So, this is another one of my "contemplation" or "mood" shorts, which I thoroughly enjoy making. They're not as simple to do as one might think, since it's easy to overdo things, and just make the video campy. I think I'm guilty of crossing that line a few times in my films. I once did a short called "The Haunted Room", and you could say this is an expansion -we're having a look at the rest of the house.
The house itself is nothing more than one stock video file and a bunch of stock images acquired through my various subscriptions. Through first Photoshop and then After Effects, I can work with the images to achieve the look I want for each shot.
Here's one example. This exterior photo of an abandoned castle has been altered by cutting out the sky in Photoshop and placing the image on a transparent alpha layer. In After Effects, I then add a layer behind the castle, a photo of a stormy sky, which is then manipulated into becoming a moving image by applying and manipulating the "Mesh" distortion tool.
In the same way, the ghosts are added in their own AE layers using a mix of stock videos and images. Changing the transparency setting on the ghost layers helps make them a more subtle element. I also add an adjustment layer on top of all layers where I add a filter to change the colors and create that dreamy, fuzzy look. I hope all of this isn't all gibberish to you. Suffice it to say, if you manage to get a decent grasp on After Effects, you have a wonderful toolbox at your fingertips. I access AE through an Adobe subscription, which one of my Swedish book collaborators kindly pays for.
However, this shot is a little bit different from the others. The whole background is a photo of a dilapidated house, like the other settings in the film, but the ghosts are originally two of my older puppets.
It's these two guys, whom I have used many times before in my film projects. Once they both had full heads of grey hair, but moths have eaten away all of it. Though the ghost to the left moves, he's not animated via the miracle of stop-motion. I snapped photos of the puppets arranged in their positions for the tableau, extracted them from their backgrounds in Photoshop, and added them to the background photo in AE. Besides erasing parts of their heads and adding smoke stacks (digital stock footage) over these areas, I also animated the arms and hands of the left ghost via the AE "Puppet" tool to make them shake. With the metallic grinding of the soundtrack looming over everything, I felt that I, unplanned, managed to create a sort of David Lynch-like atmosphere to the scene.
I did add a bit of stop-motion in the shape of two demonic pics having a discussion about something. Demonic pigs and cursed houses seem to go like hand in glove. The Amityville Horror house has a diabolical porcine in it, as does the haunted derelict home in Edward Lucas White's "The House of the Nightmare." The stately but crumbling "House on the Borderland" by William Hope Hodgson is positively swarming with pig monsters. So, in short, no haunted home should go without one. The two pigs here are actually just the one puppet, and again, it's one I've used before. It was built and animated for a very brief shot in my film "Imps." I thought it would be ok to recycle it and have it do a bit more (like playing two characters.) Though I do have a full post about "Imps," I'll do a quick retread here of the pig-making process.
I sculpted the head and torso in medium-grade Monster Clay, and cast a latex skin from a dental plaster mold created over the clay.
A very simple aluminum wire armature did the job. It's still strong enough and versatile to carry the puppet through many hours of animation.
The latex skin was partially padded with thin bits of polyurethane foam. Aluminum wires go into the ears and the jaw. Also, reflective pearls were glued into the eye sockets.
The foam muscle padding was quite detailed, though most of the focus of the viewer would be on the latex torso, which was attached to the padded body using liquid latex as a bonding material.
Reddish tinted latex was applied as a base paint, with a purple-greyish latex paint dry brushed over that, with strands of fake fur added as bristles to the neck, and cotton/latex tusks stuck into the mouth. Saliva and snot were created with Glossy Accents scrapbooking plastic.
That's about it. There's no narration in this one. The music is plucked from the YouTube sound library, plus choice sound effects from various subscriptions. The end credit song, "Tickle Me, Timothy," is a little ditty I found on Wikimedia.
I can't recall who came up with the idea, but I'm sure someone suggested to me, at some point, that I should do a video where we observe fantastic things happening without any cuts. I like a book by Edward Gorey called "The Untitled Book", where every page is an illustration of a garden where first very little happens, then all sorts of strange things start to happen.
Another Gorey book, "The West Wing" is probably also an inspiration. The reader walks through a stately but empty house, sometimes seeing bits of weirdness.
The room in my film is inspired by a room in my grandmother's old country house, a guest room that was seldom used with an old carpet and old wallpaper. It is, however, not haunted in the slightest. I furnished my haunted room with various props that I could animate during the brief running time. The grandfather clock has a time-lapsed dial, which speeds up, and then stops to start going backward. There's a ball and a rocking horse moving on their own accord, a bloody handprint, and a CGI spider crawling down the wall. The one thing happening throughout the video, though very slowly, is the framed portrait of the young man. He turns from a handsome chap into a decomposing corpse.
This was very easily made by having the original photo dissolve into a Photoshopped corpse version. Inbetween frames I also added bits of distortion to make the hairline recede and his mouth frown up a bit. It's not a perfect morphing effect, but I think it did the trick.
The video ends with a small demon crawling out from behind the clock and invading the rest of the house, indicating that the haunting has now spread.
I actually built this puppet so quickly that I didn't snap any photos of the making of it, but it's basically the same basic puppet I make when no extra bells or whistles are necessary.
The subject for this little film had been on my mind for many years, namely to use a woodcut describing "imps", witches' familiars, as a template for stop-motion puppets.
I am, of course, thinking about the famous woodcut featuring witchfinder general Matthew Hopkins and two of his victims-to-be. The presumed witches are parading a pretty impressive lineup of servitor demons in various animal shapes, some more bizarre than others. The names of these imps were pretty cool too.
Lets' start with Sacke & Sugar, which is actually just the one creature. In the woodcut, it's apparently a black rabbit of some kind. I went with a zombie rabbit kind of thing instead. This little monster has an exposed skull, which I sculpted in medium grade Monster Clay. The skull and the jaw are separate.
Both parts of the skull were replicated in Rhino casting plastic from two DragonSkin FX silicone molds (after cleaning out the clay).
The aluminum wire skeleton has a pair of t-nuts in its feet, with bits of harder wire lashed to the aluminum wires using yarn, creating the "bones" of the skeleton. An aluminum wire also goes into the jaw.
Since most of the puppet would be covered by fake fur I didn't have to spend too much time on shaping the foam padding into exact muscle replicas. General shapes were quite adequate. A latex cast of a mummified-looking chest sculpted for another puppet was re-used. To create bits of shredded, dried tissue I simply rolled up thin skins of tinted latex sponged out over a plastic tray, the so-called "chunks-o-flesh" method. The insides of the ears were simply made by carving negative shapes into clay with the end of a paintbrush and then adding tinted latex into those shapes. The eyes are German-made taxidermist's glass eyes (don't know what animal they're supposed to be used for.
The fur I used was also used for the puppets in Empire of the Robot Monsters and is a short-haired synthetic fur attached to a slightly elastic fabric, which means that it will stretch slightly when animating the puppet.
Greedigutt isn't pictured in the woodcut but Imagined it as a dwarfish Hieronymus Bosh kind of creature. The head and feet were sculpted in clay, and then cast in latex from a dental plaster mold.
This little fellow was built in one day, having a very simple body padded with foam. The tail was built up over an aluminum wire using soft yarn.
Patches of latex cast in old skin texture molds covered the puppet. It was given a base paint of reddish-brown using tinted latex applied thinly with a sponge.
A lighter coat of tinted latex was then dry brushed on. White latex pigments helped create a pale skin tone. The white eyes were just painted on, but the lower lip could be animated via an aluminum wire.
Another quickly built puppet (though not in one day) was Jarmara, the caterpillar dog. Actually, in the woodcut, he most resembles a creepy version of Dougal from The Magic Roundabout. It doesn't look like he's got any legs, so I decided that he probably walked like a caterpillar. The only thing I sculpted in clay was his head.
A latex cast of the head, reinforced with a cotton/latex mix, was attached to the aluminum wire skeleton. Aluminum wires were also used for the ears, which were covered with more latex and cotton. More padding with that soft yarn.
Jarmara's head and feet were dabbed with tinted latex and his buggy eyes were another pair of German taxidermy work. Strips of soft foam helped to further pad out the body.
Finally, fake fur from an old had was used to cover up the body. The aluminum wire torso could be contracted and extended to ape the movement of a kind of caterpillar.
The idea for Pyewacket (another imp not shown in the woodcut) was inspired by dancers and contortionists who can bend their hips and legs over their shoulders. It's a fairly impractical way of walking, but it sure looks strange. Another simple aluminum wire armature provided the skeleton. The dark grey blob at the bottom is a bit of dense foam from a camping seat cushion, filling up the chest area, without adding any real weight.
The head was sculpted in Monster Clay..
..While the rest of the body was built up using foam shapes of various densities.
Patches of latex cast in texture molds then covered the foam.
The finished Pyewacket was painted with tinted latex, and detailed with acrylic airbrush paints spattered onto the puppet using a toothbrush. Fake fur from an old jacket collar was glued on here and there using the very strong and transparent Telesis silicone glue.
The best-remembered critter from this woodcut is doubtless Vinegar Tom, the strange cow-whippet-thing. The head was another Monster Clay sculpture, using plastic pearls for the eyes.
The horns were cast in latex from an old plaster mold. Small aluminum wires help move the ears and the jaw. The tie-downs I use are usually M4 t-nuts, but for this puppet, I used M3 to make the feet really small.
For Vinegar Tom, I did a pretty intricate foam muscle build-up. I based this on both cow and dog muscle diagrams.
The pearl eyes were used so I could move them around, BUT looking at the woodcut I realized the eyes were simply too small. I simply glued a pair of bigger glass taxidermy eyes over the original pearl eyes, and built up eye sockets around the eyes using cotton dipped in latex. A finely detailed latex skin was added over the foam padding.
More fake fur was used to add a short mane to Tom's neck. Teeth were made from cotton and latex, as were the toes. This puppet was painted with PAX paint (Prosaide glue + acrylic paint) using a sponge, with acrylic airbrush paints adding a bit of subtle detailing.
Grizzle, our last little critter, was basically a scary pig standing on his hind legs. He only appears for a short bit at the end, so I decided to make him something recognizable. There are examples of demonic pigs in religion, folklore, and pop culture, so it seemed a suitable choice. I sculpted and cast both head and torso in latex from a dental plaster mold.
Again, a very simple aluminum wire armature did the job. It's still strong enough and versatile enough to allow the puppet to be used for more projects.
The latex skin was partially padded with thin bits of polyurethane foam. Aluminum wires go into the ears and the jaw. Also, reflective pearls were glued into the eye sockets.
The foam muscle padding was quite detailed, though most of the focus would be on the latex torso, which was attached to the padded body using liquid latex as a bonding material.
Reddish tinted latex was applied as a base paint, with a purple-greyish latex paint dry brushed over that, with strands of fake for added as bristles to the neck, and cotton/latex tusks stuck into the mouth. Saliva and snot were created with Glossy Accents scrapbooking plastic.
That's all about the imps, but what about their mistress. Well, I don't know who she is, because she's just a bunch of stock footage clips from Videoblocks.com, but I'm glad I found her.
All of the film was treated with a couple of filters in After Effects to make the image a bit fuzzy and dream-like. Libby Grant delivered another excellent narration (our previous collaboration was Baba Yaga's Hut). Almost all of the backgrounds were found on Depositphotos.com, where I have a monthly subscription.
