H P Lovecraft's Dagon

Welcome again to the wacky world of H P Lovecraft! This time I've tackled a real classic, his early and game-changing tale "Dagon". You could say that this short story defines most of his work that comes after it. It introduces that most parodied Lovecraftian cliche: the narrator who keeps writing down what happens up to and including his own demise, death screams and all.

Let's start with the title. Since monolithic imagery is such an important part of this story I decided to expand this theme to the titles. I sculpted the letters of the name "Dagon" in clay and cast a plaster mold around them. This allowed me to cast extremely light weight versions of the letters in latex, reinforced with cotton, and then paint them with a mix of latex and various tinting mediums. The letters were placed on a green screened turntable and then filmed one by one. The separate letters were then lined up against a black background in After Effects and synchronized to turn all together.

The story takes place at the beginning of WW1, and I decided to try and stick with that period. I think I managed to scrape by just about when trying to maintain the credibility. I recruited my stalwart filming buddy Martin Merkel to play the narrator. It was a no-brainer to engage him in the project since he, besides being ever reliable, also had a decent collection of costumes and props from the WW1 era, coming mostly out of his cosplaying and historical reenactment interests. I filmed all of Martin's scenes outdoors against a green screen. Well, almost all, because I needed some shots of him walking at a distance, and my screens weren't big enough to handle that.

To get those shots we found a slope of short grass, and Martin simply walked in front of it.

This may look primitive, but with the aid of an AE plug-in called Smooth Screen I could transform the grass into a more unified green background. This allowed me to pull Martin out of the green as with any ordinary green screen shot.

But to get rid of most of the background I also had to draw a "garbage matte" around him, and changing the shape via keyframes I could track his walk with a minimum of background showing.

Martin was then sandwiched in between two Photoshopped background images, allowing him to walk into the rather nauseous landscape of the dry ocean floor.

Lastly, the green around him was removed, and the rendered shot was treated with atmospheric filter effects and then rendered out again.

These backgrounds were all created in Photoshop using photos of ebb and tide beaches combined with hundreds of images of stranded sea creatures. Sometimes, like in the top image, I've added a tracking camera move to add some depth, creating a 3D effect with artificial means.

It's done rather simply by marking all the layers of the shot as 3D layers, and then adding a distance between each layer. Depending on how big that distance is, the perspective effect is more or less accentuated when a camera move is animated in the shot. It's kind of crude, but it certainly helps sell the illusion if you do it well enough.

The monolith of this story is a very famous Lovecraftian artifact, which needed all my attention. But at the same time it's impossible to create the definite version of such a thing, so I just went with trying to literally recreate what the text says about the artifact. It has peculiar carvings depicting humanoid monsters that look like a cross between a fish and a frog. One of them is battling a whale. So that's what I went with. The images are depicted as bas reliefs, which meant they had to protrude out from the stone surface; a tricky bit of time consuming sculpting. I wasn't up for that, so I used a technique from my early days of prop-making. Instead I carved out the details, in reverse, so to speak, on a flat clay surface.

When I poured hard dental plaster onto this surface, the dry plaster cast revealed just the kind of bas relief I wanted. Again, crude but effective. This plaster cast was joined with three clay walls to create the actual monolith. Over this I applied four layers of DragonSkinFX silicone to shape a flexible mold.

SmoothCast 325 was poured into the silicone mold and roto casted to create a hollow plastic copy of the monolith sculpture. This casting was painted with washes of bronze, blue and green acrylic paint, and the whole thing was attached to a rudimentary but sturdy wooden stand.

The Dagon monster hugging the monolith was a foot tall puppet, built with my usual materials and techniques. I started off with a head and torso sculpture in medium grade Monster Clay. Like the monolith, this creature has achieved mythic proportions and there's a ton of art out there depicting it. How to make a version that's wholly original and yet familiar enough? The only way was to make it look like I think it should look, which is probably a distillation of loads of images from other artists, as well of real world fish and amphibians.

The armature was very simple; aluminum wires held together with thermoplastic, and reinforced with bits of metal rods to make the hard parts of the "skeleton."

The head and torso was cast in tinted latex from a plaster mold built up around the sculpture. An aluminum wire angler fish rod was added, along with fangs made from yarn dipped in latex.

Very soft polyurethane foam (the yellow bits) was mixed with denser foam (the green bits) to create a muscle padding, which was then covered with scaly patches of latex skin.

I wanted the monster to have fin-like outgrowths that looked worn, befitting an ancient sea giant. After attaching spikes made from cotton and latex to parts of the puppet, soft Monster Clay was pressed up against these spikes and tinted latex was brushed over both spikes and clay. When the latex had set, I had achieved that look of worn skin that I wanted.

The finished puppet was painted with acrylic airbrush paints, including the eyes, which were then covered by Glossy Accents scrap booking plastic to create that deep sea fish look to the eye lenses. The angler outgrowth has a glass pearl at its end. 

That's all folks! My take on Dagon has been generally well received, though there have been a few angry people letting me know what they think of this mangled version of one of their favorite tales. But that's how it goes. The more famous the tale you adapt, the more criticism you'll get.

The Materials I Use

I'm quite often asked (especially on YouTube) what materials I use, so the person asking can go right out and buy all the stuff at once. It's not really that simple. The materials I prefer may not be what someone else would choose, but I guess it's somewhere to start if you really have no idea about what you should get.

 I have used quite a few clays in my creative travels, but I didn't find a favourite until I came across Chavant, medium hard grade. This clay has been my mainstay, as well as the choice of many a sculptor in the FX business. But I have actually found something I like even more: Monster Maker's "Monster Clay". This stuff is very firm until you warm it, either by putting it in your microwave oven for a short while, or (as I do) by simply using a heat gun on it. You can melt it down to a puddle if you choose, and while it's soft you can slap together large rough shapes. As it cools you're able to work lots of minute detail into the clay, and you can handle your sculpture quite roughly without squashing it.

I use a variety of sculpting tools, but the ones I'm holding up here are my three most effective. The red one on the right is home-made, using an old brush handle and simple steel wire epoxied in place. I use this tool to work in both larger and smaller details. The middle tool has two hard rubber points, which are very useful for creating soft, but defined shapes. The larger loop tool to the left is used to smooth out the shapes made by the other two tools, and also to create larger shapes.
To soften the shapes further I put some Vaseline (petroleum jelly) on a finger, and rub it over the clay. I also have texture stamps made by applying latex or firm silicone rubber over surfaces with interesting textures, like bumpy plastic displays in cars or various fruit. I seldom use them nowadays, but these flexible texture stamps are a quick way to add interesting surface detail to your sculpture.

I use only really hard plaster, mostly some brand of dental stone. Hobby plaster will deteriorate very quickly, and if you plan to re-use your plaster moulds for new projects, you'll find that they won't hold up for very long. In short, buy your plaster from a dental supply shop, which is easy to find online. I keep all my plaster in a big plastic container, with a tight snap-on lid to keep dust and moisture out.

Latex can be considered a fairly primitive material now, but it's also one of the most reliable and cost-effective. I really should get on with using silicone for my puppets and masks, but I still find latex far more enjoyable and easy to work with. You can also find it at lots of places, from sculpture shops to hobby shops.
I often mix the latex with other materials, mostly cotton, to add volume. But it's important to remember to never add a cotton/latex mix to an area of the puppet which needs to be soft and bendable.

 For my puppet skeletons I only use aluminum wires of varying thickness. I have used advanced ball & socket metal armatures as well, but I often find them lacking in some aspect, mostly regarding movability. Aluminum wire allows you to bend your puppet's limbs in any direction, until the material covering the wire and padding the body can't be compressed any more, and starts to spring back.

To create the "bones" or the hard parts of the wire armature I use Friendly Plastic thermoplastic. This material is brilliant, and I've been using it for years for all sorts of things. I've made entire sword handles from it, as it's very sturdy. You melt these plastic strips with a heat gun, and if you have to re-do something, just melt the stuff again and again.

I pad the bodies of my puppets with the softest urethane foam I can find, which I simply collect from old cushions and mattresses. I piece together the foam bits using a brand of contact cement, which I believe is manufactured in Sweden. The Casco contact cement is yellow, smelly and dries to a strong flexible bond. It's perfect for puppet work, and I also use it for many other types of projects.
Master animator and puppet builder Jim Danforth recommends a brand called Pliobond.

This is my trusty Black & Decker heat gun. I've had it for over 10 years now, and it hasn't failed me yet. It's a real workhorse. I use it to quickly dry latex in a plaster mould, to dry paint, to soften the Monster Clay and melt the Friendly Plastic. It's an invaluable tool for me.

When I paint the rubber skins of my puppets and masks I use either latex tinted with Kryolan tinting powders or Universal tinting liquids, or I sponge on PAX paint; a mix of Prosaide make-up glue, and acrylic paints. There's a type of Prosaide formulated especially for making PAX, called No-Tack, which means it doesn't have the stickiness of normal Prosaide.
But when the base paint is dry I attack my subject with an airbrush, in my case the Iwata HP-C double action airbrush pen. I can't say if this model is still available, but it's another little tough guy, very precise and easy to clean. I use a small air compressor specifically made for airbrush work.

I've used a variety of airbrush inks. Right now I'm into the Liquitex line of airbrush acrylics. I only use airbrush paints that are water-based. Cleaning up your pen can be a real hassle otherwise.

Moving on to other materials, which I use for prop-making. I've found that the Dragon Skin FX-Pro silicone from SmoothOn is ideal for making soft, elastic moulds in which you cast plastic or plaster items. These moulds last forever, the materials are easily mixed on a 50/50 ratio, and the silicone sets up fast -within about 45 minutes you have a usable mould.
I've also made masks and puppet parts out of Dragon Skin FX-Pro, and there are many ways you can vary the softness of the silicone using additives. I can also recommend PlatSil Gel 10, which is another easy to use silicone ideal for both moulds and mask/puppet projects.

The material I use more than any other for casting props, fake jewellery, puppet armature skulls, etc, is SmoothOn's Smooth-Cast 325. It's another 50/50 ratio mix material, and it can be tinted with other SmoothOn products. Smooth-Cast 325 is ideal for "roto casting", which means that it sets on the inside of your silicone mould if you start to turn it. In other words, you can cast hollow objects of almost any size -from tiny puppet parts to big monster skulls. This plastic also sets very quickly.
Sometimes I use Smooth-Cast 65D, which is more elastic, and therefore able to take a bigger beating.

Are these material expensive, then? Well, the SmoothOn products cost a bit, but are worth every penny. The Monster Clay is also quite pricey, but other than that you won't have to spend an arm and a leg tooling up for your first puppet or mask project.

Star Trek Alien Masks

A few years ago I was a member of the Trekspace Star Trek fan page. When I eventually left, the blog posts about Trek props and masks I had made on that page disappeared. For a while now, people have been asking me to re-post the same info, so I'll be doing just that. Hopefully it'll be of interest to any wayward Trekkie dropping in here, or just to anyone curious about how to make your own latex mask pieces.

I'll start off with a bunch of molds I made for simple Trek alien masks. I make all my masks in either liquid latex or silicone. Latex is cheap and easy to handle. This means low costs and quick production time. Silicone is infinitely more flexible than latex and very skin-like. The problems with latex are that some people may be allergic to it and that the material isn’t quite as flexible as you’d want it to be. The problems with silicone are that it’s expensive, hard to paint and a bit of a hassle to cast. There are good uses for both, however. A simple false nose, ears or a forehead will work just as fine in latex. If you want a full face with great movability, say for a character like Odo, silicone is ideal.

But before getting started with any of these materials it’s all about getting a decent sculpture as the basis of your mask. The choice of clay and tools do the trick. I prefer the oil-based clay Chavant, but any oil- or wax-based clay that’s not too soft is good. I have a stack of tools that I use for different purposes. The ones I hold in my hands most of the time are loop tools. Often, they are a bit clumsy for really detailed work so I’ve made small loop tools by attaching steel wire to old brush handles using “Friendly Plastic” thermo plastic. But you can also use plumber’s epoxy.

I use a face plaster cast to put my mask sculpture on. You can make one yourself casting your own face or a friend’s face. I might go into techniques for doing that in another blog. I’m using a cast I made myself from a bought polyfoam bust, since these masks will all be generic. The plaster face is often referred to as a “positive” while your mask mold will be the “negative”. When casting with foam latex or silicone, the mask material will be put in between these two parts. The sculpting process in itself is about adding and taking away clay. If you want some really excellent advice on sculpting techniques I recommend that you check out any of Mark Alfrey’s instructional DVDs. From time to time, I put a tiny amount of Vaseline on my fingers and rub on the clay surface to smooth it out. I use a closely cropped brush to get at where my fingers can’t reach.

Here’s an important detail: If you leave your mask sculpture without any skin detail it’ll just look flat. Add some pores by laying a piece of soft plastic, a plastic bag for instance, over your sculpture and gently press with a pointed tool on the plastic. This will leave subtle little markings that’ll add plenty of life to the mask.

I’ve done a version of the Bajoran nose ridges here (the Bajorans are a very human-like race). I’ve made a clay wall around the sculpture marking where the so-called “cutting edge” will be. When making mask pieces in foam latex, the cutting edge will result in a very thin edge on the finished foam mask, making it easier to apply and cover. You really don’t need a cutting edge while casting latex, but I prefer to put one in anyway, since it shows me how far out I’ll be putting the latex in the finished mold. This will help making every casting virtually identical. I’m using a softer clay for the cutting edge. The one I’m using is also oil-based, but it’s more common to use a water-based clay. Klean Klay is very popular for this in the US, but I can’t get that in Sweden so I’m sticking to what I can find to do the trick.

I use a plaster called Ultracal 30, which is very durable. It will hold up to repeated castings much, much better than ordinary hobby plaster. I always brush on the first coat of plaster. Here I’m using a small brush to get into all the details. This will help eliminate air bubbles in the finished plaster cast. After this first layer I put on a big gob of plaster. Notice that I’ve built up a wall with the softer clay surrounding the sculpture to help keep the plaster in place while it sets.

After the plaster has set up it’s taken off the sculpture and any residual clay is cleaned off the cast. The best time to remove the plaster mold is when it’s hard, but still a bit warm. Then it’ll come off pretty easily.

This sculpture is based on the Andorian look from “Star Trek Enterprise”, which differs from the The Original Series look. They have a pair of antenna, which will be created separately and attached to the mask.

Another cutting edge put on using the softer clay.

As this is a bigger sculpture, I’m using a bigger brush to cover up more quickly. Again, after the first layer has set up I add a thick layer of plaster on top. Have a bowl with some water to wash your brush in directly after having applied the plaster. NEVER wash your brush in a sink. The plaster will clog up your pipes and wreck them. If you have a soft bowl, (sculpture houses sell rubber bowls) just use very little water and leave the bowl with the dirty water in it after you've cleaned your brush. After a few days the water will have evaporated and you can clean the dried up plaster out.

This is a Tellarite mask design, mostly based on how they look in the TOS episode “Journey to Babel”. I’ve added some other details based on their look in ST Enterprise, mixed with some of my

own ideas.

After adding the brushed-on plaster layer I can recommend that you put on a layer of soft burlap pieces dipped in plaster. This will act as reinforcement to the plaster mold and give it extra strength. This can be important when you pry your mold off your plaster face positive. If your mold isn’t thick enough or reinforced, it may crack. So add that extra layer of burlap just to be sure. When I have to dip into the Ultracal plaster with my fingers, I cover my hands with surgical latex gloves.

Here is a weekend’s worth of mask plaster molds. At the top left is also a Romulan forehead and below the Andorian cast are the tips of the antenna. When prying the mold loose from the plaster face positive I use a flat screwdriver. Using gentle force I get the mold loose in one place and then it’s usually enough to use my fingers to remove the whole mold. Having that extra cutting edge area outside of the sculpture means that I never get the screwdriver inside the actual sculpted area, damaging it.

Of course, I also had to make a Klingon head appliance. This one was created for a friend in the US. I tried to come up with a ridge design of my own, and I think I was partially successful. It's hard to come up with something for a Klingon that hasn't already been seen and done.

That’s all for now, children. Next time I'll show a couple of the masks applied to some willing victims.