Sculpting and Molding "Jump Scare puppet" and "one eyed kelp zombie"

Two more zombie head and shoulders puppets (life size).  A tall one which stalks divers in the kelp forest and a "jump scare" puppet that pops out and chomps.

This guy is going to be covered in loose skin and shreds of seaweed, etc. He will mostly just bite but we'll give him mechanical eye movement.

Laying them up in clay to start the fiberglass mold.

Three layers of fiberglass.

Flipping over the tall guy to do side 2. Clay wall ripped away. Fiberglass all clean.

one long weekend, 2 complete fiberglass molds done, both sides. going to cast the skins, hairwork, mechanics and paint in the coming weeks....

don't do this without protection!

More zombie head sculpts...

 Various sculptures in progress. Working on a couple of different styles.

Prepping Next U/W Test Shoot

Well, we learned a lot from our first couple of tests.
Now its time to make some real proof-of-concept shots. I've been brainstorming, with the help of some of the best fx people in the business, and we've come up with some great performance concepts, building on our early tests.
  I've also been working hard on the script and here's the bottom line: every producer who reads it says that it "reads big" and is "unique and fresh" and "scary" and "awesome" but they ALSO say "this is going to cost a lot of money".
 So we need more proof-of-concept video to help our case.  This will help in raising the cash and clarify the process for us.  So we are prepping a 2-day underwater test shoot, both day and night, to experiment with lighting, digital compositing, and some really awesome puppet fx concepts.  I will post plenty of pics and video very soon....
Scroll to the bottom for pics and video of our first underwater test.

Small Scale Puppet?

TEST VIDEO HERE.  I wanted to try a small scale zombie puppet. This could be a great way to do some of the background zombies without having to create them full size. It will save gobs of money on materials and will still allow us to do characters not constrained by an actor's proportions.  Out of the water, smaller puppets don't move as smoothly so I think a small scale puppet like this would work best filmed at a higher frame rate or twixtored. This would smooth out the jiggles and make it look better. We haven't yet tried small scale underwater but I think it will work well, if the proportions on the puppet are correct.
Even so, there are some interesting things about this puppet. I cranked this puppet out in 8 days from scratch! In the video test we just tried moving the puppet around a little bit to see how a fleshy silicone rod puppet body would move, and then I just tried a few rough rough comps just to see different backgrounds and visual looks just for fun. There are great possibilities! And this is only above water!
In the pics below, you see the rough sculpture, the fiberglass mold, the armature.

 

WATCH VIDEO TEST 

 

Fish eye on 1st puppet.

NEXT TEST PUPPET

 Wow, the water is cold this time of year. But we need to keep testing underwater zombie puppets now, to make sure we can really perform with them. I like the looks of the first puppet but I also want to see what its like with one that is less decomposed.  Earlier in this blog, I showed some pictures of this second sculpture as I sculpted it and molded it. Here, in the first pic is the finished skin without any hair work. He's going to need some wild hair like the first guy to take advantage of being underwater. He also is going to have some crazy green/white/filmy zombie eyes, and now that I see the pic I think I will punch up the paint job a little more. He's just not traumatized enough. Right? Also needs torn clothes and seaweed.

 Here is one of his hands, unpainted, fresh from the mold. I created a nasty bony green thing and encased it in skin. Going to paint it to match the head...

Here is the fiberglass underskull I'm going to cut up and puppetize. Its a dupe of the mold core... just trust me...its very clever...mold tricks...

Here I've started cutting it up, and attached some messed up teeth. Usually now this thing would get cut all up and filled with servos n' stuff but this guy is going to be underwater- SALT water if he's lucky, so for this test he's not going to have much of that, probably just jaw and eyes. We may even do some digital facial expressions after the fact.  So now... hair...eyes... mechanics...assembly.... and then back in the pool...