Thinking about Shark Week

I've been enjoying Shark Week on the Discovery channel this week. It got me thinking to how I first became interested in sharks.

In the mid 1960's my Mother and I had gone for a walk and stopped to rummage through a bookstore. There was an enormous selection of old National Geographic magazines on sale for 3 for a quarter. I begged a quarter from my Mom and shot off to pick out my three issues!

Delving through the stacks of magazines I came across the very one Chief Brody is leafing through in the film Jaws. When I saw the painting of the white shark attacking the lobster fisherman's dory that appears in the film I was hooked!

Then in 1971 Peter Gimbel released the documentary Blue Water White Death which chronicled his search for the Great White shark. Amazon.com: Blue Water, White Death: Peter Gimbel, Ron Taylor, Valerie Taylor, Stan Waterman: Movies & TV

I pestered my Dad to take me to see it. I remember he was none to pleased when he found the theater had hiked up the usual ticket prices for this movie!

Watching that film I thought I had died and gone to heaven! No one had ever filmed White sharks underwater before. That film blew me away.

Around that same time my Dad bought me a copy of "Sportfishing for Sharks" which was written by Capt. Frank Mundus. Mundus coined the phrase " Monster Fishing " to describe this new sport.

Then in 1974 I coerced my Dad to take me to see the self proclaimed " Monster Man " Frank Mundus give a lecture on shark fishing.

After his talk I got Mundus to autograph my copy of his book!

That same year my Mom mentioned my love of sharks to a co worker who owned his own boat and often did offshore fishing. He agreed to take my Dad and I out for the day.

I remember first laying eyes on his 23 foot boat and wishing it were bigger! It was a windy day and the choppy water inshore grew to fairly large swells as we headed 40 miles offshore.

No sooner did we start drifting and chumming then my Dad who was prone to getting seasick turned green as a gill and laid down in the cabin.

When the drag of the reel screamed to announce the strike of the first shark my Dad dragged himself back on deck to watch me land a 5 ft Brown shark.

Sick as he was he watched us measure, then tag and release the shark. At which point he promptly added his breakfast to the chum slick and then crashed back onto the bunk in the cabin.

I caught a second Brown shark soon after but nothing will ever replace landing that first shark and seeing it close up!

Getting back to Mundus if you notice he autographed my book twice! I finally got to fish with him out of Montauk aboard his boat the Cricket II in 2005. Fishing with him was a treat! To say he was a character would be putting it mildly! He regaled us with his great stories and shared his scrap book of photos with us.

To celebrate Shark week I'm having a sale on my Shark and Nautical sculptures at my Etsy shop. Use the coupon code SHARKWEEK201 at checkout to get 30% off the purchase price! : Mako Shark OOAK Sculpture by BlacknickSculpture on Etsy

Making Tentacles for a Stop Motion Puppet

The stop motion puppet I'm designing will have six tentacles. I sculpted one tentacle and made a two piece mold of it.

From the two molds I made six sets of latex skins. Six top sides and six bottom sections to cover the finished tentacles.

The tentacles were made by taking a section of aluminum wire and wrapping it in cotton string. I tacked the string in place with a bit of liquid latex rubber.

The thicker portion of tentacle that attaches to the body of the creature was built up with sections of foam rubber.

Then after dabbing on a bit of liquid latex I began wrapping the entire tentacle with athletic foam wrap.

Here is a top section of the latex skin for the tentacle fresh from the mold.

Here I'm test fitting the skin to one of the foam wrapped wire tentacles.

Next post I'll begin assembling the tentacles.

Christmas In July Sale

I'll be taking part in Etsy's Christmas in July sale between the dates of 7/14/2011 through 7/24/2011. Use the coupon code at checkout to take 30% off your purchase price. I also liked to mention that a couple pieces of my sea themed artwork are in these two fishing inspired treasuries: Musings of a Fisherman's Wife by fiiimac on Etsy Gone Fishing! by WhisperingOak on Etsy

Cthulhu Sculpture

I took a break from working on my spider pit recreation to sculpt Cthulhu. I thought I'd share some work in progress photos with you.

Here is the aluminum wire/foil armature.

Here I've started adding clay. The bolts in the feet will secure the sculpt to the base.

The sculpt mounted to the wooden base. I'm adding Apoxie clay around the bolts to secure it in place.

Cutting the armature for the wings out of wire screening.

The two completed wings with metal rods added for mounting to the sculpture.

Smoothing the area the wings will attach to.

Blending the area around the wings with the rest of the body.

Adding the tentacles to Cthulhu.

Here is the finished Cthulhu.

Whale Washes Up Off Atlantic Beach NY

I was working on this fellow this morning.

It is one of the creatures that inhabits the spider pit diorama I'm creating.

I had just got the eyes installed when a friend called to tell me a whale had washed ashore in the next town.

I grabbed my camera and decided to take a walk along the shoreline. Atlantic Beach is a private beach but I figured they wouldn't mind.

When I got about a 1/4 block away I could smell the carcass.

The biologist at the scene said it is a Finback whale. It is estimated it is between 35 - 40 feet long. I guess they have to haul it out to sea and let nature take its course.

Spider Pit Ravine WIP Photos

I've been chipping away at getting my spider pit ravine finished but it has been slow going. The weather has been constantly rainy, humid and foggy for the last week.

Because of this the rock work I am doing on the ravine walls is taking forever to dry! The picture below is the wood and hardware cloth frame covered with mache and wood putty. I've just added a section of styrofoam board to build up the rock face.

This is the styrofoam rock face before I added my mache/wood putty mixture.

This is the rock face about 75% finished. I just have to refine the cave entrance a bit.

Here is the pit lizard stop motion puppet sitting on one of the finished boulders waiting for its final coat of paint.

Spider Pit Interview with Lee Ashworth

I'm a huge fan of the 1933 version of King Kong! So you can imagine my pleasure at discovering the website KongisKing.net.

There I met a great bunch of folks. Kindred spirits that share my fascination with Kong and the process of stop motion animation.

Some members like Mr. Lee Ashworth have taken their passion for Kong a step further. Ashworth and his co author Gary Vehar have penned what may well be the definitive article exploring the mystery of whether the spider pit sequence was ever filmed.

What is the mystery of the spider pit you may ask? In the film a rescue party pursuing Kong are dashing across a fallen log spanning a chasm.

Enraged Kong appears from the jungle and shakes the terrified men clinging to the log into the ravine below. At the bottom of the ravine the sailors that survived the fall are set upon by a menagerie of grotesque creatures -- giant spiders, a crab and a tentacled monstrosity.

I'm currently building a diorama of the ravine and some of the pit creatures. So you can imagine what a treat it was for me when Lee Ashworth agreed to be interviewed about his love of Kong and his article " Lost Nightmare The Mystery of the Missing Spider Pit Sequence "which was published in FilmFax magazine.

For those wishing to read his article it can be downloaded at this link: http://newboards.kongisking.net/perl/gforum.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediafire.com%2F%3Fnszyx0h67oadwnv

So Lee at what age did you first see the 1933 version of King Kong?

My dad took me to see King Kong '33 in 1977. I was five at the time. When Kong first emerged from the darkness with the trees moving the way they did via stop motion animation, it left me mesmerized and my imagination started to run wild and it has never stopped.

Well, I'm now 38 and my favorite subject is Kong '33! When I first got Kong '33 on home video it was the best thing in the world (even better than Christmas and my birthday combined)!! It is a movie that I can honestly say I love.

What prompted you to write Lost Nightmare The Mystery of the Missing Spider Pit Sequence ?

Whilst posting on KongisKing.net, some years ago, I became involved in one of the "was the spider pit sequence shot or not?" debates and joined in just for fun really. I owned copies of letters that Merian C. Cooper the director of Kong had wrote that mention the lost spider pit sequence and why it was not in the final movie.

I also had several photos of the scenes, so I shared them on the site and was contacted by Jim Quirk (who dropped out for personal reasons) and Gary Vehar who were planning on writing a book on the subject. A book was not a realistic prospect due to the amount of knowledge that seemed to exist on the subject, so we decided on a lengthy article instead.

A year later and we had the version you can read today. We had help from some very generous people in the business and a personal friend of both Cooper and composer Max Steiner, and besides knowledge we also received several never before published pictures of the scene set ups (one of the many highlights of working on such a project) from stop motion animator Chris Endicott.

How hard was it tracking down sources on a film that is over 78 years old?

Well, we were very lucky to start with and managed to find out lots of tales about the sequence. One guy that we interviewed told me that Max Steiner had seen the spider pit sequence in a preview to help him score the film (it does sound plausible seeing as the score was composed in the "Micky Mousing" style) so he could write the music to fit the scenes and that when he next saw Kong (still unscored) the pit sequence was gone.

He also said that when "Jack" reacts to the sailor hitting the rocks in the version that we know, the reaction was actually because "Jack" had seen a creature in the pit attacking the sailor.

So we had plenty of "word of mouth" stories to compare and filter down to what most probably was shot, but we were no closer to finding out what happened to the scene after its removal, and we didn't expect to find out either, because if that information was available then the scene would not remain lost to this day.

Saying that, a second Kong armature did come to light after many years and that was also believed lost. On the opposite hand, we did have patches where things seemed to move at glacial speeds and we would run into many dead-ends, hence the reason it took a while to get enough material to put the article together.

How accurate do you find Peter Jackson's recreation of the spider pit sequence to be?

Peter Jackson's spider pit? I'm assuming you are referring to the stop motion version and not the ghastly CGI version. I don't think the scene would have played out like that in the 1933 version for these reasons:- The Styracosaurus NEVER appeared in the original film, the shot of it standing at the other side of the ravine was just a cut and paste job created by the studio. They even managed to cut the Styracosaur's beak off.

The crab and the lizard grab two sailors at the same time, so you don't know which to watch. That scene was certainly rushed. The men are still seen being dashed on the rocky floor of the chasm and would not have survived that kind of impact. In the original script, the men landed in soft mud and were supposed to be attacked after that.

I say "supposed" because we still have no hard evidence that the scene was shot, although I have seen stills from actual film that to appear to have a soundtrack on them, maybe a temporary music or sound effects track (you can see where the sound is encoded onto film. It appears to the side ).

Another thing to ponder is that the log scene in Kong '33 has been tampered with ... As Kong drops the log into the ravine, the whole scene has been flipped (left now appearing on the right side) for some unknown reason. Anyway, in Jackson's defense, he did state that it was just a fan version, so I suppose that gives him the advantage of using as much artistic licensing as he wants.

Recently you mentioned your adding a Kong ball & socket armature to your collection. How did that come about?

I noticed that Tom Brierton was selling a gorilla-like armature with a replica of the original Kong armature skull and I just had to have one! It worked out at around the same price as the "Sideshow Collectibles" replica Kong armature which I'd heard horror stories about the metal being soft and the thing couldn't hold a pose, so it was a no-brainer for me.

I remember once I'd paid for it I wanted it straight away and then got realistic about the time it takes to ship across the Atlantic ocean, but that didn't stop me looking out the window hoping to see a courier van arriving after day two! I had always wanted a stop motion Kong puppet, so this was the nearest that I'd ever been to getting one.

What motivated you to begin building stop motion puppets?

My first love of monsters and the fantastic, is Kong, and that walks hand in hand with stop motion animation, so I was also hooked on the films of Ray Harryhausen too.

I always wanted to own a stop motion monster as I was growing up, but it was very elusive due to the fact that I had no idea where to get my hands on latex rubber and other supplies necessary for the task. And also living in England didn't help matters, as the only subject material I could lay my hands on were imported American mags at the time.

Then along came the Internet, and thank heavens it did! I could speak to more like minded people like myself, talk to the SFX professionals I'd only ever seen in books and mags, it was great. Still, I didn't consider trying my hand at creating my own stop motion monsters because I didn't think I had the skills to take it on.

It was only after a near death experience in 2010, that I decided to try some things I wanted to try out, and that's where I got the "nothing ventured nothing gained" attitude, and that's how I finally stepped into the art of stop motion.

You mentioned building a T Rex inspired by the one that challenges Kong in the film. What other puppets are you planning on building in the future?

At the moment I'm working on another "Skull Island" type creature. I've decided to create a hybrid of two of the creatures built but not used in "King Kong." The new creature will be a mix of the Arsinoitherium and Triceratops. I am planning to use this "Arsinoceratops" monster in a scene involving the T Rex.

I'm also near to completing a lizard-man puppet, but have yet to settle on the design of the head, so it's taken a back seat for now, as has the Octopus creature from the deleted "Spider Pit" sequence from 'King Kong."

The beauty of creating the Octopus creature is, that apart from the tentacles, we have never seen an image of the final design that was to be used in 'Kong,' so it gives me a free range in which to use artistic licensing!

Stop motion animation and creating the articulated puppets can be such an exacting and tedious process. What do you find rewarding about it?

What do I find rewarding .... Well, I love to create things from nothing, so building the stop motion puppets and other miniatures is very rewarding when it's going right, and then animating something that you've created and playing it back is something very special indeed.

It's not as simple as just moving the puppets arms or legs frame by frame, you have to channel the "actor" within yourself from your minds eye, through your fingers and create a personality for your puppet or it will be as interesting as animating a block of wood sliding across a table top.

The Kong scene that I animated was a rush job due to my impatience and wanting to finish the animation and get stuck into adding sound effects, music and compositing a background in there.

It was a big mistake I made, but trial and error are the best ways to learn the art... You really need to study things very closely, e.g.: when you really watch how a body moves when walking, everything moves, the body has to balance and counterbalance, etc., the head remains centralized whist the shoulders and neck are in constant motion.

It's the things animals do that we don't really notice that can make a big difference to your puppets natural looking actions. With Kong I did give him a personality but didn't take care with the movements, it's something I will address on my next project.

I've included the link to one of your first animation sequences with your Kong puppet: http://www.youtube.com/user/shran1933#p/u/6/B9ShIlaOYhQ

Also a clip of your T Rex in action: YouTube - T Rex on Skull Island

How has the groundbreaking special effects created by Willis O'Brien in King Kong influenced you?

Well, (this will sound cliche, but it's true) I have never been the same since I first saw 'King Kong' on the big screen as a child. After that day my life took the direction of indulging myself in the world of Kong and monster movies, books, toys, games, cards ... you get the picture.

You can't beat reading a cool horror comic whilst listening to a storm rage outside, none of which I would enjoy if it wasn't for monsters and horror icons that I took an interest in after seeing Kong. I feel that it's made my life a little, no, a lot more interesting than the average blokes on the street, and I wouldn't change that if I had my time over again!

So, the work of Willis O'Brien, Marcel Delgado, Merian C. Cooper, and everyone else involved in that utterly magical film, have been with me throughout my life, and I can say that it always will be!