The Munkits

I recently found two poems written by the fabled Dr. Seuss that are in the public domain. I thought I'd give them a go as adaptations for my YouTube channel, starting off with "The Munkits." 

For those of you who have no idea who Dr. Seuss is, his real name was Theodore Geisel (1904-1991), and he's the author and illustrator behind more than 60 children's books, including "The Cat in the Hat" and "The Grinch." In the field of stop-motion animation, he's connected to Ray Harryhausen, as both men did their military service at the same time and collaborated on creating the cartoon character Private Snafu.

Most of Dr.Seuss' characters look the same; more precisely, they look like the Grinch. Even some of his bird characters look like the Grinch. I wanted something different for my version of the Munkits.

I looked at monkeys with colorful faces, because nature always gets it just right.

I was also inspired by the look of the Fraggles and other Muppet characters. I also had to look at what kind of materials I had lying around. In the end, the resulting puppets had the DNA of all these factors.

I didn't take many snapshots of the Munkits in progress, so we'll have to make do with what I have. Each Munkit face was first sculpted in medium-grade Monster Clay, and two molds made with regular hobby plaster were created over them. Latex tinted with universal tinting mediums was carefully painted into the molds to create separate areas of different colors.

The eyes are plastic pearls pulled from a fake necklace. I reamed a concave surface into each ball using a Dremel tool and painted the iris and pupil. UV resin was then poured into the iris area to create a lens.

The square brass tubes at the bottom of the picture will become attachment points for a flying rig. Two tubes are placed in the chest and on the back of each puppet, and I did have two more tubes that would've gone up the butts of the puppets, but with the other attachment points, I never had to use them.

You can see a partial shot of the armature here, which is as simple as can be; just two mm aluminum wires for the arms and legs, and two wires joined together for the spine and neck. To quickly create the back of the head, I just crunched together a ball of aluminum foil and hot-glued it onto the top of the neck armature. Parts of the face were propped up with cotton dipped in latex, which created a tough, leathery feel, while other sections were padded with soft polyurethane foam. The fingers and the toes were made with 1,5 mm aluminum wires wrapped in soft yarn and then dabbed with tinted latex.

Most of the puppets were covered with fur, all of it fake fur left over from various projects, including some stage productions. For example, the shockingly pink fur was originally bought to build a suit of the Cheshire Cat from a production of "Alice in Wonderland." That suit was quite an eyesore for the audience!

Teeth and nails were made with tissue paper dipped in latex. The jaws of the Munkits were just aluminum wires wrapped in yarn and attached to the lower lip with liquid latex. As the lip moved, so did the teeth, which wasn't very realistic, but somehow expressive enough to make the animation work. Cartoon characters have their own rules regarding anatomy and physics, as you know.

The eyeballs were placed in globs of dental silicone which were pressed up against the inside of the eye holes, lining up the eyes to fill out the eyelids. When the silicone had set after a couple of minutes, thermoplastic was added on top of it, permanently fixing the eyes and their sockets in place. The oil in the silicone makes the sockets lubricated, and it's fairly easy to swivel around the eyeballs.

The flying rig I mostly use nowadays is just a 4 mm aluminum wire fixed to a metal plate, with a bit of square brass tubing at the other end. This tube is slightly smaller than the ones inserted into the puppets and easily fits into those. The flying rig was used for shots where the Munkits were running or climbing.

Funnily enough, a background figure was actually spoiled with more coverage than the main characters. I wanted a desert animal loitering around the edges of the main story. I went with a cross between an aardvark and the extinct giant armadillo Glyptodon (see image above).

I sculpted the main carapace out of Monster Clay mostly using small loop tools. While using a Glyptodon shell as a template, I also added big spikes to make it look both more cartoony and more over-the-top.

I used PlatSil Gel 10 to build up a silicone mold over the sculpture. Burro resin with a brown tinting medium added was poured into the mold to create a hollow shell. Excess resin was cut away with a Dremel sanding tool.

The head of the "Armavark", as I call it, was again sculpted in Monster Clay with a slightly cartoony look. It doesn't have any jaw yet. That'll be added later.

I'm building up a hard, dental plaster mold over the sculpture, which has been added to an aluminum slab. I made a base for the sculpture out of more Monster Clay. That base is the area which the plaster will cover.

The latex head cast is here just out of its plaster mold. I added a reddish-brown dye to the latex as a base color.

Jumping ahead a bit, here's the head added to the armature. The head has interior aluminum wires providing movement for the ears and the snout. I've also added eyes made from plastic pearls. The jaw is a 1,5 mm aluminum wire bent into a U-shape, wrapped in yarn and dabbed with tinted latex.

The main body is made from a couple of wooden tongue depressors hot-glued together. 2 mm wires make up the legs, the neck, and the tail. After thinking about it for a while, I actually shortened both the tail and the torso, making the creature look more stumpy, which I think worked better.

I wanted the carapace to bob up and down as the Armavark was walking in a VERY cartoony fashion. To make this happen during animation, I made a sort-of lever out of a 2 mm aluminum wire, lashing two bits of metal rods to the wire and creating three joints in the gaps between the rods, the carapace and the back of the puppet. 

When animating, I'd just gradually pull the carapace up and then press it down to make it bob up and down. Here, by the way, is the puppet with the modified tail and torso. Thermoplastic holds everything in place.

I wanted a Glyptodon tail for the Armavark, so I sculpted a bunch of loose sections in clay.

One plaster mold later, I was able to cast latex versions of my sculptures. These latex pieces were reinforced on the inside with a mix of cotton and latex.

The tail sections were pulled over the tail (which is padded with yarn), the biggest piece first and the smallest one last.

All the paint touch-ups were made with a brush and acrylic hobby paints. Here I'm adding differently colored spots to the carapace, while listening to T. E. D. Kline's horror novel "The Ceremonies."

The fur is of the fake variety and comes from an old winter hat found at a local thrift store. Tufts of fur were added to the latex head using liquid latex as a glue. The claws are tissue paper and latex.

The teeth are only tiny blobs of latex tinted white. I added them to the mouth using a pointy sculpting tool.

The worm the Armavark pulls from under a rock was made from plasticine.

The backgrounds were all made from CG stock images downloaded from Depositphotos.com. I tweaked them a bit in Photoshop, for example, adding blue skies or night skies. Stock footage dust clouds were also added over the animation.

I've rarely made something this cartoony, which was a bit of a mellow departure. I didn't have to worry about making anything realistic; quite the opposite. I'll probably do something similar eventually.