My Lovecraftian Alphabet part 2

Finally getting on with my Lovecraftian Alphabet video project! Here are another three stop-motion puppets representing various cosmic horrors. Again, these were built pretty fast, using a minimum of materials, and therefore dirt cheap to make.

If you know your Lovecraftian horrors, you know that Nyarlathotep is a key figure in the Cthulhu mythos pantheon. He/it can turn up in a number of shapes. for my puppet I chose the so-called black howler, or red tentacle. Basically, this avatar of Nyarlathotep is vaguely humanoid, with three legs and a slithering tentacle instead of a head. It does seem to have a sort of mouth, though. A basic aluminum wire / Friendly Plastic armature was slapped together. The yellow stuff over the arm joints is thin foam rubber.

 To make the front of the puppet slightly more detailed and controlled, I sculpted a chest, mouth, and torso in Chavant clay.

The arms and legs were covered with rolled lengths of cotton dabbed with black-tinted latex, making these limbs very thin and sinewy. The body was wrapped with thin sheets of foam rubber, and the tentacle shape was created by wrapping thick soft string around the aluminum wire.

Before painting the whole body was covered with cast patches of latex skin.

Here's the final monster, with PAX paint smoothing out the overall colour scheme, and acrylic airbrush colours adding shadows and highlights.

Yes children, this is how the world will look when the black howler finally appears on Earth.

 In his story "The Whisperer in Darkness" Lovecraft describe the alien Mi-Go race thusly: "They were pinkish things about five feet long; with crustaceous bodies bearing vast pairs of dorsal fins or membranous wings and several sets of articulated limbs, and with a sort of convoluted ellipsoid, covered with multitudes of very short antennae, where a head would ordinarily be."
These creatures are also known as "the fungi from Yuggoth", adding a bit of ambiguity to their nature; are they plant, animal or something completely different?
Sounds like the Mi-Go would make interesting stop-motion puppets, don't they? The only thing I really had to figure out was how to make that peculiar head. The "convoluted ellipsoid" is made up of a multitude of fleshy pyramids, and somewhere on or between these the antennae grow forth. I decided to create a backwards sculpture of the head shape, by pressing a hand-made pyramid-shaped silicone tool into a clay ellipse.

This shape was the covered by a thin layer of liquid latex, and then more latex covered with cotton.

The Final shape (although unfortunately blurry here) had a leathery texture, and slipped right off the clay, when I turned it outside in like a banana peel.

 The "head" was then attached to this simple armature, consisting of thick aluminum wire and a wood ball, with holes drilled for attaching wings and legs.

I won't go into the fabrication of the wings this time, since I've talked about it in length in other blog posts. I did try out something new here: Adding a webbed shape on the backside of each wing by dipping a pin tool in latex and "painting" with it. The other side of the wings already had the webbing etched into the plaster mould used to cast the wing membranes.

The legs were simply made by wrapping sewing string into shapes around aluminum wire. The "antannae" were thicker string dipped in latex and stuck on the head while still wet.

The wooden ball was covered with cotton dipped in latex. This mixture was prodded around with a pointy tool until a warty surface was achieved. Cast latex skins decorated the string-wrapped aluminum wire posterior.

PAX paints and acrylic airbrush paints again gilding the lily.

 It's a pretty small puppet, but I'm quite happy with it. Eventually I'll make a bigger one, much better detailed. The Mi-Go pop up in several of Lovecraft's tales, and I'll get back to them eventually.

The short story "The Horror In the Museum" was ghostwritten by H. P. Lovecraft for Hazel Heald.; one of many "revisions" Lovecraft took upon him to get some money for basic survival. There are  several weird monsters mentioned in the story, but the main big bad is "Rhan-Tegoth". I sculpted its three-eyed head in clay, while the rest of the body was built up.

The limbs were sculpted out of Friendly Plastic thermoplastic while the material was cooling. One must work fast, as the plastic sets up in about a minute or less. I was walking home from a train ride one day, while pondering where to find a structure for the monster's round body. Suddenly I found a blue plastic ball lying by the road, just the right size! I punched a hole in the ball, and poured in plastic for roto-casting. When the plastic set up, it turned the ball rigid and durable. The limbs were attached with small screws to the body.

The body was then covered with a latex/cotton mix. This was mainly to get a rough surface onto which latex skins, cast from old moulds, could be stuck.

 Eventually the puppet turned out like this...

And although I never intended to show the back, I added some structure to that as well.

A PAX paint mix was used to the entire puppet. This mixture of ProsAide glue and acrylic paints is so durable I've been able to use it on both latex and plastic. 

I've forgotten to say something about the eyes. They are Photoshopped image printouts covered by transparent plastic liquid used by scrapbookers to create dew drops and the like. I've found this to be a cheap and quick way to make good-looking eyes. Best of all is that you can decide the size of the eyes yourself.

Finally the puppet was touched up with acrylic airbrush paint. Here he's resting on a bag of cotton, awaiting a more regal seating place. And here you also get a glimpse of how terribly cluttered and disorganized my workshop is.

In the story, the alien monster is resting on an ivory throne. Not wishing to spend the time and money on  casting a resin prop, or using any similar method, I simply built up the throne out of the kind of soft plastic cushions campers use. Thick cardboard was used here and the, and decorations created with cast pieces of latex from old plaster moulds, created for various projects. The whole shebang was then painted with white PAX paint.

 Rhan-Tegoth comfortably seated on his throne: "The thing squatted or was balanced on what appeared to be a clever reproduction of the monstrously carved throne. There was an almost globular torso, with six long, sinuous limbs terminating in crab-like claws. From the upper end a subsidiary globe bulged forward bubble-like; its triangle of three staring, fishy eyes, its foot-long and evidently flexible proboscis, and a distended lateral system analogous to gills, suggesting that it was a head."

My Lovecraftian Alphabet part 1

Last time I blogged about my attempt to build a Cthulhu stop-motion puppet. This is the project I built it for.

 A while ago I bought a couple of fun-looking little books from eBay. They were the Lovecraftian poetry parody books (there's a high concept for you) “The Young Guy From Fuggoth” by M. M. Moamrath, and “The Arkham Alphabet Book For Children” by Darrell Schweitzer. Both of them were great fun, and I thought of adapting one or two of the texts as YouTube videos. Both books contained parodies of children's alphabets; here, of course, focusing on Lovecraftian horrors.

I bought the books directly from Darrell and asked for his permission to use the texts. He gave me the go-ahead for his book, but the other one was a different matter. Two authors had joined forces as the pseudonym M. M. Moamrath, and neither of them could be reached. In fact, they seemed to have vanished from the face of the Earth (the work of eldritch powers??)

After having spent a few days trying to get hold of said parties I finally though, what the hell -Can't I write my own humorous Lovecraftian alphabet? It turned out I actually could. I spent an afternoon composing the verses, and then sent them off to my regular Lovecraftian video narrator, Mr John Hutch of London. He sent a jolly good MP3 back to me the following day, and I started on creating the scenes illustrating the alphabet, beginning with “A is for Azatoth, that amorphous blight; B is for Byakhee, which flies in the night.”

Now, what is really the point of this exercise in monstrous Lovecraftian indulgence? Well, that is actually the point: To have fun with the monsters and texts of old Lovecraft, but also to give myself a challenge -how can I produce visuals of a huge number of monsters and places without spending forever doing it, and all of my money? This is why this project might be of interest to other creative minds. I hope to show you in this part and the next that it's possible through lots and lots and LOTS of cheating.

 I knew that I had to approach each of Lovecraft's often indescribable creatures as simplified concepts; the bare bones, tentacles and slime of them, so to speak. Azatoth, “the mad Daemon Sultan”, is as ambiguous as they get. I decided to show him as a rotating lump of mouths, eyes and tentacles suspended in space. I started sculpting a flat circle of nasty details in Chavant clay, but immediately noticed how time consuming this was. When I started out in the early 1990's I knew nothing of clay sculpting techniques or mould-making and casting. I simply built everything up, from puppets to masks, using liquid latex and lumps of cotton. This was the proper way of making this monster, and I did the whole thing in just an hour or so.

 The finished latex/cotton “sculpture” was airbrushed and had red scrapbooking beads added here and there as eyes. I also did a cloth/latex hand puppet, basically a sock puppet with latex teeth added. This contraption was pushed through a green piece of cardboard and filmed live, while operated by me.

 

 Multiple shots of the toothy sock puppet together with some animated tentacles were added over a photo of the Azatoth body sculpture, with all of it animated to rotate in After Effects. Presto: A space-bound Daemon Sultan.

 The Byakhee was done in a very similar manner. A Byakhee is a sort of flying beast, used as a riding animal by several fractions in the Cthulhu “mythos”. Lovecraft describes them as having features of ants, moles, bats, birds, decomposing humans, and other unlikely elements. Again, overthinking this creature would simply keep me from ever getting it finished, so I tried to simplify things as best I could. I started off with a jointed head and neck stuck to a piece of wood painted greenscreen green. This allowed me to animate this part of the monster's body as an isolated element.

 The rest of the body consisted of Googled still images of various insects and crustaceans hobbled together in Photoshop, with the arms and animated wings of a previously built puppet, the Nightgaunt, added in After Effects. A stock footage night shot was added behind the creature.
Of course, this sort of trick film cheating won't hold up for portraying a monstrous character throughout an entire film. But for the odd quick shot, building an entirely new puppet may not be the best option, especially not if it's a very complicated character.

 And you can certainly do the same thing with humans and surroundings. Here's my friend Håkan reading the blasphemous book the Necronomicon, and blowing his mind in the process. The library is a Photoshopped photo collage, the book is another manipulated photo saved with a transparent background, and Håkan, filmed against a greenscreen, is spliced in between these two elements. A stock footage steam effect is protruding from his ears.

 This shot illustrating the story “The Colour Out of Space” is one piece Photoshopped photo collage, and one piece stock footage CGI effect added. Even simpler, in other words.

 Another example: Here we're approaching the fabled city of Kadath in the Dreamlands. It's yet another Photoshop mash-up, with added stock footage sky and smoke.

 I've done so many Lovecraftian projects by now that I'm able to recycle my puppets. Here I've pressed both my flying polyp puppets from “The Shadow Out of Time”, and my claymation shoggoth from my buddy Daniel Lenneer's “The Terror From the Abyss” back into service again.

 In my alphabet V is for “victims of re-animation”, in other words the zombie creatures created by mad doctor Herbert West. I helped a bunch of high school kids make a zombie film, and between takes of their movie, they shambled past my camera for this scene in my project.

 My contribution to their film was the actual zombie make-ups. I spent four hours making up about 10-12 people as the living dead. Prior to that I held a full day rubber guts-making course, which was much appreciated.

Next time I'll delve into the more complicated scenes, where puppets, people, and various Photoshop and digital image files are combined. Stay tuned!

Re-creating Cthulhu

Horror and fantasy author H P Lovecraft would probably be quite astounded today if he could see what a pop culture phenomenon his monstrous creation Cthulhu has become. And then he'd marvel over how few people have actually read the story "Call of Cthulhu". Cthulhu has become regarded as a maskot or symbol of unstoppable cosmic evil, and is (like his creator) the brunt of many an internet parody or satire. "Cthulhu for president -Why vote for a lesser evil", and so on.

But what, in short, is really this green, octopus-headed, many-loved horror? It's mentioned in a number of Lovecraft's tales, and tales by others trying to emulate his style, but is the focus of the short story "The Call of Cthulhu" (1928). A carved idol representing the monster is described thusly: "A monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind." He came from the stars to the primitive earth with a horde of his "star spawn", and fought other alien races, before retreating into his tomb/sleeping chamber on the island of R'lyeh, which sank into the ocean. Bad omens and hinted at portents reveal that he will eventually wake up, and bring doom to our civilization.

 Cthulhu is generally portrayed in a myriad of very similar interpretations, and the web is teeming with them. Mostly, Cthulhu looks like he's been working out quite a bit in his crypt over the millennia, and can't wait to flex his muscles before the horrified gaze of mankind.

 Lovecraft did at least a couple of sketches in letters, revealing how he saw his creation himself. This version is a rubbery, bulbous, seemingly six-eyed abomination, that has actually been realized as a cast resin sculpture, available for sale on some websites.

So, why haven't I made my own, stop-mo version of the great Cthulhu yet? Well, I haven't had a project for him. But now I have. I won't be doing "The Call of Cthulhu" as that one has already been lovingly recreated on film by the Lovecraft Historical Society. Instead I have a few other ideas, which I will talk about in detail in a while.

 Lovecraft fans are quite vocal about their dislike for half-baked or totally erroneous interpretations of Lovecraft's visions. Hollywood has rightly taken the brunt of this critique. Amateur filmmakers usually avoid taking on stories that demand the recreations of Lovecraft's more elaborate creatures, instead focusing on tales that are driven by suggestions and atmosphere. I enjoy taking the other route. However, instead of burying myself in pictorial research on Cthulhu I just jumped into the creation of my puppet, opting to work as fast as I could, simply driven by my impressions of the character. The head sculpture in Chavant clay was not overworked. I added three eyes on either side, and stopped as soon as I thought I had captured the essence of the monster. 

 For practical reasons I decided to give this Cthulhu only seven tentacles on his octopoid head. They're aluminum wires covered with soft, thick string, made fleshy by covering them with latex casts of wrinkly skin textures. The latex head skin cast was supported by a “skull” made with Friendly Plastic thermoplastic, and the tentacly beard was stuck to this structure using more plastic.

 The body armature was made, as I always do, out of thick aluminum wires acting as joints, with Friendly Plastic bony parts.

 I've written before about my home-made technique for making bat/pterodactyl/dragon wings, but here's a recap: An aluminum wire bone structure is covered with sewing string, and latex. This whole thing is lowered into thick plaster of Paris, the cheaper hobby store kind, and half submerged.

 When the plaster is dry I etch veins and other details into the plaster, and the areas between the “Fingers” are covered with latex simulating wing membranes.

When the latex has dried, the wing is removed from the plaster. I either add more wing details to the smooth backside of each wing using a needle dipped in latex, or simply cast thin latex pieces from the plaster moulds, and attach them to the wings using liquid latex.

 The wings are attached to the body armature with more thermoplastic. I can now begin to bulk up the body with padding.

 I did the padding work very quickly and without dwelling too much on details. I kept a vague body outline in mind, and tried to stick with that. Some structures and muscle build-up were achieved using rolled up cotton pieces covered with a thin layer of latex.

 The skin was cast from a variety of old skin moulds, originally produced for monsters in other films I've made. I keep re-using those moulds over and over. As you can see I've added a dark green tint to the latex during the casting process.

 Here's the puppet with a light coating of PAX paint (Pros-Aide glue plus acrylic paint)..

..And here it is with acrylic airbrush shading and detailing.

 

 I am a frequent user of pearly plastic scrapbooking beads to simulate glowing eyes. The thing is, these half-beads reflect light shone at them right back into the camera at all angles, so you'll always get a sinisterly glowing red dot (or whatever colour you're using) staring back at you from the centre of the “Eye”, even if your puppet isn't lighted very well. Much simpler and cheaper than using small electric lights.

 As you can see, this puppet isn't very big; just about a foot tall. All in all, this puppet took about four days to build from start to finish. As I said, I didn't want to dwell too much on details, but focus on the essence of this very famous character. Hopefully I managed to do him justice.

 This puppet will be used in a project just nearing completion now, where he'll be seen in a short four second clip. But so far the reaction to this puppet in various social media has been so good that I'm already thinking of using it a bit more elaborately. One day I'll probably make another version, which is done with more consideration. For now, this fellow will do, I'm sure... A great wailing shall be heard, and the cities of man shall fall before his might!!

By the way, my favourite all-time version of Cthulhu is this knitted one, made for me a few years back by German knitting artist Hecateslight Muse on Elfwood and Deviantart.