Krampus Night

Visitors to my YouTube channel have been bugging me for a while about why I don't do any holiday-related videos. I have done a Halloween-themed film, but that didn't exactly set the internet on fire, so I stopped thinking about doing something similar. However, this past Christmas I decided to do something with the Krampus; the so-called Christmas Devil, the evil counterpart to Santa. I was already working on another project, but I paused that to make room for my Krampus video. In other words, this past December was one of the few months where I managed to produce two films featuring a fair amount of animation, and effects editing.

To give you some context, let's have a quick look at Krampus. Traditionally the Krampus character has flourished best in Eastern Europe, the alps and German-language regions like Bavaria and Austria. When Santa comes with candy and gifts, Krampus comes with coal and bundles of sticks for thrashing the bottoms of naughty children. If the kids are really terrible, Krampus puts them in his sack and carries them away.

There's been an odd resurgence of Krampus-related festivities in the last couple of decades. There are Krampus parades in both Europe and the US, and pop culture has placed the fiend in movies of varying quality and budgets. To sum up all of this info I wrote a poem that served as the basis for my video and read it myself.

I wanted my Krampus to be super traditional. Thus I sculpted a character that sort of summed up all the characteristics of the old devil folklore archetype. Medium grade Monster Clay was used, as usual.

I also sculpted what would become the horns in clay, placing the sculpture on a flat surface to make the casting of it easy.

From a plaster mold made over the sculpture, I cast two latex horn skins which were attached to a pair of metal rods padded with yarn and foam dipped in latex. When the latex had dried I twisted the wires with my fingers, making the horns curve in a way you can see on certain goats and antelopes.

The armature was super simple; my usual mix of thermoplastic and aluminum wires. I decided to give my Krampus one human leg and one goat hind leg. He also has a tail.

The tail was covered with a wrapping of yarn soaked in latex, while the body was padded with soft polyurethane foam. As you can see the head wasn't attached at this point.

That's because the aluminum wires inside the head -for brows, ears, and jaw- were stuck directly into the latex cast of the head and torso. Thermoplastic was used to create the skull and the jaw, and also held the two pearls used for eyes in place. Liquid latex applied to both the inside of the latex skin and the foam padding worked as an adhesive.

Patches of latex skin cast in various older skin texture molds were attached in the same way. The teeth are cotton dipped in latex and rolled into pointy shapes. The human foot shape was built up using tinted latex and cotton.

I wanted the Krampus to have a mix of muted colors, ashen grey to be exact, and a color that would make the puppet "pop" a bit on screen. A dark purple seemed to do the trick.

The finished Krampus puppet was adorned with clumps of crepé hair (sheep's wool used for fake beards) to make him look old and mangy. Thin steel wires were used to make bits of body jewelry, and claws were created in the same way as the teeth. Krampus is often portrayed with a long tongue, so that had to be in there in one scene at least. I couldn't fit it into the puppet's mouth, so I made it from latex and a single aluminum wire as a loose prop that could be inserted into the mouth.

Krampus´ sack was made from real burlap and was lined with aluminum wires, so I could animate it bulging and moving around when Krampus was carrying away the kid.

All of the backgrounds in the scenes featuring the Krampus were Photoshopped images layered in After Effects. One of the busiest shots is the one where Krampus minces up the kid. It contains 12 layers: the log cabin wall, the bundle of chains to the right, the big chain to the left, the Krampus turning a mincer handle made from plastic, the table, the cleaver, the bowl, the meat (footage), the mincer, the leg going into the mincer and some smoke. The mincer handle was actually attached to a model mincer I made, but that model kept moving about when I animated the puppet turning the handle, so I simply covered it with a photo of a real mincer.

All the images I used for backgrounds were downloaded from Depositphotos.com. Most of them needed only minute Photoshop manipulation to work on the film.

Now for the actual antagonist of the film. Remember Hannes Karlsson who was the hero in my film "The Two-Headed Monster?" I recruited him again for this project, and he will pop up again in my films later this year.

My long-suffering buddy Andreas Pettersson also appears in the film as a sleeping relative given a whipped cream mustache by Hannes. Andreas' friend Leif also puts in an appearance where he's hit over the head with a pillow.

The rest of the people you see in this film are all stock footage from Videoblocks.com. They had a bunch of Christmas-themed clips which were all so horribly saccharine that I couldn't possibly produce anything myself to match them.

One of the more complicated shots in the film is when Krampus puts Hannes into his sack, simply because it needed to look totally effortless. Technically it's not very complicated. Hannes is placed over Krampus´ hand via tracking, and a mask over Hannes´ legs allow them to pass behind the sack.

Making the shot work all hinged on Hannes selling the illusion, and luckily, that's just what he did. In a single take, he's sitting on the edge of a greenscreen-clad couch supported by the arm of his mom, also clad in green. Balancing on the edge of the couch seat he looks like he's hanging in free air.

The take then continues with Hannes flipping over to a semi-handstand on the floor, wiggling his legs in the air. I sped up this part in editing, so it looks like he's very quickly stuffed into the sack. The Krampus puppet is animated to match Hannes´ movements in this footage accordingly.

So I finally made my Krampus film! It was fun and relatively quick to put together. Coming up, if I can make it, is a film about Walpurgisnight, and the goings-on of witches and fiends on that spooky evening.

The Loneanimator Stop-Motion Puppet Book

I've been making puppets for dimensional animation for the past 20 years or so. For the past 10 years I've been documenting the creation process by snapping lots of photos, and some of them have ended up on my web page or blog, but most of them have just been saved in digital folders.
This summer I started looking through those folders with the intention of collecting most of them in a self-published book. I'm still at it, since I have at this point made over 100 puppets. Not all of them have survived the natural decomposition of latex materials, though, and not all of them have been thoroughly documented during their creation.

This book is very simple in its design and structure. It'll be mostly large images, with some explaining texts. My aim with this book is to provide inspiration for those of you just starting up their stop-motion film projects, to show what's actually possible to do with very limited means. Then there are people who are just interested in the craft of stop-motion animation and puppet building; hopefully this book will be of interest to those too.

There will be more updates about this project soon.

The Lovecraft Alphabet: Effects and Animations

Here's a little video with me babbling on about how stuff was made for "The Lovecraft Alphabet". Hope you enjoy it and get inspired :)
 

Re-creating Cthulhu

Horror and fantasy author H P Lovecraft would probably be quite astounded today if he could see what a pop culture phenomenon his monstrous creation Cthulhu has become. And then he'd marvel over how few people have actually read the story "Call of Cthulhu". Cthulhu has become regarded as a maskot or symbol of unstoppable cosmic evil, and is (like his creator) the brunt of many an internet parody or satire. "Cthulhu for president -Why vote for a lesser evil", and so on.

But what, in short, is really this green, octopus-headed, many-loved horror? It's mentioned in a number of Lovecraft's tales, and tales by others trying to emulate his style, but is the focus of the short story "The Call of Cthulhu" (1928). A carved idol representing the monster is described thusly: "A monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind." He came from the stars to the primitive earth with a horde of his "star spawn", and fought other alien races, before retreating into his tomb/sleeping chamber on the island of R'lyeh, which sank into the ocean. Bad omens and hinted at portents reveal that he will eventually wake up, and bring doom to our civilization.

 Cthulhu is generally portrayed in a myriad of very similar interpretations, and the web is teeming with them. Mostly, Cthulhu looks like he's been working out quite a bit in his crypt over the millennia, and can't wait to flex his muscles before the horrified gaze of mankind.

 Lovecraft did at least a couple of sketches in letters, revealing how he saw his creation himself. This version is a rubbery, bulbous, seemingly six-eyed abomination, that has actually been realized as a cast resin sculpture, available for sale on some websites.

So, why haven't I made my own, stop-mo version of the great Cthulhu yet? Well, I haven't had a project for him. But now I have. I won't be doing "The Call of Cthulhu" as that one has already been lovingly recreated on film by the Lovecraft Historical Society. Instead I have a few other ideas, which I will talk about in detail in a while.

 Lovecraft fans are quite vocal about their dislike for half-baked or totally erroneous interpretations of Lovecraft's visions. Hollywood has rightly taken the brunt of this critique. Amateur filmmakers usually avoid taking on stories that demand the recreations of Lovecraft's more elaborate creatures, instead focusing on tales that are driven by suggestions and atmosphere. I enjoy taking the other route. However, instead of burying myself in pictorial research on Cthulhu I just jumped into the creation of my puppet, opting to work as fast as I could, simply driven by my impressions of the character. The head sculpture in Chavant clay was not overworked. I added three eyes on either side, and stopped as soon as I thought I had captured the essence of the monster. 

 For practical reasons I decided to give this Cthulhu only seven tentacles on his octopoid head. They're aluminum wires covered with soft, thick string, made fleshy by covering them with latex casts of wrinkly skin textures. The latex head skin cast was supported by a “skull” made with Friendly Plastic thermoplastic, and the tentacly beard was stuck to this structure using more plastic.

 The body armature was made, as I always do, out of thick aluminum wires acting as joints, with Friendly Plastic bony parts.

 I've written before about my home-made technique for making bat/pterodactyl/dragon wings, but here's a recap: An aluminum wire bone structure is covered with sewing string, and latex. This whole thing is lowered into thick plaster of Paris, the cheaper hobby store kind, and half submerged.

 When the plaster is dry I etch veins and other details into the plaster, and the areas between the “Fingers” are covered with latex simulating wing membranes.

When the latex has dried, the wing is removed from the plaster. I either add more wing details to the smooth backside of each wing using a needle dipped in latex, or simply cast thin latex pieces from the plaster moulds, and attach them to the wings using liquid latex.

 The wings are attached to the body armature with more thermoplastic. I can now begin to bulk up the body with padding.

 I did the padding work very quickly and without dwelling too much on details. I kept a vague body outline in mind, and tried to stick with that. Some structures and muscle build-up were achieved using rolled up cotton pieces covered with a thin layer of latex.

 The skin was cast from a variety of old skin moulds, originally produced for monsters in other films I've made. I keep re-using those moulds over and over. As you can see I've added a dark green tint to the latex during the casting process.

 Here's the puppet with a light coating of PAX paint (Pros-Aide glue plus acrylic paint)..

..And here it is with acrylic airbrush shading and detailing.

 

 I am a frequent user of pearly plastic scrapbooking beads to simulate glowing eyes. The thing is, these half-beads reflect light shone at them right back into the camera at all angles, so you'll always get a sinisterly glowing red dot (or whatever colour you're using) staring back at you from the centre of the “Eye”, even if your puppet isn't lighted very well. Much simpler and cheaper than using small electric lights.

 As you can see, this puppet isn't very big; just about a foot tall. All in all, this puppet took about four days to build from start to finish. As I said, I didn't want to dwell too much on details, but focus on the essence of this very famous character. Hopefully I managed to do him justice.

 This puppet will be used in a project just nearing completion now, where he'll be seen in a short four second clip. But so far the reaction to this puppet in various social media has been so good that I'm already thinking of using it a bit more elaborately. One day I'll probably make another version, which is done with more consideration. For now, this fellow will do, I'm sure... A great wailing shall be heard, and the cities of man shall fall before his might!!

By the way, my favourite all-time version of Cthulhu is this knitted one, made for me a few years back by German knitting artist Hecateslight Muse on Elfwood and Deviantart.

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.