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!

King Kong Pays A Visit To My Studio

When filmmaker Eric Kessler came to my studio to pick up the miniature Skull Island wall and altar I had worked on he brought along a special guest -- King Kong!

I had often admired Kessler's stop motion puppet from afar. Watching as Kess put Kong through his paces dispatching his stop motion adversaries on YouTube: YouTube - Kong vs. Spinosaurus

As good as the YouTube footage is it doesn't come close to doing this unique piece of articulated artwork justice!

Getting to examine Kong close up in my own hands was a great treat. Kess and I concluded the visit by having some fun posing Kong attacking the Skull Island gates for a few pictures.