to build up the rough shape of the legs, and then dabbed with latex.

The legs were attached to the trunk with thermoplastic.

Hot melt glue was used to piece together the EVA foam bits.

To create the bark-like texture on the trunk, I dipped cotton in latex and draped it over the foam trunk. With various tools, I could then shape the dough-like substance into the look I wanted.

The splintered bark on the top of the trunk, as well as the smaller roots at the bottom, were made from tissue paper dipped in latex and rolled into pointy shapes.

The finished puppet was drybrushed a few times using tinted latex and a foam sponge. Concave dips were reamed into the plastic eyes, and then painted to create the look of colored irises. Drops of UV resin filled out the dips to create a lens effect.

The eyelids were created by attaching patches of latex cast in a skin texture mold to the edge of the aluminum wires making up the lids and the trunk, using liquid latex as glue.

Texture mold latex patches were also attached to the legs, instead of using cotton and latex, as that would’ve made the legs too stiff for animation.

This creature makes a very brief appearance, but I tried to make it memorable. I wanted something that was both creepy and a bit goofy, and hopefully I achieved that.

The head and jaw were made completely from Cosclay, which is a polymer clay cured in my kitchen oven. In contrast to other polymer clays, Cosclay cures semi-flexible and feels more like a piece of plastic.

The jaw was attached to the rest of the head by a single 2 mm aluminum wire running from the back of the head to the underside of the jaw. A mix of superglue and baking soda was used to fix the wire in place. The neck and torso have 4 mm aluminum wires running through them, and the legs have three 3 mm wires. Polymorph thermoplastic holds the armature together. Thick and soft yarn pads out the neck and thinner crochet yarn pads out the arms. I used soft polyurethane foam for the legs.

More soft foam was used to pad out the whole body, except for the arms, which I wanted to look feeble and scrawny. The dark grey section on the back is a piece of EVA foam, which is tougher, and was OK to use here, since I didn’t plan on bending the midsection of the puppet when animating.

The body of the puppet was covered with patches of tinted latex, which were cast in various skin texture molds. Wrinkly skin covers the join between the head and the jaw. This was also made from latex using the ”chunks-o-flesh” method, where latex is stippled onto a flat surface, allowed to dry, and then rubbed off the surface, creating a bunched-up, organic-looking texture. While the body was painted with tinted latex using a sponge, the Cosclay head was painted using water-based hobby paints.

The eyes are two plaster half-spheres with a mother-of-pearl effect, bought at a local scrapbooking shop. The flimsy hair is crepé hair (sheep’s wool) attached to the head using Pros-Aide prosthetic adhesive. The back spikes are tissue paper dipped in latex and rolled between my fingers into thin, pointy shapes. They were attached to the puppet’s back using liquid latex and glue. Highlights and other additional details were added with acrylic airbrush paint.

This scene was the first one conceived, and would, at one point, have been the entire film.

The largest puppet from my film is what I call the ”big mouth.” You only see him from a distance, but I still wanted to add a fair amount of details. A big chunk of medium-grade Monster Clay was shaped into the character.

Dental plaster was applied over the sculpture to create a durable mold, and three layers of tinted latex were cast into this mold. The latex skin was also reinforced with thin pieces of polyurethane foam soaked in latex, which were pressed into the mold over the latex surface. The head was reinforced with a mix of cotton and latex.

Here’s a better view of the insides of the latex skin. The cream-colored material is foam padding. The white stuff up in the head is thermoplastic, which adds extra sturdiness as well as provides a fixing point for the aluminum wires working the nose and the jaw. Two wooden ice cream sticks provide extra support for the head, helping it keep its shape.

The legs were actually created for the pig demon in my film ”Snail Wizard”, but they turned out a bit weak for that large puppet. I saved the original legs and put them to good use here instead. 3 mm aluminum wires are used to create the armature for the puppet. Thin metal rods are tied down against portions of the wire using yarn to create hard sections simulating a skeleton.

Soft polyurethane foam is wrapped around the armature, creating a pudgy look for the puppet.

Teeth and claws are made with tissue paper dipped in latex.

The finished puppet is painted with tinted latex and detailed with acrylic airbrush paints.The eyes are Photoshop print-outs of goat’s eyes, with drops of UV resin applied to create a lens.

The trunks are aluminum wires with yarn wrapped around them to create both the shapes as well as wrinkly skin. 

Clear varnish was painted onto the mouth and the nostrils to create a wet look.

Here’s the smallest puppet from ”Woodland Lurkers.” 

I forgot to snap photos of the clay sculpture, but the image above is pretty much what I sculpted. This creature is basically just a big head with legs and a tail.

The head was cast in tinted latex from a plaster mold. The eyes are two acrylic half-spheres with Photoshop print-outs attached to the flat backsides using transparent glue.

The mouth has a 1 mm aluminum wire looped around it inside the latex skin.

All the limbs for the puppet were made from 1 mm aluminum wires and wrapped in soft yarn. Liquid latex sealed the yarn.

Thermoplastic holds together the head and the limbs. Right under the second leg pair there's a small dark area. This is an attachment point for a flying rig.

Soft polyurethane foam was attached to fill up the back area.

The finished puppet is around

3 inches long. It’s painted with tinted latex and acrylic airbrush colors.

Here’s how the scene where the big mouth monster eats the tree grabber was made. A flying rig arm (far right) is joined to the attachment point on the side of the grabber puppet facing away from the camera, holding it aloft when the puppet is animated. Beside this is another flying rig arm, made from a 5 mm aluminum wire, working as a substitute for the tree the creature is grabbing. The green sticky tape makes both arms invisible when shot against my green screen puppet stage background.

When the shot is static, I'm using still images of mossy woodlands from Depositphotos. When the camera is moving, I'm using stock footage from Storyblocks or Videohive. I could've gone out in the forests where I live and gotten the kind of shots I wanted, but being quite lazy now in my old age, I went for stock options instead. 

My first idea was to make a fake nature documentary about these creatures. As the project evolved, it began to take on a more found footage-like quality. At least, the whole series of events is observed by someone walking through the woods, as we can hear his / her footsteps and breathing.

I am tempted to make a similar video in a different setting, but my aim is always to try and vary my content  -we shall see what turns up in the future.