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.
Like last month's post, this entry is about a project that started off as a YouTube shorts project, until I rejected that idea. In the end, I ended up just making a very short, silly video.
My inspiration for the ghost in the film was this Victorian illustration. I have no idea where it's from but it's included in a huge book on supernatural literature, which I've had for years.
I sculpted the face in medium-grade Monster Clay on a flat slab of aluminum and did all the rest: a plaster mold of the clay and the casting tinted latex into the mold. The chest area was cast in a mold created many years ago for the demon in my film "Memory."
I wanted striking eyes for the puppet since it would only be on screen for a very short bit. I picked a couple of semi-transparent plastic pearls, for a sort-of luminous effect, and reamed a concave surface into each pearl to create a lens effect. The eyes were detailed with acrylic airbrush paints painted on with a thin brush. UV resin was then added to create the actual lens effect.
I wanted the arms to be really spindly and skeletal, so they were built up with thin metal rods folded over and covered with soft crochet yarn soaked with latex.
When the puppet parts were assembled the whole thing was attached to a wooden rod, one of those you stick into a flower pot to support a floppy plant. Thermoplastic was used to hold it all together.
The flimsy garment of the ghost / dead thing was made with kitchen tissue paper soaked in latex. I then simply cut pieces from it and pressed them together. the sticky surface of the paper as a bonding agent.
So, here's the finished ghost. The arms, the neck, and the jaw were the only articulated parts of the puppet. the hair was made from crepé hair (sheep's wool used for fake beards.)
The second puppet in the film is the man who walks by the cave and engages in conversation with the ghost. This is actually a very old puppet, built at the end of the 1990s. It's still holding up, barely. The latex is really dry and brittle but the clothing and the armature are fine. As you can see he hasn't got any real feet because for the film he was originally built, he doesn't show his feet. I didn't make any tie-downs back then, I just clamped the puppet down on a tabletop with a small glue clamp.
Some of my YouTube viewers were disappointed that the film was short and thought it was just "gimmicky." Others thought the film was fun. It was an interesting experiment.
I had the notion to do a Lovecraftian weird tale in the style of a diary or log book and considered writing my own text instead of finding one readily available. This is what I came up with. I think it's filled with enough cliches to feel comfortably familiar. I decided to dispense with any actors, just showing a lonely ship on an ocean that was getting weirder and weirder.
One inspiration for this project was, of course, the horror-filled nautical tales of William Hope Hodgson, but also the rambunctious songs of Swedish singer-songwriter Evert Taube (seen in his element in the photo above). Some of his songs are very long and tell of nautical adventures, some of which he himself took part in. These songs go into great detail, naming the ship, describing the cargo and the destination, and painting colorful pictures of the crew.
I found a few images online showing model ships built for museums, picked one image, and then spent a couple of evenings removing the background in Photoshop. I probably could've made things easier for me, and only included the absolutely necessary details for a ship shown in the distance, but I wanted to be sure that nothing was missing. I added an animated flag waving in the wind atop one of the masts in a couple of shots, as well as engine steam.
The sea in all the shots is stock footage clips, either showing real oceans or CG versions of water. The sky is represented by photos of normal skies, which are then supplanted by stock footage of time-lapse skies, as well as shots of ink and glitter being pumped into a water tank.
When the ship eventually crosses into a different dimension it's escorted by strange creatures floating in the ethereal sea of space. I only made one puppet and animated it moving about. This beastie was built from scratch, and by that, I mean not sculpting anything in clay, but only relying on building up the shapes using materials like latex, cotton, and EVA foam. It’s a fairly quick procedure and very cost-effective. I’m starting with making the eyes, and I wanted big watery eyes for this creature. Instead of resorting to buying glass or acrylic taxidermy eyes, I’m making these using acrylic domes bought in a Scrapbooking shop, and Photoshopped eyes printed out on ordinary printing paper. I’m using transparent scrapbooking plastic to glue down the dome over the eye art, creating a lens effect that looks kind of neat.
For smaller eyes, because this monster will have a bunch of them, I’m adding drops of UV resin over the art and then blasting the plastic with a small UV light. I can then simply cut out each eye from the paper with small, sharp scissors.
The body of this puppet is this leftover plastic casting made from a silicone mold created over an old perfume bottle. This was what I had handy, but I could’ve used an old pill jar or a bit of scrap wood. I made holes in the plastic and attached screws to create points where aluminum wires for tentacles will be placed. If I just attached the wires with glue or thermoplastic to the body, they might come loose, but when they’re hooked up to the screws they’ll stay put.
This little wooden ball will become the head and this single 3 mm aluminum wire will be the neck. To attach the wire to the ball I’m using a few drops of super glue, and then I’m spreading some baking soda over the glue, thus creating a new solid material which helps bond the wire to the wood very effectively. I’m also making a hole on the side of the model to attach a t-nut. This nut will work as an attachment point to my flying rig. This nut is also held in place with the super glue/baking soda combo. To attach the aluminum armature wires to the screws I’m using melted thermoplastic. I melt portions of it with a heat gun and being careful I can then handle the material with my fingers, taking care to move the plastic blob around a bit, so I won't get burned. This creature has three tails or three tentacles growing out from its behind, and I’m making them out of 1,5 mm aluminum wires, covered with soft string and then dabbed with latex. You’ve most likely seen this procedure before. It’s one of my golden oldies.
I wanted something like a strange beak growing out of the monster’s head and for this, I’m using dense EVA foam. Ordinarily, I would’ve made this as a sculpture in clay, then making a plaster mold around it, and then cast a latex duplicate into the mold. But building it up like this saves time, as well as allowing happy accidents to happen.
To add texture as well as to cover up parts of the puppet I'm applying cotton dabbed with tinted latex. Using pointy tools I can create wrinkles and other textures in the material. This method works well for rigid parts of the puppet that won't have to stretch or bend.
Most of the puppet is then covered with patches of wrinkly latex skin cast from skin molds. This skin is very flexible and will work well for the bendy areas on the puppet.
To create extra details I'm adding drops of latex on top of the skin, creating small bumps.
Cotton and latex are also used to build up folds of skin around the eyes, which have been applied using contact cement.
Finally, the whole puppet is painted a dark red using tinted latex and a sponge. When that layer has dried (with the help of a heat gun) I dry-brush on a grey/blue color to offset the deep red, which will still be seen adding shadows to wrinkles and folds.
The finished puppet was animated and held aloft on my flying rig jointed arm. You only see the creature from one side, but I finished both sides with equal effort.
I read the narration myself, as I usually do. I don't consider myself especially gifted at that, but hiring people to do the voice work is getting increasingly expensive.
This film was a fun little experiment. I might do similar projects in the future if I can come up with narratives that fit this form of storytelling.
