Ray and Me

 Yesterday I was heartbroken to learn that Ray Harryhausen, the great wizard of stop-motion effects, had passed away at 92. Although it is inevitable in the end, we don't want our heroes to die. It seems impossible, since they've achieved feats that seem far beyond the means of mere mortals. I spent my evening reminiscing with people at Facebook, making new friends, and enjoying the flood of love pouring over the memory of this man. It was a celebration of a life well lived, not a funeral wake.

The signed photo above hangs on the wall by my animation stage. Next to it is a photo of a scantly clad Fay Wray, and also a clipping from Cinefex magazine; a last tribute by his colleagues to David Allen after his passing. Fitting images of Pete Peterson and Jim Danforth will doubtlessly find their way there too. I keep that photo in the corner of my eye to remind me of what can be achieved, and what I should strive to live up to. A presumptious ambition to be sure, but I'd like to think it's a noble one.

 

 Growing up in Sweden in the 1970's and 80's meant that fantasy films weren't shown very often on TV. Thank goodness the classic "King Kong" was an exception. I had the fortune to see it on TV at age five, and it changed my life forever. With the advent of home video things changed a bit. I and my mom found that a nearby laundrymat had started renting out VHS video tapes, so we went there, and I picked out something called "Clash of the Titans". Again I was blown away by what I saw on the screen. This time the epic effects were in colour, and the interaction between monsters and actors flawless and far more intricate than in "Kong". The fact that the subject matter was Greek mythology, which I was slightly obsessed with at the time, only added to the incredible wonder.
Eventually I found a magazine called "Starlog" at a local magazine vendor, and faithfully bought a new issue every month. Starlog's celebratory 100th issue featured an interview with the enigmatic "Ray Harryhausen", and for the first time I got a proper look into this man's career.

 

 Some slightly blurry, but no less exciting photos aluded to a Sinbad film, as well as other movies. I set out to hunt them all down and somehow get them in my possession; something that wasn't an easy feat in the days of rental-only-video. Some time later Swedish TV screened "Jason and the Argonauts", and, finally, while visiting my dad who had just moved to the US, I raided Blockbuster Video for every Harryhausen tape they had. To say that those films influenced my life would be saying that a glass of water after walking through the desert was "refreshing"! They possessed my mind with a burning ambition to make films just like them, in any way and form I could.

 

 More Starlog articles followed, as well as research into the puppet-making and stop-motion animation crafts, usually via the now Starlog Group-published CineMagic. My dad also got me the first edition of Ray's "Film Fantasy Scrapbook" to include "Clash of the Titans". During this new millennia, Ray has treated us to a bunch of luxurious books dealing with every aspect of his life and career, as well as the legacy of many other stop-motion artists. My edition of "Ray Harryhausen an Animated Life" is, by the way, signed by the master.

 

Although I am only an amateur filmmaker posting my videos on YouTube, I like to imagine that I walk in "uncle" Ray's footsteps. I've come to realize that there are quite a few of us doing that, so I'm in good company. My own purest Harryhausen tribute is probably "The King Who Sought Immortality", which features a questing hero walking into set-pieces with monster encounters. However, only one of these scenes is a traditional Harryhausen-style battle, but done with all the zest that I and my main actor Dag could muster. The scene has a more than a slight nod to the multi-opponent skeleton fight of "Jason".
Ray's passing has made me more than determined to continue my "hobby", as others like to call it, my passion, as I like to call it. It has also made me realize I have to pick up my slack if I wish to be a prolific filmmaker, even if it as as an unpaid, YouTube backyard-epic mogul. It made me realize that I haven't done my own Greek mythology epic -gotta fix that. I haven't made my own Arabian Nights epic -I actually have a script for that. I haven't made my own dinosaurs vs cavemen film -let's get to work!
Let us not dwell on the "remakes" of Ray's "Clash of the Titans", as these films are insults in every way to both Ray and the moviegoing audience. Let's instead consider the many "children" of Ray, and celebrate the incredible influence he's had on popular culture. Both George Lucas and Peter Jackson has admitted that no Harryhausen, no "Star Wars" or "Lord of the Rings" movies. The same goes for his influence on James Cameron, and the whole slew of amazing British animations, spearheaded by Aardman. The examples of master movie craftsmen and women are too many to list. In short, Harryhausen is one of the most important figures in the history of entertainment. So many have been led by his example of excellence, and new aspiring fimmakers continue to discover him.
Anyway, this has been my little tribute and walk down memory lane.
Thanks Ray; my life would be so much poorer without you.

Stop-Motion Devil Puppet

Swedish film editor and CG FX creator Christoffer Åström contacted me about building and animating a cartoony devil for a music video featuring US band "Angry Johnny and the Killbillys". It's supposed to be a tiny imp, haunting the video's protagonist, and hounding him into doing dastardly deeds. Is the devil real, or is it just in his head; who knows! 

 

 

I started off with sculpting the head to get an interesting expression, defining the character. This puppet was going to be about the scale of the “real” devil, and slightly bigger than my usual puppets. Plastic balls stood in for the eventual finished eyes.

 

As I usually do I sculpted the front half of the puppet's torso, allowing me to have control over the most visible part of the puppet. This whole piece is cast as a loose latex skin, into which I can add padding, eyes, and the head armature.

 

The horns were actually the first thing I did, as you might've figured out from that first image. I did one horn sculpture in Chavant clay, based on the wild mountain Ibex goat. The sculpture was encased in soft silicone (DragonSkin FX), and removed, pretty intact, actually, after the silicon mould had set.

 

Two horns were cast in black-tinted SmoothCast 325. No news here for those of you who usually frequent my blog; I've been using the same materials for years, and as long as they work for me I see no reason to change to something else.

 

The hooves and the teeth and gums of the devil were also sculpted in clay and cast in plastic. For the teeth I used a different plastic; the slightly more flexible, and therefore more durable, SmoothCast 65D.

SmoothCast 325 can be a bit brittle when casting minute detail, like miniature teeth, for example, and the 65 D variant doesn't have that problem. It also cures solid white, which of course is the perfect base colour for teeth.

I did a slightly different armature this time around. Instead of using two or more tightly braided medium-thick aluminum wires I used very thick aluminum wire as it was. The “bone” sections of the armature were, per my usual method, covered with Friendly Plastic thermoplastic, but I also added long nails with the heads cut off. This meant the wire had to go exactly where I forced it. It bent, and it stopped with virtually no jiggle at all. You want as little jiggle as possible when you animate. This is the way I'll be building all my armatures from now on, even smaller ones.

The protruding rods on the back are screws embedded in Friendly Plastic. They're there simply to act as a sturdy piece I can grab hold of when animating. The cast cloven hooves were added to the armature, with wingnut tie-downs in the bottom.

 

The padding of the body was constructed out of variously soft and denser pieces of polyurethane foam, following a human muscle diagram. Here and there latex-soaked cotton was added to accent bonier parts, such as the hand and the legs.

Here's the cast torso latex skin, with Friendly plastic holding together different parts on the inside, such as the horns, the teeth and the aluminum jaw wires. There are also wires for the upper lip and the eyebrows. I've glued pieces of foam to certain areas to help fill out the skin in the best possible way.

 

The eyes were simply made from white plastic balls painted with hobby paints and glued into the eye sockets. The inspiration for these orbs were the eyes of Paul Blaisdell's low-budget monsters from various 1950's and 60's films. Blaisdell's monsters were always a tad crude, but his designs really grab you. His monster eyes were bloodshot and bulging. My original intention was to have moveable eyes, but the slit pupil design proved to be tough to keep in proper alignment. These static eyes will do the trick.

 

The padded body was covered with patches of cast latex skin, taken from flat plaster moulds. Liquid latex was used as a bonding agent.

 

I decided to put a fish-fin-like fringe along the puppet's arms. This detail was inspired by medieval art, showing devils with such protrutions here and there on their bodies. The bony outgrowths were simply made by dipping cotton in latex and rolling it between my fingers into a pointy shape. After all these pieces were stuck to the arms, I pressed very soft modelling clay against the arm, embedding the cotton “needles” about halfway, and then painting tinted latex over it.

 

The finished patched skin on the puppet was given a dry rub of tinted latex, and then subtle detailing with acrylic airbrush paints.

 

And here's the finished bad boy, with some fake fur added to his feet and private parts, and a slight paintjob on his horns and hooves. Well, not quite finished, as he'll be wielding a trident pitchfork too (of course). When that's made I'm probably off animating. I shall report on the progress when the project is up and running.

Bye, bye 2012!

2012 has been a shamefully slow year for me; I mean, just look at the time difference between this blog post and my previous one! Lots of stuff happened this year, and just a few things were good. Dad passed away in April, and lots and lots of paper work followed. He was a resident of the US and I live in Sweden. Without going into the entanglements of his personal life and businesses, it's enough to say that it's taken a long time to get everything cleared out, and it's not done yet.

 Dad in his prime (early 1970's), on one of his many to-be-crashed racing bikes.

Another really bad thing that happened was that I was let go from the job I've had for 11 years. So my economy has suffered quite a bit. That I can live with; I've always found ways of getting by. But what astonished and upset me was how low my social status dropped among people. Persons I considered close friends would have nothing to do with me anymore. Apart from being unemployed I hadn't changed a bit, but they apparently thought I had. So I did what the modern civilized person does to retaliate: Kick them out as Facebook friends! Thank god I have my creativity to lean against. There is no better friend when the winds of life blow cold.

 

During the spring, I and my friends Daniel Lenneer, and Christopher Johansson finished our H P Lovecraft film adaptation “The Shadow Out of Time”, and posted it on YouTube. The reaction has been (for us) incredibly positive, and the film has now reached 32000 views.

Almost immediately I was bombarded with suggestions from the YouTube viewers about what we or I should do next. I had contemplated adapting more stories and it's very likely I would've done so anyway. Now it's certain that I will, and I'm already working on the next one. More than anything people have suggested that I take on “At the Mountains of Madness”, which was going to be produced as a feature film by Guillermo Del Toro, but financing fell through, and the world of Lovecraftian fans let out a groan of disappointment. However, having read one of his screenplay drafts I'm not so sure his version would've satisfied the fans anyway. I shall tackle this rather monumental task by approaching it the only way I can; to make a condensed version, but still with lots of (hopefully) interesting visuals and monster action. I've already worked on preparing “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath” for a while, and hopefully I can seriously get that one going during 2013.

 

On a slightly similar note, my work on Rolando Gutierrez´ Lovecraftian horror game continues with animations and Photoshop duties. It'll be really interesting seeing the finished version of this old-school interactive game.

 Stills from the animations created for the game.

 

I also have a few older unfinished projects that I shall see the end of during 2013, damn it! One I'm working on finishing right now is what you could say is a dreamlike contemplation on “Alice in Wonderland”; a video illustrating a poem about the young heroine. Alice is played by Angelica, who previously portrayed a feisty Elf and an equally feisty space agent in my films. There has been lots, and lots of work creating the right look for this one, with many new puppets, and tricks I haven't attempted before. I hope you'll enjoy it when it's finished

 

It's astonishing how quickly a year goes by. When we were kids a year lasted forever, and at least I seemed to get tons of stuff done. I will attempt to trick time and get back to that slow passing of things this coming year. In short, I shall try to do more every month. Just a few days ago I got a call from some people who seemed keen on hiring me in February, thereby vastly improving my financial situation. I shall see how that works out, not holding my breath, but it's nevertheless a good note to go out on this year. Here's to 2013!

Monsters For Lovecraftian Computer Game 2

My work for Rolando Gutierrez' computer game is almost over: I built three more puppets and I have some animation left to do.

One of the more striking scenes in the game will feature a transforming woman, realized as a stop-motion puppet. I sculpted a twisted torso based on the likeness of an actress from the game's live-action portions. From the shoulders up I made the plaster mould in two parts.

As I usually do I sculpted a flat piece of skin and made a plaster mould over it. I prefer to have a bunch of plaster mould skin textures on hand to cast small and big pieces at my leisure when I build up my puppets.

The puppet is a mishmash of cast latex pieces and parts built up with latex and cotton over foam shapes. My idea was that this lady would undergo a transformation inspired by the final revealed appearance of Wilbur Whateley from Lovecraft's "The Dunwhich Horror". I'm sure some of you know what I'm talking about.

The finished puppet was painted with acrylic airbrush colours and decorated by tufts of crepé hair.

A monstrous worm puppet was also required. I had a design mailed to me, but for some reason I strayed a bit from it. Here's the head sculpture for the cyclopean monster.

The legs were aluminum wires with a cotton/latex mix applied over them.

The mid-body section was a cast originally sculpted for another puppet monster; the blunderblat (see my earlier blog posts). The spine of the puppet was braided aluminum wires, with Friendly Plastic thermoplastic added as support.

The skin for the rather long body was sculpted flat in clay with various details.

All the latex was tinted black using Kryolan tinting powders before being poured into the plaster moulds. This isn't the final colour, but it's a fairly good base colour, and automatically creates deep shading in hard-to-get-to spots.

Some simple foam padding was added before covering the puppet's body with the cast latex skin pieces. Liquid latex is the bonding agent.

 

And here's the little bugger with its finished paint job, and a plastic lens eye fitted into its head.

 

 

Don't ask me why I can't post this image standing up, ask Blogspot!

 

It's a pretty nice monster, if I may say so myself. However, this wasn't really what Rolando had intended for his game, so it was back to the workshop.

 

I started building another version, and this time I stuck exactly to the sketch I was given. The belly and back parts of the monster's body was sculpted in clay and cast as two separate latex skins.

The skins were wrapped around a foam padded aluminum wire armature with lots of legs.

 

The finished terror attached to my animation stage using a tie-down nut in its belly.

 

The first version of the bugworm will probably be used in another project.

Plastic Stageplay Helmets

The nearest town to where I live, Ronneby, was routed in 1564 by the Swedish king Erik XIV; an event noted in the history books as "The Bloodbath of Ronneby". It's a fitting moniker, since most of the population was actually killed. My home province of Blekinge wasn't Swedish at this point in history, it was Danish, and the Swedes and the Danes were embroiled in a 7-year conflict. The Swedish king hired Finnish and German mercenaries to capture Ronneby, which they did in just one day.
Every year some theatre group stage an outdoor show recounting the bloody events, and this year's production wanted to add as much historical detail as possible. Some years back, a rusty morion helmet was dug up in Ronneby. Obviously someone of the mercenaries had worn it. The play director, Johan Westermark, wanted two morions to be worn in the play, but he didn't want any pristine steel reproductions. I was asked to produce two slightly beat-up morions in plastic, so they'd look right AND wouldn't be heavy to wear.

I did one helmet sculpture in Chavant clay, based on the rusty morion found in Ronneby.

It took about a full day to create a silicone mould for the sculpture, adding layer upon layer of DragonSkin FX Pro silicone. I used a thickening agent for all layers but the first one. I added a two-part support shell for the silicone mould by using thick plaster bandages. After peeling off the cured silicone mould, I could let it rest in the plaster bandage "cradle" when casting the plastic.

I used a plastic called SmoothCast 65, which is sold by SmoothOn. It's quite sturdy and bends rather than breaks. It cures bright white, but I added black pigments to create a greyish metallic look.

After cleaning up the plaster casts I painted them with a high-gloss chrome spray paint. Over that I covered the helmet with an airbrush varnish, which created a more worn, satin look. The chin straps were just second hand shop-bought belts. The studs were also plastic, and created by casting Friendly Plastic thermoplastic into a silicone mould I made from a coat button. Roundhead fasteners were pressed into the curing plastic studs, and then threaded through the helmet to keep the studs in place. 

If I had enough money I'd love to try and create my own fantasy armour, but it'll take a lot of clay and a lot of silicone and plastic. Dracula's crimson armour from the prologue of "Bram Stoker's Dracula" was made this way. I've worn real armour and I know how heavy and cumbersome it is. It also takes forever to get in and out of it. The thing is, I have an idea for a video project requiring armour that doesn't look like anything out there, and I'm racking my brain trying to figure out a quick, cheap way of building it. More about that later, I'm sure.