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..)

Save Prince Plutonium on YouTube!

So, here’s the finished little epic. It took two years to put together, mostly due to interference from ”real” life. For instance, this spring my little studio, an old boiler room connected to my house, was flooded due to melting snow. It was the start of endless problems and very expensive repairs. It’s still not over, but I’m getting back to something similar to ordinary life. About six months were eaten away by this problem. It’s tough keeping your spirits up when you have a lot of worries to take care of.

I also made a little behind the scenes film. It’s very compressed, but shows some of the process behind putting this project together.

Sayonara, old buddy...

One of my oldest and best friends, Rolf Berg, passed away today. We made 15 films together, and had a blast doing them. Rolf played everything from pirates and crooks to trolls and wizards. He did it all and did it very well. I will really miss him.

Recreating Taurus

 I just finished one of my very few puppet-building commissions, a recreation of the monster Taurus from the film "Equinox" (1968/71). I built it for a fellow YouTuber with a great interest in vintage monsters. This puppet is built up, like all my puppets, having a aluminum wire-jointed skeleton covered with soft foam and a latex skin. It's a pretty good recreation, and I'm quite happy with it. I hope my YouTube pal will like it too.

"Equinox", for those of you that don't know, is a low-low budget horror fantasy of singular pedigree. It was put together by people who would in the 70´s rise to fame as creators of the effects for "Star Wars" and most of the blockbuster fantasies that followed during the 80´s. Besides Taurus there's also a bat-winged devil and a Lovecraftian tentacled horror, chasing no other than fantasy author Fritz Lieber in a small role. Today you can get "Equinox" as a very polished double DVD set (of course).

Save Prince Plutonium Trailer!

The poor people who appear in my films are almost always in for a long wait to see the finished piece. I sort-of film first and then later try to figure out how to make the film hold together. I've also learned to film WHEN people are available, and stock up on footage. Anyway, for the young actors in "Save Prince Plutonium", my space movie, I put together this little trailer as a "Happy Easter to you" message. Hope you enjoy it too!

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.

Imitating Life

I'm a member of UFO Sweden, an organization researching strange anomalies encountered and reported by people. UFO Sweden is led by the indefatigable Clas Svahn, journalist and author. We publish one magazine for the general public, and one for the investigators. Several years back I drew a comic for the internally published magazine, portraying Clas and his colleague Håkan as Men in Black. The comic was called “The Y Files”, and made fun (rather innocently, I thought) of the sometimes very weird and crazy UFO movement. Some loved it and some hated it bitterly, arguing that this single jest undermined the whole purpose of our organization. Eventually I grew tired of the crybabies and put the comic to rest.

I decided to give Clas a surprise Christmas gift this years, and sculpted a figurine of his “Y Files” alter ego, about to be grabbed by a stalky-eyed alien.

I created both characters in Chavant clay, and built up silicone molds around each figure separately.

 

The finished figurines were cast in SmoothCast 325, my favorite plastic, and painted with acrylic airbrush paints.

Clas had a really bad Christmas. Both his mom and his father in law passed away within a few days of each other. I hope my little gift gave him cause to smile a bit, and I think it did.

I also made a small sculpture of my uncle Ingvar as a gnome, since he’s interested in folklore and old traditions, but not least because he’s actually seen one!

When I make my silicone molds, I just build up a clay wall as closely to the sculpture as I can, so no excess silicone will be wasted. Also, I don’t want the molds to be too thick. If there’s a good enough thinness, without making the molds to soft and wobbly, I don’t have to make many, or any, cuts in the silicone to remove the sculpture, and later, the castings.

The camera wouldn’t give us any sharp images today, but I hope you get the general idea.