The Shadow Out of Time: The Film

Dear fellow bipeds; here's the fruit of many late evenings -The finished version of H P Lovecraft's tale "The Shadow Out of Time."

This is a collaboration between Richard Svensson (me), Daniel Lennéer and Christopher Johansson. Åke Rosén stars, and John Hutch narrates.
Daniel on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/lenneer
Chris on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/CJFILMvideoworks
John on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/JohnHutch
Daniel's project page: http://millroad.lenneer.se

An adaption based on the novel "The ShadowOut of Time" by: H. P Lovecraft

Written by: Richard Svenssonand Daniel Lenneér

Director of live-action: Daniel Lenneér

Director of animation: Richard Svensson

Voice-over: John Hutch

Music composed and mixed by: Christopher Johansson

CAST:

Åke Rosén

...with supporting roles by;

Christopher Johansson

Thobias Ericsson

Daniel Lenneér

RichardSvensson

Greenscreen composition: Daniel Lenneér and Richard Svensson

Puppets and animations: RichardSvensson

Credits and Map animation: ChristopherJohansson

Hand actor: Owe Lenneér

Sound filters: ThobiasEricsson

Lettering: Charlotte Jolin

Assistant: David Gustavsson

Produced in unholy union between Millroad Film and The Lone Animator 2011-2012 in Sweden.

Links:
http://www.loneanimator.com
http://www.lenneer.se
http://millroad.lenneer.se

My Own Gandalf

As I've mentioned before, sometime around 1999/2000 I was involved in an amateur musical film project based on J R R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. This project was actually, believe it or not, endorsed by the Tolkien Estate. Due to creative differences the project drifted apart and nothing came of it. However, during these later years I've revisited video footage shot during the project and put together my own short films. This latest effort features Niels elley, who is an old friend of mine, and a sculptor, stone cutter and artist.
I made a big crepé hair beard and mustache for him, and used a wig actually made from real human hair. About half of it was shot on location and half in front of a green screen.

 Gandalf taking a leak behind a tree (even wizards gotta go..)

Building an Oliphaunt

I’m sure most of you know what an oliphaunt is by now. Or Mümakil, as they’re also called. If you haven’t read J R R Tolkien’s poem, then you have seen oliphaunts stomp around in the two last Lord of the Rings movies. They’re big, mean elephants, basically.

I like Tolkien’s poem “Oliphaunt”, or I should say Sam’s poem, as Tolkien credits Sam Gamgee as its actual author. I’ve wanted to make a short-short animated video clip based on it for years. In fact, I started sculpting an oliphaunt puppet three years ago, but got no further than the head. But a while ago I decided to finish the puppet nad animate it, urged on by 10-year old Joel, who has a soft spot for the monstrous elephants. So, a short description of my oliphaunt puppet.

As I mentioned, this sculpture was begun three years ago. I made a plaster mold and sort of forgot about the project.

Recently I cast the skin of the head in tinted latex, sort of creating a mini-muppet.

The armature was really simple, using pieces of very hard cardboard for larger body sections, and thick aluminum wire, untwisted, for the joints. This made the joints less “springy”, and in theory that means easier to animate. As I’ve started animating now I’ve found it to be quite true, but only quite.

 First muscle foam padding of the body…

And then some additional padding to smooth things out.

 The eyes are home-made; plastic beads painted and dipped in Crystal Clear plastic to get a nice shine.
 

The tusks are paper clay and not as brittle as you might then think. They’re painted and airbrushed. They’re also NOT as white as my camera flash makes them out to be.

 

The trunk, ready to be attached to the skull, which, by the way is made out of Friendly Plastic thermoplastic.

Trunk attached and covered with latex skin.

Head attached to body, ready for it’s latex skin covering.

I cast about 40 or more smaller latex skin pieces to allow for better stretch and movement. All skin pieces were dyed black.

 Having the latex dyed black meant that I could get away with a very quick paintjob, namely just some drybrushing, using acrylic paint and ProsAid make-up glue.
 

And here’s the big boy ready for the camera. This puppet is actually pretty big, over a foot tall. It’s not at all heavy, though. I’ve started animating him now, and as with all puppets he’s got shortcomings that you don’t find out about until you start bending and twisting the joints. Still, so far he’s behaved pretty well. My idea was to create a slightly surreal elephant, something that would look a bit funny, but also a bit scary. I based most of my design on Mammuthus imperator, a really huge relative of the Wooly mammoth, and then tried to make the finished look a tad cartoonish.

Frodo in the world of home movies.

Here's a real curio for you: This short clip comes from a bigger project that was never finished. Somewhere around 1999 I was part of a group of Swedish artists and musicians who worked on a musical video version of "Lord of the Rings"! For real! This was just before Peter Jackson´s mega-version of the books grabbed the world. At the end of the 1960's, Krister Gustavsson and Stefan Håkansson had written folk-rock songs based on the many poems of the books. (You can find Krister's YouTube channel HERE.)
At first we got permission from the publisher Harper Collins and the Tolkien estate to do an amateur version of the story. Then New Line Cinema pulled all the worldwide rights to protect their interests. This could very well be the biggest disappointment of my life. Now I realize that our version was very humble indeed and not much different from other amateur efforts, with hand-held cams and kids for hobbits. Those of you who know the books can see that I've changed the barrow-wight fight a little bit. For those of you who don't know the story, it is as follows: The Hobbits are captured by a ghost called a barrow-wight, but rescued by Tom Bombadil, master of the Old Forest.
This past weekend I found the old tape containing this particular footage, the devil went into me and I took a holiday from my other obligations to piece together a little video featuring this episode from the book "The Fellowship of the Ring". On Saturday evening I started building the barrow-wight hand and late Sunday morning it was ready to be animated. It's probably the fastest I've ever built a puppet. On Sunday evening the animation was finished and edited into the live-action footage. I wish all projects would go as easy as this one.

Here's the aluminum wire / Friendly Plastic hand armature. Nothing fancy, but it could do everything a human hand can do.

The hand armature covered with latex skins and a latex / cotton mix. It's been attached to a support rod made out of braided aluminum wire.

A pretty simple set-up as you can see. But why make things unneccesarily complicated?

The support rod was partially painted blue to be keyed out with the rest of the background.

There are a number of Tolkien fan film projects out there, and quite a bit of them on YouTube. Most of them are parodies but some are dead serious (perhaps a bit too serious for there own good). I've done a couple and am planning to do more. I'm a member of a forum on the web page "theonering.net", originally devoted to Peter Jackson's films, but now more of a stomping ground for Tolkien purists. There's a section for "fan art", including music and some home-made films. Some of us posting there have recieved quite a beating from those who believe that nothing should be produced without the approval of the Tolkien Estate. Tolkien himself stated that he'd like to approve all the art being produced based on his ideas, and now that he's gone, that job falls to the Estate. But I must say the taste and judgement of the Tolkien Estate is highly debatable.
I use a by-line in my forum posts that read: "I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama." Now, this is a quote from a letter that Tolkien wrote to editor Milton Waldman to convince him to publish "The Silmarillion" and "The Lord of the Rings" simultaniously. I took this quote as a postive affirmation that Tolkien would approve of at least of what some of us are attempting to do. He had, after all, the ambition to create an alternative mythology for Great Britain, that hopefully would be as appreciated and widely read (and studied) as any other real mythology. It was, however, pointed out to me on that forum that before that statement in the letter, Tolkien makes it clear he has all but abandoned this early idea for a larger, shared mythology. Thus, using that quote as a statement is a great misjustice to Tolkien's memory.
The concept of that great shared mythology may not have been a reality when "The Lord of the Rings" was first published, but, by God, it certainly is now. I'd say Tolkien's ideas and imagination have grown out of the hands of any copyright holders. I'd say it falls to the love of us fans to do his work real justice, without any thoughts of any profit besides the shared joy of the finished result. I'll go so far as to say that some fan efforts help make up the perception of LOTR et al, for some of us. The fan efforts help make this a phenomenon, and I'm surprised this fact is not acknowledged. It's not any damn commerce that make a myth, but constant, honest retelling of it.

In the 60's when "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" were absorbed by pop and hippie culture Tolkien was, as I understand it, befuddled by the great interest, the fanzines, the rock songs, the "Frodo Lives" stickers and the people trampling the flowers in the garden of his peaceful Oxford home just to take pictures of him and his wife. But as far as I know he never raised any issues of copyright infringement or claimed any "creative injury". And he very well could've, had he been inclined. The only debacle where he actually took action was against Ace Books, who published "The Lord of the Rings" in the US without telling him, using a loophole in the copyright law. In order to stop those books Tolkien addressed his most powerful ally; his fans, and asked them to boycott the Ace editions, which they did. I think that says a lot about the relationship between this author and his admirers.

A bit of a rant there, I'm afraid, but I feel strongly about all of this.

Bilbo Baggins Figurine

I love sculpting characters using my favorite clay in the Universe; Chavant. Mostly, my sculptures end up as puppets or masks, but I have also done sculptures that are cast as plastic figurines. For the past three months I've been really busy finishing films for both myself and others, plus I've been doing some art for books. But I decided to spend ten minutes every morning right before I go to work on creating a sculpture, made for no other redeeming reason except that it's fun to just do it. I decided to try my hand at one of my favorite characters ever; Mr Bilbo Baggins, hero of J R R Tolkien's "The Hobbit". I think the moment that best sums up Hobbit life is when Bilbo steps out to smoke his enormous pipe right in the beginning of chapter one ("early one morning in the quiet of the world"). He hears someone (Gandalf) coming up the path beside his Hobbit hole and starts to turn his head.

This sculpture was going to be quite small, but still needed some support. I made this very simple frame using tin wire and a plastic bottle cap.

The humble beginnings of Mr Baggins. I soften the Chavant with a heat gun and just slap it on to form a basic shape.

I was pretty sure I had taken a couple of photos of the sculpture in the middle stages of its creation. Obviously it wasn't so, so we'll skip right to the finished version. I added a clay pipe just for fun. It wasn't a part of the finished casting.

Here's a bunch of photos showing how the silicone mold was cast. I used DragonSkin Q from SmoothOn Inc. First I sponged on a very thin layer, just to get rid of air bubbles. I then built up a Chavant clay wall around the base, then pouring in silicone and letting it seek its level. Then the clay wall went up a little futher with more silicone, and on and on until the sculpture was covered. This way I was able to make a very sturdy, yet not overly thick, silicone mold. In the last two images you can see the clay wall removed and then the sculpture dismantled and taken out. I had to cut the mold in the back a bit using a hobby knife. I also cut the space between Bilbo's legs inside the mold in order to get the support frame out.

SmoothCast 325 (also from SmoothOn) was poured into the mold. To the right; the casting just after it came out of the mold.

The finished Bilbo figurine. The pipe was made by softening Friendly Plastic and rolling it into a long tube, then shaping it. The head of the pipe was made out of Apoxie sculpt. But if I start making any copies I'll make a pipe head that can be cast instead. The figurine was painted with acrylic airbrush colors. In some areas I painted on the color with a brush.
I think this turned out quite well. Bilbo is 13 cm tall. You see, the plan is now to go on doing some other characters from the book; Gandalf, Thorin, Gollum, the Great Goblin and so on. Making Bilbo this size will allow me to make many of the other characters in scale, ending with Beorn. The Trolls and Smaug, if I ever make them, will have to be in a scale of their own.
It seems my mornings will be booked for a while ahead. Roll on Gandalf..