The Song of the Bats

Robert E Howard is probably most famous for his pulp-era creation Conan the Barbarian, who has outlived his creator in many ways. But Howard also wrote a lot of poetry, most of it destined for Weird Tales and similar magazines. Though many of his most famous works are copyrighted to high heaven, more and more of his literary estate is slipping into the public domain. One such work is the poem "The Song of the Bats". I found it to be a perfect vehicle for experimenting with lip-synched puppets, something I'm planning to do more of. 

I only built the one bat puppet, which was then animated to represent a whole group of bats, hopefully successfully.

I based my bat on a couple of species and sculpted its face in medium-grade Monster Clay.

The bat face was cast as a hollow latex skin and an aluminum wire and thermoplastic jaw armature was inserted into it. Aluminum wires also went into the ears.  The armature was based on a real bat skeleton, though I made the legs slightly longer since that bats were going to stand and walk upright.

To add skin between the fingers and the body I resorted to my old trick of submerging the puppet halfway down into soft plaster, and added tinted latex over the plaster and the armature.

The finished puppet has fake fur on the front and back of its body. The latex skins are painted with tinted latex. The teeth and claws are tissue paper soaked in latex. The black eyes are simply painted on and covered with a glossy medium.

In the bat's back, there is a t-nut, allowing me to attach a ball & socket flying rig. The rig is simply covered up with green screen sticky tape -an an endlessly useful tool.

I did the voices for the bats, as well as the narration. It's a very short and relatively simple little film, but I enjoyed making it. As I've said before, I'll probably lean more and more into all-puppet projects, because the possibilities are endless.

 

What is Your Work Worth?

This summer I made quite a lot of stuff for Castle Kalmar, which is a stately 16th century fortress (begun in the 12th century). It's one of the big tourist attractions in the south of Sweden and all sorts of arrangements for kids are going on there. This summer they needed some new stuff, which they wanted me to produce for them. Here's some of the stuff I did:


They needed about ten fake rats to be handled by storytellers dressed up as "forgotten prisoners" in the castle's dungeons. As always, they were first sculpted in clay.


They were then cast in latex, filled with soft polyurethane foam and had jointed feet and black button eyes added. The tail was also made in latex. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of them with fur added, but they were actually quite effective when used. A costume-making lady at the castle did the fur-adding job.




I did eight fake bats in the same way, though I added the fur myself. The toes worked as small grappling hooks, so the bats could be hanged around the castle.


They also needed a bunch of fake herrings that could lie in a wooden barrel all summer without going smelly. The fake herrings were foam-filled latex fish.



I also made a latex character mask for one of the storytellers telling ghost tales about the castle.




The nicest thing I did was probably an oversized version of "Five in a Row", using only three pieces per player. Kids could challenge the black knight of the castle to a game of wits. The knight used the black pieces and the kids the smaller white ones. The game pieces were cast in plastic and reinforced with metal bars inside.

Apart from the aforementioned stuff I also made three decapitated heads, with hair, and a bunch of rubber swords. At the beginning of my dealings with the castle, I was only supposed to do the rats and the swords, but as summer went along the crew at the castle came up with more and more stuff. However, I soon realized they didn't have that much money to spend. The things I made for them eventually wound up costing $700, which is not much to begin with. I don't have a registered company, which means that when I do work for, say, a stage show I get paid by buying stuff for the amount I've quoted for doing the job. The stage people take care of the bills and everybody's happy. This time the castle wanted to pay me and needed a proper company to go through. I contacted a billing company to take care of the business. It's run by a friend's friend and they charge 6% of the payment for their services. But after all the taxes and fees that you have to pay in Sweden for running a company were finally paid, I only ended up with $240. This has deterred me forever from doing more of the same work. This is what it's like having your own business in Sweden, ladies and gents. I've never been very interested in politics, but the more work I get, the more I see how much a part of business-making politics is. For a few decades the Social Democratic Labour Party has been in power in Sweden, and they simply don't like small businesses. They rather have workers lined up inside factories and weighed the solitary business-owners down with loads of costly taxes. The last four years the Swedish government has consisted of a coalition of four centre-right, liberal conservative political parties, which have done whatever they can to lighten up things for the small-time business-maker. And things have brightened up a bit. It's actually election day today in Sweden, and I hope they get another four years. Maybe I'll get enough guts to start my own official business eventually.