Hunter of Hyperborea

I can't recall where the idea for "Hunter of Hyperborea" came from, but the general notion was to make a film starring a hunter or a hero who recorded his successful exploits and clearly lied about the whole thing. I already had a bunch of prehistoric creature puppets, some of them not featured in films posted on my YouTube channel, and that kind of decided the plot. 

Instead of posting the same info twice, I'll just post links to older blog posts detailing the making of the puppet in question. Regarding the "terror bird," it was featured in a film called "The Age of Invention", made with my special needs people film group, and that film isn't posted on my YouTube channel. You can read about that puppet HERE.

The mammoth (there's just a single puppet) was also built for "The Age of Invention," and you can read about making that puppet HERE.

The big yeti-like ape monster was made for a film that is on my YouTube channel; "In the Ooze of Ubbo-Sathla." This puppet was only very briefly featured in that film, so I thought it deserved to have another go. I added a little horn to its forehead in a nod to both "Trog" the giant Neanderthal in Ray Harryhausen's "Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger" as well as the "orangopoid" from the 1936 "Flash Gordon."

You can read about the making of this puppet HERE.

So, over to the puppet that was actually built specifically for this project, namely our hero, the hunter of the title. 

The character was sculpted in medium-grade Monster Clay (well, the head and neck.) I tried to make him look meek and maybe a bit comical.

After creating a hard dental plaster mold over the sculpture, I cast a copy of the sculpture as a latex skin. The eyes are made from small plastic fake jewelry pearls, placed in sockets made from silicone clay. Since this puppet was fairly small -about six inches tall- I only used single 2 mm aluminum wires for the armature. 3 mm threaded nuts are attached to the feet with a mix of super glue and baking soda. A 3 mm t-nut was also stuck to the puppet's behind so I could attach him to my flying rig for certain scenes. 

The body was padded with a wrapping of very thin and soft polyurethane foam. Fingers were made with crochet yarn wrapped around aluminum wires and dabbed with tinted latex. And also, he got some hair.

I used crepé hair for the beard and hair. It's sheep's wool boiled and tufted, then braided. Stage productions use it for fake beards and mustaches on actors.

Liquid latex was used to glue down the hair, one tuft at a time. To press down the hair I use a dental spatula tool.

To make the application of eyebrows easy on such a small puppet I simply painted them on.

The clothes of our hunter are actually based on what Ötzi the Ice Man was wearing. So I'm beginning with giving him a linen diaper-like loincloth. this is made with tissue paper dabbed with latex.

The rest of his clothes would be made with leather -or, rather, small bits of latex cast in a texture mold.

The hunter's tunic is made from thicker leather and I resorted to using the thin foam I wrapped the armature in. These are washing pads I bought at a local drugstore.

To make "leather" out of the foam I soaked each patch with tinted latex, applying the latex with a piece of foam sponge.

The shoes were also made from these foam pads.

Apparently, during at least a part of the Neolithic age, nobody wore pants but rather used leg hoses, like many native American people. 

Our hero is equipped with three spears made from simple wooden flower pins.

I roughed up the surface on each pin by rubbing it against a coarse abrasive pad so it'd look a bit more worn and hand-made.

The flint spear points were simply made from scrunched-up tin foil and then painted with hobby paints.

Of course, he'd need some cool hunting trophy so I made a claw necklace from plumber's epoxy and a bit of flexible garden wire.

The hunter would be wearing a rather makeshift deer skin disguise, which apparently was a thing according to established archeology. I made two small horns from tissue paper and latex.

The actual deer skin was a piece cut from an old winter hat made from short fake fur. I added a 1 mm aluminum wire along the edge of the skin, so I could animate it flapping and folding when the hunter was making fast movements.

So, here's our finished protagonist. I also made a flint knife from tin foil, but I can't recall if I ever used it. It was a while ago since I made the film, or even watched it. It seems my little stone-age drama was well-received on YouTube. People got the joke at the end. I used the word "Hyperborea" in the title mainly because it had a suitable pulpy connotation. My hunter had adventures not unlike those endured by hardier heroes like Conan the barbarian, but without any of the success of a legendary champion. The moss he eats at the end of the film was plucked from a branch on a very old oak tree standing at the edge of my garden.

The Age of Invention: The finished film.

Here's the finished "Age of Invention", warts and all. Due to various technical issues and some problems during the filming, it's not as polished as I wished it would be, but I hope you'll enjoy it nevertheless. Since all dialogue is in Swedish, it's subtitled in English.

The Age of Invention: Mammoth and Dog Monster

There were only two more puppets in this project, and they're both pretty standard builds. Let's start with the mammoth.

I used my preferred sculpting material of medium grade Monster Clay to create the mammoth head.

I managed to cast the whole head using a single one-piece plaster mold with a broad open base. this is just before the plaster is added over the sculpture.

The head was cast as a hollow latex skin. The trunk was build up separately, covering a bit of aluminum wire with soft yarn, and thin polyurethane foam.

The tusks were shaped by hand from melted Plolymorph thermo plastic. The eyes are round plastic beads painted and covered with a shiny sealer. An aluminum wire goes into the lip, and the whole head is lined with the Polymorph, holding together all the jointed bits of the head, as well as giving the latex skin a sturdy support.

The plastic and aluminum wire armature is given some light weight bulk by using hard foam camping cushions (the moss green material) along the torso and in the legs.

Balls of cotton fills out the belly, but keeps the spine free from obstructive padding, and allows it to be easily animated. All of the muscles and defined shapes are covered with thin polyurethane foam.

All of the foam is in turn covered with patches of latex skin, cast from a wrinkly plaster skin mold. All the latex has been tinted a very dark grey.

Before adding any fur, the whole puppet is given a unifying coat of paint by drybrushing tinted latex over the skin, leaving some of the deeper wrinkles still quite dark.

I decided to make the mammoth slightly shabby-looking, as if parts of the fur was shedding due to hot weather, or something similar. This meant that I couldn't simply add patches of fake or real fur still stuck to fabric or leather. To get the right look I used crépe hair, which is sheep's wool washed, dyed and braided. When the braid is ironed out you get what looks like long strands of hair, which is traditionally used to make fake beards and mustasches for stage productions. I added tufts of crépe hair to the mammoth skin using liquid latex as a bonding agent- The latex looks milky white hear, but turns transparent when fully cured.

The third and last critter from the film is s dog-like mammalian monster. Originally I intended to make it an Andrewsarchus, which traditionally has been portrayed as a giant wolfish creature. However nowadays I think the palaeontologist reconstruct is as more hippo-like. Anyway, when I started sculpting the head to make it more like a weird bull terrier, since I think they're both cool and funny-looking dogs. I sculpted the mouth open to get some details between the lips and the gums. But having the mouth open that wide and also sculpt the inside of the mouth would invite difficulties when making the plaster mold, so I filled it up with clay. Now I could simply create a one-piece plaster mold, as I had done for the mammoth.

I wanted the teeth to look particularly fearsome, so I decided to sculpt them too.

When the top and bottom teeth (with gums) were finished I created two silicone molds over the sculptures, using DragonSkin Pro silicone.

Two aluminum wires make up the jaw joint. The wires are stuck to the plastic teeth using a mix of super glue and baking soda, which creates a chemical reaction resulting an a very hard bonding material.

The teeth are painted with enamel hobby paints and attached to the latex head skin using Polymorph plastic. You can create jointed mouth pieces this way without having to make an entire skull.

The puppet is then padded with lots of small bits of soft polyurethane foam, which is covered with cast patches of tinted latex skin.

This nameless species of prehistoric canine was given an acrylic airbrush paint job, as well as a crest of blond crépe hair.