The Sweepers

The idea for this film comes from a couple of places. Firstly, the Sweepers themselves are inspired by two UFO cases, or rather, two cases of what's called "high strangeness." 

In 1973, in Uden, the Netherlands, a man claims to have seen a couple of strangely dressed individuals seemingly hoovering the street outside his home. Also in 1973, this time in Belgium, another man says he saw a glowing figure walking around in his backyard with what looked like a metal detector. Both these occurrences happened in the middle of the night.

The flying creature is based on a monster from a story by Walter McDougal, author and illustrator. Originally, I intended to adapt this story, which is in the public domain, but I later went in another direction and kept the basic look af the monster.

To create this zeppelin-like menace, I start off with a plastic cover used for bathroom lights. It’s lightweight and fairly cheap. 

I don’t need the screw-on part, so I cut it with a Dremel, actually using an extension on the Dremel tool, which is easier to hold and more preciseit with. 

I am measuring out where the neck, tail, and legs will be attached. But before I start working on that, I’m making a cover for the big hole that’s now in the globe. I’ve measured out and drawn a section on the globe, which I’ll cover with latex and cotton to make a new piece over the hole. 

Latex goes on first, then layers of cotton are pressed into it with a sponge.

When the latex has dried, I can pull off the cotton/latex mix and use it to cover the hole. Reinforced with cotton, the latex now has a very sturdy, leathery feel.

 I’m again using my Dremel extension to cut holes in the globe where the various limbs will be attached. I’ve also cut a square hole where I’ll place a small bit of square brass tubing. This will be the attachment point for a support arm that’ll keep the puppet aloft during animation.

Before fixing it to the globe, the brass tubing is covered at one end with a small bit of thermoplastic. This is so that when the larger blob of thermoplastic is applied inside the globe to hold the tube in place, the material won’t fill the tube and prevent insertion of a support stand. 

I’m using 2 mm aluminum wire to make the limbs. I’m making hoops on one end of the wires that’ll help anchor the limbs to the inside of the globe. Thermoplastic is used to hold each loop in place.

Since the globe is a bit soft, they’ll all come loose eventually. To prevent that, I’ve mixed up some Burro resin, which is perfect for roto-casting. This time I’ll use it to create a sturdy lcenv shell for the globe, as well as a strong matrix securing the limbs. The resin needs to be sloshed around inside the globe to cover all parts and set up evenly. The same goes for the latex piece covering the hole in the globe and also holding the neck armature. To spread the resin evenly, I’m helping the material out with a Q-tip and also by rotating the latex piece. As the resin starts to set, I’m wetting my thumbs to press it into places where the stuff isn’t evenly thick.

As you can see, I’ve added toes to the feet of the creature. They are made from thin steel rods used in floral decorations and are clumped together with thermoplastic.

As I sometimes do, I’m bulking up the limbs by wrapping soft yarn around the armature wire. The yarn I’m using originally came from a carpet factory where my uncle Ingvar worked for most of his life. Somehow, some rolls of yarn found their way back home with him. And again, as I usually do, the yarn is dabbed with latex to fix it in place.

It’s time to add the lid over the hole. This piece is secured in place with super glue. 

This puppet will be covered with various textured latex skin pieces, but these won’t stick very well directly to the plastic globe, so I’m covering the globe’s surface with a mix of cotton and latex. Latex always shrinks a bit, so when it dries, it’ll hug the globe tightly. The added cotton makes the latex tougher. 

I’m using my heat gun on a low setting to shorten the drying time.

s. I didn’t have any old texture molds like that, so I had to sculpt one. It’s a very simple thing: just rolling the monster clay into small balls, slicing them in half, and pressing them onto a flat clay surface. With a pointy sculpting tool, I’m adding grooves reminiscent of the look seen on barnacles and cockles. Hard dental plaster is first painted onto the clay to capture the detail, then simply poured out. The finished mold comes off the sculpture easily enough, but there are still bits of clay left in the mold, so a pointy dental tool comes in handy for digging those out. 

I’m using latex colored with tinting paste to fill out the mold in the shapes I want. I find that casting skin texture pieces in smaller bits rather than one big bit makes it easier to apply and smooth out the skin.

Liquid latex is used as an adhesive to attach the latex skins to the puppet's round body.

Here I am using an older mold, a silicone mold, taken from a piece of really wrinkly leather, I believe.

These wrinkled latex skins will cover the snout and neck.

I’m using really sharp scissors to cut off excess latex. I bought those from an online hobby shop. A bit pricey, but worth every dime.

I wanted webbing between the toes, but instead of casting the latex in a mold, I pressed clay between the toes and applied latex over both the toes and the clay.

This wooden dowel will become the monster's snout, and the cluster of 1 mm aluminum wires will form the structure of the mouth. Wires are held in place with a mix of super glue and baking soda. I bend the end of the wires to make a sturdier base for the teeth that’ll eventually be stuck to each wire. I’m again using yarn to build up a shape around both wires and the dowel.

The snout is super-glued into a wooden ball, which will become the head. Some baking soda and more glue help secure the dowel inside the ball. Thermoplastic is pressed into the back of the ball, and the neck wire is then inserted into the soft plastic. When the plastic is cool, the neck is securely fastened to the head. Patches of latex skin cast in the plaster mold now cover all of the spherical body.

I’m giving the puppet its first coat of paint, which in this case is tinted latex. The reddish-brown latex is sponged on using a bit of polyurethane foam. This is only the base color.

I’m painting the puppet with several layers of tinted latex to create a slightly mottled look. I’m going for a purplish grey, with dabs of blue. The mouth at the end of the snout is getting the same treatment as the feet. I wanted to add some pearl-looking details to the skin that’ll light up when the monster eats electricity. I used scrapbooking half-pearls and super glue. The lightening-up is an effect applied in After Effects.

The claws were made from latex and ordinary kitchen tissue paper. I tear off a strip, fold it over a few times, dab it with latex, and voilàt: A rubber claw with a subtle texture. The webbing around the mouth was made the same way as the toes of the feet. The outgrowths on the head were made with yarn soaked in latex. I’m wrapping it around the tip of a pointy tool. More tinted latex is applied, and when I pull off the yarn after it has dried, I now have a funnel-like outgrowth. I’m making a bunch of these and sticking them to the head using liquid latex to create a myriad of, well, some kind of organ growing out of the head. Lastly, I add drops of clear varnish to the funnels on the head, the mouth, and the claws to make them look wet and shiny.

This contraption is a very simple flying rig. The support arm consists of a square tube attached to a steel nail, which is attached to a larger nail, which is then attached to a metal profile support piece. The brown stuff is Worbla thermoplastic, which is pressed onto both the nails and the profile, and THROUGH the holes in the profile to really secure the nails. This is a very cheap but sturdy support for keeping the puppet aloft. I’m holding it in place on my animation stage with a glue clamp.

The small robots that get rid of the balloon monster, "Zappers," don't have any obvious source of inspiration. Maybe there is some DNA from the Star Wars Gonk droids.

Basically, the Zapper puppet is a collection of found things stuck together. The very top is the point of a ballpoint pen. Then come a few parts that are resin casts from silicone molds taken from various plastic model kits. The long straight section is the main body of a ballpoint pen, and the tubby body is the cap from a deodorant bottle. Pearl half-spheres act as heavy-duty bolts added to the body. The tiny feet are 3 mm threaded nuts, and the legs, as well as the base of the gun, are 2 mm aluminum wires covered with macramé yarn dabbed with tinted latex.

Here's the puppet sprayed with a soft silver color. I've covered some parts with sticky tape to have them keep their own color.

As I started animating, I quickly noticed that the short strides the Zapper took when walking did not correspond well to the placement of the tie-down holes in my animation stage. Those holes were drilled out in a haphazard fashion when I built the stage many years ago, and the irregular hole pattern would often be out of reach for the puppet. Instead, I drilled a hole in the back of the Zapper, poured in resin, and pressed in a square brass tube section as the resin was setting up. That allowed me to hook up the puppet to another of my homemade puppets, and I animated the Zapper walking, shooting, and falling as it actually remained static in the shot. I keyframed it moving about in After Effects.

To get the look of the robe just right, I simply sculpted the whole thing in clay. What looks like a mouth is a space where a visor will be attached on the finished puppet.

I made a mold from dental plaster over the sculpture, and when the clay had been cleaned out, I mixed latex with tinting paste to create this muted dark green color, and poured the latex into the mold. I added three layers of latex to build up the thickness of the rubber skin.

That visor I mentioned earlier is a large plastic bead, normally used in bracelets and necklaces. Since the red plastic is transparent, I painted a white area where the visor would go. If I hadn’t done that, the red color would’ve been muddled by the dark green of the robe. I used transparent super glue to stick the bead in place. To mask the hole going through the bead (used for threading it on a bracelet, etc), I stuck a couple of metal pins through each end.

I filled up the head with ”Burro” resin, which I simply poured into the latex skin and let it level out. This blob of plastic became the armature anchor for the whole puppet. From it, I added all the other parts, like a neck, and a wooden dowel where the arms and the legs would be attached.

The arms of the puppet are actually leftover parts from an older puppet; an alien from my film ”Chaugnar Wakes.” I had intended to make a bunch of alien puppets, but in the end I only made one, and ”cloned” that one in After Effects.

Apart from adding a thumb, I used the arms as they were. Each arm is a 1,5 mm aluminum wire folded up once and covered with macramé yarn dabbed with latex. The metallic blue effect comes from adding a silver dust to the latex plus blue tinting paste. The dust is manufactured by Kryolan and can be mixed with latex and various make-up products.

If we look under the skirt (so to speak), we can see that I’ve added thin bits of polyurethane foam to give the latex skin some extra support.

Two 2 mm aluminum wires make up each leg. The feet are two 4 mm t-nuts stuck to the 

aluminum wires with thermoplastic.

The brown cookie dough-like material in the center of the puppet is Worbla thermoplastic used for holding together the various parts of the armature.

Here are the materials used to make the handle of the hoovering machine.

The backpack for the vacuum is a plastic cap for a bottle of household cleaning fluid. I can’t remember where it actually came from, unfortunately, but I’ve had it in a box of plastic junk for a long time.

On the back, there is an indentation. I filled it up with a strip of black EVA foam. 

All the plastic parts are sprayed with silver hobby paint. Since the EVA foam piece will be used to glue the backpack to the latex skin of the puppet, I can’t have it be covered with paint, or the glue won’t stick. To fix this, I simply covered the foam bit with a length of masking tape.

The hose is a piece of fabric cord, like the ones used to tighten jogging pants. I bought it for some project long ago that I have forgotten about. Super glue holds the whole contraption together, and was also used to attach it to the back of the puppet.

Here’s the finished Sweeper puppet. I only made one, but animated it a couple of times from different angles, and added the animations in two layers.

The cityscapes used as backgrounds are stock images from Depositphotos.com, showing houses and streets from many European cities, including a couple from Sweden. I cut up the images in Photoshop to create layers, between which the animated puppets could move.

All energy beams, electricity bursts, and explosions were plucked from stock footage sites, which is where I also found the cat.