The Dreadful Deinotherium

Still trying to catch up with my YouTube backlog, this film was posted on my channel in early December 2019. I'd been wanting to adapt this old-fashioned kooky poem for a while, and I finally got around to it. It's written by Hilaire Belloc, and is included as the letter "D" in a work called "The Moral Alphabet." For me, it was also an opportunity to delve into a very particular cinematic style, but I'll get back to that.

The Deinotherium was a real animal and lived up until ca 11 000 years ago. It was a huge mammal with tusks protruding from its lower jaw. Traditionally it's been reconstructed as very elephant-like; that's the version I grew up with as a paleo art-fascinated kid. Nowadays it's been turned into something looking more like a tapir. I wanted my Deinotherium to be not only extremely old-fashioned but also something of a caricature of those old depictions, to go with the jokey tone of the poem.

 The only part of the Deinotherium puppet that was an original sculpture was the head. I used medium grade Monster Clay, and a pair of small acrylic doll's eyes I had bought on eBay.

The head was cast as a skin in tinted latex. Aluminum wires padded with soft yarn were covered with patches of latex skin cast in an old texture mold and attached to the head using Polymorph thermoplastic. An aluminum wire loop also made out the jaw. The rest of the "skeleton" was also pieced together using aluminum wires and Polymorph, with a piece of hard foam filling out the chest area to reduce weight.

The whole body was padded with small bits of soft polyurethane foam cut in the shape of muscles and overlapped in a way that imitates the muscle diagram of a modern elephant.

The same type of patches of cast skin used for the trunk and the ears also covered up the foam padding. The poem gives the animal a sort of saw-ridged back, wich I made with cotton dipped in latex.

The finished Deinotherium was dry brushed with tinted latex using a foam sponge. The tusks were latex casts created in a plaster mold and the teeth were a latex and cotton blend. I should also say that the doll's eyes were placed in latex cradles cast around the eyes. The cradles were lubricated with Vaseline and the orbs were animated by pressing a pencil eraser against them, making them move slightly between frames.

The style of this film is an imitation of the look pioneered by Czech filmmaker Karel Zeman, where  2D backgrounds in the style of 19th-century etchings are used and integrated with live-action and stop-motion elements.

I simply downloaded real etchings from stock image site Depositphotos, did a bit of tinkering with them in Photoshop and added the images in After Effects along with my animated Deinotherium puppet. Also in AE I added a filter simulating old, flickering film stock, as well as the sepia coloring.

There are two other puppet characters in this film, and that's a couple of apes inhabiting the tree that the Deinotherium moronically climbs and topples. They're the same puppet animated twice, and it was originally built for the film "Memory", based on a prose poem by H P Lovecraft.

"The Dreadful Deinotherium" seems to have been pretty well received by my tiny but dedicated YouTube audience. Some have asked if I'm going to use this look for another project, and I might, but it's also a look that can grow old (no pun intended) pretty quickly if not used effectively and with the right motivations.

An Art Book of Frightful Fiends

This post will be very different from the usual stuff I'm talking about on my blog. This time I'll be plugging a self-published book, something I usually do on other blogs, Facebook, etc. But, since my drawings ARE such a big part of my creative self, I think I should mention it here as well. This is the bok in question: "The Spectres of M R James."

Since last fall I've been re-reading the works of British scholar and author M R James (1862-1936), and entertaining myself with drawing images of the very imaginative ghosts, demons and monsters, who usually make their appearance during the part of the story where the "Jamesian Wallop" (so named by Will Ross and Mike Taylor of the M R James Podcast) occurs. This is the "booo" moment of the tale, and it's always a very effective one.

So, a good question is: Doesn't this book, then, ruin the whole story if you haven't already read it? It might, yes. On the other hand, the images and the quotes, which accompany each illustration, might also arouse your curiosity and prod you into finding and reading the whole thing.

At any rate, I made this book simply to entertain myself in the hopes that my enthusiasm may be infectious to those who are M R James newbies. It's a labour of love, and I enjoyed the work immensely.

The book is published through Lulu.com, and is 59 pages long, A5 paper size. I've made three earlier books via Lulu, and I'm generally very happy with the publishing arrangements. You upload your own book file, and set the price yourself. Depending on what paper size you choose, your book may or may not be eligible for distribution on Amazon and other venues. This book was entirely created in an A5 Word document, saved as a PDF file and uploaded in Lulu's online book-making machinery. All images are RGB JPGs in 300 DPI resolution. If all this reads like Swahili, Mandarin or Klingon to you, drop me a message, and I'll explain the process in more detail, and in simple English.

Now, if you after reading this blog post find that you can't possibly go on living without owning this little book, you can find it on Lulu right HERE.

And if you're wondering about if I've considered adapting any James story for a film, the answer is yes. I'm preparing the first one to be made this fall, with a short filmed poem almost completed.