Making a Book Cover Illustration

If you're curious about what I'm up to when I'm not making films, then here's a little video about one of my illustration jobs.

Stoner Dragon

Besides working on my own projects I also try to squeeze in contributions to other people's films. Here's such an example. I was approached on Facebook by an independent filmmaker about buying old stop-motion footage from me for one of his projects. I instead suggested that I build and animate a brand new puppet, one of the characters from his film for that same sum, and he went with that. I should probably keep the lid on this project a bit, since it's currently in production, but I can say it's a fantasy stoner comedy (that's a combination surely made in heaven), and the character I've built and will be animating is a pot-smoking dragon. It's as basic as my puppets go, but I'll walk you through the steps anyway.

As I usually do I started with the head to get the feel for the character. I had a bit of artwork for a proposed poster to base it on. The dragon is basically inspired by meat-eating dinosaurs with small Elliot the Dragon-like wings (the animated Disney original). I sculpted the head in medium grade Monster Clay, leaving the mouth open to add more space around the gums. What I tried to do was create a character who could look fierce, but still had certain traits that, well -made him look a bit stoned.

When I was happy with the look of the head I cast it as a hollow latex skin in a dental plaster mold. This head skin is supported with cotton dipped in latex to give it stability. The corners of the mouth were filled with strips of soft polyurethane foam. The eyes are two plastic beads with holes through them, painted and partially covered with lacquer. They sit in hard silicone sockets stuck to the insides of the head using Polymorph thermo plastic, which covers most of the head interior to create a skull of sorts. I can insert a needle in the pupils of the eyes and animate them rotating. The teeth are made out of cotton and latex.

Aluminum wires and Polymorph plastic make up the armature, here temporarily missing its tail, since it was mostly in the way when I pieced together the armature. The blue sections are covered with soft string and tinted latex. The legs have been given extra bulk by adding bits of dense seat cushion foam.

I've talked many times before about making latex wings for puppets, so I won't go into the process in any greater detail. Basically I create a wing armature with aluminum wires, I cover it in soft string and latex, and then embed the whole thing halfway down into soft hobby plaster. I can then etch details into the plaster that will become a part of the latex skin membranes that are painted in on top of both the wings and the plaster.

After two layers of latex has been applied the finished wings are peeled out of the plaster. I deliberately left some holes in the wings to make them look a bit worn. These holes have no ill effect on the structure and durability of the wings.

After the wings have been attached to the armature I can start padding the puppet using soft polyurethane foam. I added a bit of a gut to the character by putting a bunch of cotton balls in the centre of the puppet and covering them with a thin sheet of foam. This will make the midsection of the puppet soft, and allow the spine to bend properly. I've also added a small bit of aluminum wire and plastic under its chin, so I can animate a piece of the throat swallowing.

After the padding is done I cover the puppet with bits of cast and tinted latex skin. Seams are painted over and additional scales and warts added by placing tinted latex over certain areas with a pointed sculpting tool.

The dragon has been given a base color using latex tinted blue applied with a sponge. I've added horns cast in pink latex, as well as sections in the face made from smaller spiky bits created by rolling cotton dipped in latex.

And here's the finished character, haven been given a finishing layer of drybrushed paint with PAX paint mix, as well as some augmentations using acrylic airbrush colors. The garish, slightly psychedelic look is again based on that poster concept. I'll get back to you eventually when I have more to report on this project.

The Story of Odin

Taking a short break from "The Other Gods" I thought another project might be of interest to you. Besides working on my own personal stuff I make films with the handicapped people at my day job, teaching them how to use the film equipment, how to blog, and generally how to take advantage of the various social media to market yourself and your creativity. You may remember a film from last year, "Aladdin", made with this group.

Last fall I shot this film, "The Story of Odin", conceived by Joakim Strömgren, who has a light psychological disability. He wanted to make a film based on Norse mythology, with himself in the lead. We settled on the tale of how Odin lost his eye, became a mighty magician, and eventually the chieftain of the gods. Joakim presented me with an outline of what he wanted to include, and we cobbled together the manuscript.

Here's how the film was shot; in a hopelessly crammed space, with bad lighting and a very simple consumer market camera, not at all suited for chroma key work. The resulting footage needed a lot of processing and tweaking in After Effects to work. The actual effects of the film also required tons of tweaking. I didn't have the time to make all the puppets needed to portray frost giants, trolls etc, so I had to compromise and use 2D animation far more than I'd ever done before. It was not something I preferred to do, but I got the basic job done.

Here's an example. These two frost giants inhabiting the desolate world before the real world is created was made up using photos of several puppets. The cyclops to the right is actually a fully constructed puppet that I haven't used yet for any project. Since I didn't have time to properly animate him, I simply took a snapshot of the puppet and animated it in After Effects using the puppet tool. This tool allows you to add key points on a still image (or a moving one) and pulling at those points between key frames in the timeline allows you to simulate very smooth motion. It's a popular way of creating fake extreme slow motion.

The two-headed giant to the left is pieced together using photos of an elephantine demon puppet from "The King Who Sought Immortality", and the heads of the scorpion men from that same film. I coloured all parts in the same flesh tone in Photoshop, and animated the 2D creature using the puppet tool.

Many scenes were created this way. Here's another example; the giant Ymir eating one of the smaller human-like Aesir(Norse race of gods). This puppet is also finished and was built for a project that is still waiting to be pieced together. Lack of time forced me to use the puppet tool on photos of this guy too.

Then there were shots that, in my humble opinion, couldn't have been created any other way than using 2D images and the puppet tool. A depiction of the fall of the gods at the battle of Ragnarok was created with numerous layers of images, including one of Joakim as Odin straddling his eight-footed steed Sleipner, and another where Odin is swallowed by his arch-enemy the Fenris wolf. I used stock photos of animals and lots of photos from various LARP and reenactment societies, including a local one.

When telling a story taking place in the world of Norse mythology you can't be stuffy about it -you have to at least attempt to show the grandeur of that world. So filming against a green screen was a no-brainer. It turned out quite well, but a better camera would've made the film better-looking. The backgrounds are a mix of Photoshopped still images and stock footage, mainly from Videoblocks. In the end I managed to achieve the look and atmosphere both I and Joakim were hoping for.

In the original script Odin passes through Jotunheim, home of those giants and trolls that didn't perish in the great flood that created the new world. He was supposed to meet and fight three trolls, and I started on the puppets with clay sculptures and plaster moulds. Unfortunately time constraints forced me to abandon the troll encounter, so these puppets will have to wait for another film project.

I did however include an encounter with Nidhögg, a serpentine dragon who gnaws on one of the roots of the cosmic world-tree Yggdrasil. This monster was realized as a finished and stop-motion animated puppet.

I decided that I wouldn't build the whole of the monster, just the head and neck, and concentrated my efforts on making a gnarled and unpleasant-looking, but regal head for Nidhögg. The head sculpture was split in half and cast in dental plaster moulds.

Cast in latex lined with a leathery latex/cotton mix, the head and jaw were joined with thick aluminum wires. Another thick aluminum wire was attached to a piece of board and joined to the head with Friendly Plastic thermoplastic. Soft polyurethane foam padded the body, which was then covered with cast latex skins pulled from older dinosaur and monster skin moulds.

Nidhögg has a crest along his back similar to the fins of deep sea fish, or, if you will, the crests and wings of devils of medieval church interior art. The spikes were pieces of cotton dipped in latex and rolled between my thumb and index finger. The skin between them were latex applied to soft clay stuck to one side of the spikes. After two layers of latex the clay could be removed. The latex was dusted down with talcum powder first.

The teeth and horns were also cotton and latex. A mix of acrylic paint and Prosaide glue covered the puppet as a base paint. Acrylic airbrush colours were used for the finishing touches. As you can see a tongue was also added by wrapping sewing string around very thin steel wires and then applying tinted latex.

Joakim was a delight to work with, and I hope to do it again, this time with better equipment and a longer production period. And finally, here's the finished film. It's all in Swedish, though.

Gorn Masks and Dragon Heads

A few years ago I made a replica of the mask used to portray the monstrous "Gorn" in the classic Star Trek episode "Arena", where he matched wits and brawn with the formidable force of nature known as William Shatner. My Gorn mask was built according to my personal opinions of how the original mask was constructed, as there is very little info on the subject.
You can read about the making of my Gorn mask here:
http://loneanimator.blogspot.se/2011/09/wrestling-with-gorn.html
The mask was actually eventually sold to Bobby Clark, the stuntman who played the monster. Bobby is now touring Trek conventions displaying my mask as the best replica he's seen, and he should know since he spent several days encapsulated in the hot rubber suit.

Here's Bobby with my mask at the actual location where "Arena" was filmed. I guess that's kind of cool!

Bobby had some reservations about my version, as the original was apparently bigger, and the eyes were covered with glittery sequins. I haven't been able to find any sequins as small as they appear to be in the stills from the episode, but there might've been a sequin of that type in the 1960's. Maybe the Trek costume department had the stuff on hand.

My old Gorn mask seems to be worn out and Bobby contacted me to ask me to make a new copy. Ideally, a new bigger version would've been much better, and I am actually working on that now, but to meet Bobby's convention schedule, a copy of the old version will have to do. So I recently sent a new Gorn mask off to him, along with a plastic baby hatchling. You can read about the making of the Gorn baby here:
http://loneanimator.blogspot.se/2011/09/making-gorn-baby.html
Now, is making copies of monsters someone else has designed and established a fun job? Not really, although it seems to be a popular way of making a name for yourself as a creative person. I see many wonderfully made replicas of the Alien, the Predator, and other famous movie monsters. But  I'd much rather  make my name doing my own thing.
It's surprisingly hard work copying what what's been done before, and the simpler the design, the harder it is to get it right. Just try to draw Donald Duck off the top of your head. I'm trying to do less of this kind of work, though getting an order from an old monster performer is flattering and hard to say no to.

During the past four months I've been juggling four part-time jobs. I wouldn't recommend it, as I came very close to experiencing a burnout. I have friends who have gone through this ordeal, and it's no joke. One of my jobs was building props for the outdoor stage show "The Brothers Lionheart", based on a very popular Swedish children's book. I made plastic helmets, rubber spear tips, and similar stuff, but the main big thing was creating the paw and huge head of the dragon Katla. The production team bought a previously used fiberglass dragon head from another stage show. This head was very poorly detailed, and my job was to build up a completely new surface on it. This entailed mixing sculpted and cast skin pieces with structures built up directly on the fiberglass surface. I actually used a thick acrylic paint mixed with cotton to create Katla's new skin, and the result was a very durable, leathery structure.

Here's the Katla head with a new lick of paint, but still not quite finished.

Katla in action during the show. A smoke gun located in the mouth and nostrils  provided necessary dragon ambiance, along with loud sound effects and dramatic music. Apparently Katla's a success with the audiences.

This is my last stage production. I've made a loooooot of them, starting when I was 13, creating props and masks for a fairy tale show. It's always hard work, but usually there's also lots of fun. Now, the fun seems to have gone out of the equation, and it's just work for me. As success coach Brian Tracy says, "if you're stuck in a job you don't like, get out of that job as you would get out of a burning house." And as the old Klingon proverb goes, "only a fool fights in a burning house."
For the sake of reducing stress and disappointment in my life I've now learnt to use the most powerful word there is: "NO!" Now I say no to all offers of working on stage productions. Instead I'm focusing all my efforts on my personal work, i e my miniature animation work, with occasional props and masks created for my own films, or for projects of close friends. If I can't use my creativity to put joy into my life, then what good is it for? I've no idea if my personal work will ever result in any sort of monetary success, but now that seems unimportant. I'm more concerned with what kind of legacy I can leave behind, and I'd rather realize my own ideas than someone else's. I've heard people say that's a pompous and presumptuous attitude, but shouldn't we believe in our own talents and abilities? Seriously; we must believe that our work comes to good, is important to other people, and is worth every second of effort.

The King Who Sought Immortality: The Epic Trailer...

...For the epic film!

The King Who Sought Immortality: Sumerian Dragons and Clay Snakes

The last creatures I built and animated for this two-year project of hope and despair was a dragon and a snake. Which means that the stop-motion part of the film is finally done and finished. Now, only a narration remains to be recorded.

The Dragon was based on the "Sirrush", a pretty mystical creature portrayed on the so-called Ishtar gate, alongside ordinary animals like bulls and lions. The Sirrush has a more than passing resemblance with a dinosaur, but is also furnished with a very snake-like head and clawed paws. Some very enthusiastic  researchers have suggested that the Sirrush is in fact, based on observations of live dinosaurs. The bulls and lions of the Ishtar gate are actually rendered in a quite realistic way. Is this also the case with the Sirrush?

Whatever the Sirrush was meant to be I thought it was a pretty cool beast to build and animate. I sort of took a middle path with my puppet version; It's not quite a dinosaur, and it's not quite the creature from the gate artwork.

I printed a large photocopy of the ancient artwork and measured every part of my armature after it. It wound up looking like this.

So, the proportions of the puppet were fairly close to the Ishtar gate Sirrush. However, the foam muscle padding of the body was entirely based on drawings of dino muscles.

The ancient Sirrush has a spearhead pattern of scales, that looks very ornate, but also very functional. I tried to copy it for the skin of the puppet and soon realized what a nightmare it meant trying to invisibly overlap the skin patches. I managed to piece it all together well enough. You can see the seams here, but when the puppet was painted, they pretty much disappeared.

 The finished puppet is about two feet long, which is manageble, and allows for quite a bit of detailing.

In the film, the king of the title challenges a herd of Sirrush dragons to show his prowess to the gods. The big creatures, however, are less than impressed by the pipsqueak at their feet.

 I did four different animations and spliced them together in After Effects to create the "herd". The longest animation has the puppet lumbering across my chroma key puppet stage, appearing to the right, and exiting to the left. This animation took almost four hours straight to do. Can't say I'm entirely happy with it, but it does show the dragon walking with a bobbing head and a snaking tail.

Now, for the snake. I was so lazy with this very short sequence, I simply sculpted a plasticine snake and animated it. I also animated a pair of gold paper wings for a clip where the snake goes psychedelic and flies away.