Eric Kessler's King Kong Project

The last week in October Eric Kessler visited us on Long Island to pick up a project I had completed for him. It was a set I created for a stop motion film he is at work on.

Kess is an avid fan of the 1933 version of King Kong. In that classic film special effects creator Willis O'Brien brought Kong and the other creatures of Skull Island to life using stop motion animation.

Utilizing elaborate miniature sets and the most gorgeous Kong puppet I've ever seen Kess has set about to create his vision of the Kong story. In this clip on Youtube you can get an idea how labor intensive this process is : YouTube - Kong Spino & T

Here is Kess loading the last piece of the cavern set into his Jeep.

I took some B&W photos of the cavern to see how it would look.

And here are some color photos of the completed cavern.

For a Kong fan like myself it was a privilege creating this for Kess. I mean think of it -- Kong is going to be strutting his stuff through something I made! How cool is that? The icing on the cake was Kess was kind enough to give me a sneak peek of some footage he had recently completed!

Seeing Light At The End Of The Tunnel

I'm pleased to say I'm approaching the finish line on my Skull Island cavern project.

One of the remaining tasks to complete was creating some loose rocks for the interior.

Whenever I'm working with Apoxie clay, mache or wood putty I will always make up rocks with any surplus material.

The collection of these rocks in the above photo on the left are textured to look like marine rocks. The batch to the right are more like ordinary rocks. Sometimes I'll add a stick into the rock as a handle for when it comes time to paint them. For my skull island rocks I cobbled together a few of these leftovers, added some carved styrofoam and finished molding them with Apoxie Sculpt clay.

By modeling these rocks by hand using the same technique to texture the clay that I had on the cavern I achieved a good match.

Here are the finished rocks painted and sprayed with Dullcote.

I thought I'd celebrate nearing completion on this project by having a nice seafood dinner!

After picking my wife up at work we drove to the nautical mile in Freeport.

The Nautical Mile Fish Markets

My favorite fish market on the mile is Capt. Ben's. While there I bought some salmon fillets, shrimp and a dozen Little Neck clams.

For our dinner I made salmon cakes, spaghetti with white clam sauce and garlic shrimp. My wife made a green salad and a toasted garlic bread with melted mozzarella cheese. That bread was soooo good!

My Wife Thinks She's Annie Leibovitz

I'm beginning to think there is more to this Mars vs Venus concept then I first thought. At least when it comes to taking pictures at our house.

I'm a point and shoot kind of guy. While my wife Diane tends to spend a great deal of time over each of her pictures.

For this reason I tend to score a lower irritant factor when brandishing a camera at social events then she does. My intended subjects know I'm going to snap a quick shot and keep moving.

Diane on the other hand likes to take multiple shots. She'll have people change places. "You over here". "You stand next to so and so". That sort of thing.

I have no problem with her approach to photography -- unless I'm the subject! For example this past weekend I asked her to take a picture for my blog of me standing next to the miniature cave I'm making. I wanted to show the size of it. It was a very hot day - 94 degrees in the shade.

She fiddled around taking shot after shot while I'm literally starting to do a slow burn in the sun. Then she chides me for not smiling!

Better yet was the time last summer when we were walking the beach taking pictures during an extremely rough sea with huge waves for this area. We were experiencing wave heights of 10 to 15 feet! To give you and idea of how large the surge was take a look at this photo of one of the life guard chairs.

These chairs are set out well above the usual high tide mark. They are also surrounded my a mound of sand right up to just under the chair seat. The water had washed away the mound and was beginning to drag the chair out to sea!

In this shot you can see one of the local surfers with a large wave breaking above him.

Diane decides if I went out a bit into the water it would give viewers of the pictures an idea of the size of the waves.

I look at her like shes crazy but she keeps at me. Okay I venture out a few steps and turn towards the camera. Oh no she says I need you a little further out!

I take a few more paces out and I'm starting to really feel the strength of the current pulling at me. She wants me out further! I'm starting to feel like the Chief in Jaws when Hopper is taking photos and wants him at the end of the boats pulpit to give the shark some scale. A breaking comber nails me and I'm soaked and not a happy camper. As Diane is lining up her perfect shot a large wave and comber are lining me up!

Just out of camera view to my left is a rock jetty where all the water rushing back out to sea had created a nasty rip current. I got out of there in a hurry!

So if I ever post a picture of me on my blog and I'm not grinning from ear to ear you know who the photographer was!

Working with Resin

It has been so hot and humid here I haven't felt like posting much lately. It figures the PC would be in the hottest room in the house!

I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome the new followers of my blog and to thank the folks that have expressed an interest in the skull giveaway. The giveaway will close the end of July so if anyone wants in there is still time.

Recently I have been working on making the cavern I blogged about awhile back. The interior will have a curved ceiling. I needed to construct the ceiling light yet strong. I chose to build the foundation of the ceiling with resin.

I decided to move my entire operation outdoors into the garage for two reasons. First off the resin fumes are murder and I've yet to find a respirator mask that 100% blocks the odor. Secondly I figured it would be easier to load the finished piece in my clients truck straight from the garage.

The resin I am using is from WASCO -- Wildlife Artist Supply Company . It is a good product and the staff at Wasco are friendly and helpful should you need help with using any of their products.

The interior of the cave is roughed out in rigid styrofoam board. When it is completed it fits into a wooden framework that supports it. For the ceiling I stapled the middle of a piece of hardware cloth 1/4" screen to a panel of wood. Wood was also added to the end sections of the screen.

I curved the ends of the screen into the shape I wanted and secured the ends to my styrofoam boards. Next I hot glued sections of styrofoam to the screen. When I was done I roughed up the styrofoam with a coarse file so it looked irregular.

Resin time! I make it a habit of recording the dates I use the resin on a sheet of paper affixed to the can.

Older resin may not set up as readily as new material does. For this reason I always mix two test batches of the resin I plan to use.

One batch is allowed to cure in the paper cup. The other is applied to scrap pieces of the materials I will be using. This way if there is a negative reaction I can more readily figure out where the problem arose from.

In the photo you can see that the two small pieces of craft styrofoam are unaffected by the resin. While the piece of styrofoam insulation board is completely eaten away by the resin!

Once I knew I was good to go I began mixing up small batches of the resin with chopped fiberglas resin strands added to it. Not only does this thicken the resin it makes it incredibly strong.

I wrapped and taped a heavy duty black plastic garbage to the underside of my project to capture any resin drips.

In this photo most of the ceiling has been covered with the chopped fiberglas/resin concoction.

Once the resin is fully cured I can begin adding the rock look to the cavern ceiling. When I'm further along in the construction I'll post some pictures.