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.

 

Woodland Lurkers

The idea for Woodland Lurkers came about when I thought about doing a film about strange forest creatures that we've never heard of, that hide in the deepest areas of the woods. Originally, I would only have made one critter, but I came up with a bunch of them, so the menagerie grew. I even added yet another one when I had finished editing the film. Let's go through our fauna.

The first creature you see, or glimpse, is a Bigfoot-like figure that towers over the forest.

I reused an older puppet, the hulking creature from "The Path Through the Marsh," and if you're interested in how that puppet was built, check out my blog post HERE! 

I call this little fellow "spud guy", since, well, he looks like a potato. He was built up without me using any parts sculpted in clay and cast in plaster molds.

This is the very basic armature for the character. 2 mm aluminum wires were used for the arms and legs, with Polymorph thermoplastic (the white blobs) used to hold them all together. The upper lip is made from a steel wire wrapped in yarn and is rigid. The jaw is a 3 mm aluminum wire wrapped in soft yarn, and is flexible for animation. 

The midsection is totally rigid and made from a wooden tongue depressor reinforced with a large 

stainless steel nail and thermoplastic. 3 mm threaded bolts are attached to the feet using super glue and baking soda.

EVA foam was used for most of the padding, making the body solid but lightweight. Below the jaw and around the neck, I added a bit of soft polyurethane foam (not yet attached in this photo) to make the opening of the jaw easy. Hot melt glue was used to attach the bits of EVA foam.

Soft yarn was wrapped around the arms and legs, which were then dabbed with latex.

The torso was also wrapped in soft yarn to smooth out the slightly blocky shapes of the EVA foam.

The body and head were built up using cotton dipped in tinted latex. I used a pointy sculpting tool (a dental tool, actually) to create the wrinkles and other shapes by simply pressing down with the tool in the cotton and moving around the material.

The throat was covered with a patch of wrinkly latex skin cast in a texture mold.

The fingers were made by wrapping yarn around a toothpick, dabbing the yarn with tinted latex, and then slipping the yarn off the toothpick when the latex had cured. The fingers were attached to the cotton/latex hands using liquid latex as a glue.

The eyes were made from two small plastic pearls, with irises cast with UV resin.

The puppet was painted by dabbing tinted latex over it with a sponge. Various colors were applied with this method in thin layers to create a mottled look. 

Acrylic airbrush colors were used to add highlights here and there.

Teeth and nails were just blobs of latex tinted white applied to the puppet using a toothpick.

The tuft of hair on the head is from an old fur winter hat, from which I have cut bits over the years for a few of my puppets.

The living tree stump is a staple critter among Swedish illustrators of children's stories. Trees and stumps with eyes and faces add color to many books throughout the 20th century. Swedish illustrator Gustaf Tenggren worked on Disney's Snow White and created a bunch of truly monstrous trees for the flight through the woods. I grew up with the staring storybook trees and have been thinking about how to add the concept to one of my films. 

The main part of the body, the actual trunk, was made from a piece of thick, rolled-up EVA foam. I cut two holes for the irregularly placed eyes, which were made from two plastic pearls, and also inserted two 1 mm aluminum wires to work as eyelids.

Two blobs of silicone clay pressed down around the backsides of the eyes hold the plastic pearls in place, allowing them to swivel when poked on the outside of the trunk. Thermoplastic was applied over the silicone to lock it down. More plastic was used to line the insides of the trunk, making it very sturdy.

The trunk creature has three limbs for walking, made from folded 1,5 mm aluminum wires. I used this smaller gauge to make the feet as small as possible. Using 3 mm threaded nuts as tie-downs, the wires were attached with a mix of superglue and baking soda. Thick, soft yarn was wrapped around the wires to build up the rough shape of the legs, and then dabbed with latex.

The legs were attached to the trunk with thermoplastic.

Hot melt glue was used to piece together the EVA foam bits.

To create the bark-like texture on the trunk, I dipped cotton in latex and draped it over the foam trunk. With various tools, I could then shape the dough-like substance into the look I wanted.

The splintered bark on the top of the trunk, as well as the smaller roots at the bottom, were made from tissue paper dipped in latex and rolled into pointy shapes.

The finished puppet was drybrushed a few times using tinted latex and a foam sponge. Concave dips were reamed into the plastic eyes, and then painted to create the look of colored irises. Drops of UV resin filled out the dips to create a lens effect.

The eyelids were created by attaching patches of latex cast in a skin texture mold to the edge of the aluminum wires making up the lids and the trunk, using liquid latex as glue.

Texture mold latex patches were also attached to the legs, instead of using cotton and latex, as that would’ve made the legs too stiff for animation.

This creature makes a very brief appearance, but I tried to make it memorable. I wanted something that was both creepy and a bit goofy, and hopefully I achieved that.

The head and jaw were made completely from Cosclay, which is a polymer clay cured in my kitchen oven. In contrast to other polymer clays, Cosclay cures semi-flexible and feels more like a piece of plastic.

The jaw was attached to the rest of the head by a single 2 mm aluminum wire running from the back of the head to the underside of the jaw. A mix of superglue and baking soda was used to fix the wire in place. The neck and torso have 4 mm aluminum wires running through them, and the legs have three 3 mm wires. Polymorph thermoplastic holds the armature together. Thick and soft yarn pads out the neck and thinner crochet yarn pads out the arms. I used soft polyurethane foam for the legs.

More soft foam was used to pad out the whole body, except for the arms, which I wanted to look feeble and scrawny. The dark grey section on the back is a piece of EVA foam, which is tougher, and was OK to use here, since I didn’t plan on bending the midsection of the puppet when animating.

The body of the puppet was covered with patches of tinted latex, which were cast in various skin texture molds. Wrinkly skin covers the join between the head and the jaw. This was also made from latex using the ”chunks-o-flesh” method, where latex is stippled onto a flat surface, allowed to dry, and then rubbed off the surface, creating a bunched-up, organic-looking texture. While the body was painted with tinted latex using a sponge, the Cosclay head was painted using water-based hobby paints.

The eyes are two plaster half-spheres with a mother-of-pearl effect, bought at a local scrapbooking shop. The flimsy hair is crepé hair (sheep’s wool) attached to the head using Pros-Aide prosthetic adhesive. The back spikes are tissue paper dipped in latex and rolled between my fingers into thin, pointy shapes. They were attached to the puppet’s back using liquid latex and glue. Highlights and other additional details were added with acrylic airbrush paint.

This scene was the first one conceived, and would, at one point, have been the entire film.

The largest puppet from my film is what I call the ”big mouth.” You only see him from a distance, but I still wanted to add a fair amount of details. A big chunk of medium-grade Monster Clay was shaped into the character.

Dental plaster was applied over the sculpture to create a durable mold, and three layers of tinted latex were cast into this mold. The latex skin was also reinforced with thin pieces of polyurethane foam soaked in latex, which were pressed into the mold over the latex surface. The head was reinforced with a mix of cotton and latex.

Here’s a better view of the insides of the latex skin. The cream-colored material is foam padding. The white stuff up in the head is thermoplastic, which adds extra sturdiness as well as provides a fixing point for the aluminum wires working the nose and the jaw. Two wooden ice cream sticks provide extra support for the head, helping it keep its shape.

The legs were actually created for the pig demon in my film ”Snail Wizard”, but they turned out a bit weak for that large puppet. I saved the original legs and put them to good use here instead. 3 mm aluminum wires are used to create the armature for the puppet. Thin metal rods are tied down against portions of the wire using yarn to create hard sections simulating a skeleton.

Soft polyurethane foam is wrapped around the armature, creating a pudgy look for the puppet.

Teeth and claws are made with tissue paper dipped in latex.

The finished puppet is painted with tinted latex and detailed with acrylic airbrush paints.The eyes are Photoshop print-outs of goat’s eyes, with drops of UV resin applied to create a lens.

The trunks are aluminum wires with yarn wrapped around them to create both the shapes as well as wrinkly skin. 

Clear varnish was painted onto the mouth and the nostrils to create a wet look.

Here’s the smallest puppet from ”Woodland Lurkers.” 

I forgot to snap photos of the clay sculpture, but the image above is pretty much what I sculpted. This creature is basically just a big head with legs and a tail.

The head was cast in tinted latex from a plaster mold. The eyes are two acrylic half-spheres with Photoshop print-outs attached to the flat backsides using transparent glue.

The mouth has a 1 mm aluminum wire looped around it inside the latex skin.

All the limbs for the puppet were made from 1 mm aluminum wires and wrapped in soft yarn. Liquid latex sealed the yarn.

Thermoplastic holds together the head and the limbs. Right under the second leg pair there's a small dark area. This is an attachment point for a flying rig.

Soft polyurethane foam was attached to fill up the back area.

The finished puppet is around

3 inches long. It’s painted with tinted latex and acrylic airbrush colors.

Here’s how the scene where the big mouth monster eats the tree grabber was made. A flying rig arm (far right) is joined to the attachment point on the side of the grabber puppet facing away from the camera, holding it aloft when the puppet is animated. Beside this is another flying rig arm, made from a 5 mm aluminum wire, working as a substitute for the tree the creature is grabbing. The green sticky tape makes both arms invisible when shot against my green screen puppet stage background.

When the shot is static, I'm using still images of mossy woodlands from Depositphotos. When the camera is moving, I'm using stock footage from Storyblocks or Videohive. I could've gone out in the forests where I live and gotten the kind of shots I wanted, but being quite lazy now in my old age, I went for stock options instead. 

My first idea was to make a fake nature documentary about these creatures. As the project evolved, it began to take on a more found footage-like quality. At least, the whole series of events is observed by someone walking through the woods, as we can hear his / her footsteps and breathing.

I am tempted to make a similar video in a different setting, but my aim is always to try and vary my content  -we shall see what turns up in the future.