If I re-build it will they come? Episode Seven

Ok Episode 7..... Seven! Jesus. This is turning out to be longer than I thought. There's still loads to go aswell. I'd best get on with it.

We still had no workspace. Doing any further work at my place was out of the question this time round as I imagined that if my landlord (who lives in the house!) caught me fibreglassing in my room - which he would - then he'd probably rip my nuts off. If he didnt then the fumes would have probably melted them off in my sleep, not that it would matter because I'd have died from inhalation long before. Also the rest of the sculpting would be done on a full bodied mannequin which would be too much for my room to cope with regardless of any mould making fumes killing everyone in the house & there's no garage or shed. It'd be a bit like building your own monster truck from scratch in your bedroom. My suggestion of using the really cheap & really massive workspace down the road was disregarded as Joey & Robin didnt want to come to Huddersfield everyday. At the time I didnt understand why they thought they needed to come everyday anyway & thought it mad that they had passed up a wicked opportunity to get not only a space for me to work in but a space that was big enough to become a manufacturing plant for everything this film would need. Their reasoning would become clear soon enough though.


In the meantime, with nothing armour related I could be getting on with I ventured onto our very own secret website. Yes Joey & Robin have created an art department website that only we can access with a secret password. There are people working on this film all over the UK. Some of them are students or graduates looking for their golden opportunity & some are like me - people who have worked or do work in the film industry & other related artistic fields & for whatever reason decided that theyd like to help out in their spare time. The first time I saw this site my jaw dropped. I was expecting a bunch of doodles similar to the napkin drawing I was given right back at the beginning but the quality of some of the work is stunning. Joey & Robin are unbelievably lucky to have this stuff. Trouble is they have no real clue what to do with it all. I wish that I could show you some of it but Joey & Robin are so (in my opinion) overly & needlessly paranoid that I can't due to their non-disclosure agreement. So I have to adhere to that to save myself needless ball-ache.

Anyway, they'd asked me about creature stuff from time to time as I've worked at a few creature fx companies in the past. They wanted to know if I could do monsters for the film too. I said I'd love to but lets just see about me finishing the armour first eh? So now here I was with nothing to do looking at the gallery entitled "Monsters & Encrustations". Yes you read it right. I looked at a few designs for mutants & quickly deduced that Joey & Robins lack of understanding regarding man hours & above all cost was evident in all the departments. Oh well its all stuff for the portfolio. I decided that the closest that they would ever get to realising these designs would be to have some fairly basic but proper looking monster masks that would only be seen for brief shots. With some nifty camera work, lighting & editing you can achieve alot. However minimal my faith in Joeys organisational skills may be there is no doubt that he knows what he's doing behind a camera.

So I set to work designing a maquette of a nasty looking mutant based on a combination of various designs from the Monsters & Encrustations section. I figured I'd do it & then show it to them & say I came up with this...you can use it if you want or not. I'm not fussed. It was more of an exercise really & besides I had'nt done a monster in ages. The result I was going for was a really horrible warping of the human form. Monsters are wicked but I wanted this to be disturbing too so I sculpted one half of the face as a pained expression that was twisting into a horrible fucked up thing on the other side as if the creature growing within the host human was ripping its way from the inside out. Not massively original if you've seen The Thing or Wicked City but fun nonetheless. Essentially a cheap scare....everythings quiet in the dark room & there's a figure in the corner... it looks human as the flashlight shines on it......RAAAAARRRRGGGHHHHH ITS A MONSTER!!! etc etc etc......... I don't think that happens but I'm just illustrating the point.
I spent a couple of days on it using super sculpey. I did the teeth with milliput as this sets hard when left exposed to the air. This meant that I could roll out some teeth & as they gradually began to set I could go back to them & shape them a bit more. I could have done them in sculpey but they would have been a bit flacid without a wire support in each one.

He looks pretty cool but ironically half the point of using milliput for the teeth was so I could get them really sharp & pointy. These ended up a bit blunt. As I said it was intended as a quick excersise to get back into the flow of a gross out beastie so I didnt get massively into ultra fine detail. I did enough to convey the point. Once he'd been cooked I got me box o' paints out. Its more of a case actually though.

Super Sculpey is flesh tinted so rather than paint the whole thing with fleshy paints I just added shading in the wrinkles & folds & washed these colours out into the flesh. On the monster side of the face I just used a succession of darkening reds till they were almost black to make it look like the tears in the flesh were deeper than they are. I did a very light stubblewash (not sure if thats actually a real word) on his scalp & beard area just to give it a bit more about it. Finally i coated all the gory bits with gloss varnish to make it nice & wet looking.

He's not bad for what he is. A quick sketch of something that may or may not be used. A concept sculpt. He's not going to make it to the portfolio though I'm afraid. Doesn't matter though, I've got a suit of cool armour that lights up & everything going in there soon.......if we find somewhere to build it that is.

I decided to carry on & do some more concept mutants. And thats when I ended up doing my own head in. My very first blog is the result of that particular day. You may have spotted it ages back. It appeared very briefly between 1 - 2 in the morning when I accidently published it. It was a bit of a mad one that consisted of me venting my frustration. I took it down & gave it to Ady for review & she edited out ALOT of swearing & reposted it about a week later. I do swear too much & I try & tone it down but sometimes man........ So if you want to know what I said (or some of it anyway) then you'll have to look for it cos i cant be arsed to type it all again & my blogs are too bloody long as it is. That sounds weird.

Next week:

• We finally get a workspace
• Frankensteins Mannequin unleashed

See ya later,

Michael


*catch up on previous episodes:

Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6