ANIMATION HAS WRAPPED UP FOR ATOMIC!

Here's the cast, posing together:

Live action filming should start next july.

Here are some puppets and veichles I did for unknown species. The project is on indefinite hiatus, considering it would take forever to finish, so this is the last you'll most likely see of it. Still, the puppetts are so good, I'll reuse them eventually.

 

Here's some extra photos of the monsters. They were the most challenging puppets to animate, condsidering they had highly experimental body plans and were prone to breaking or falling over. Still, Im really glad the animation turned out great.

Merry Christmas!

Kelston Hubler

HAPPY THANKSGIVING! ON JURASSIC WORLD AND ATOMIC CREATURES

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

I try my best to make a post at least once a month, so happy Thanksgiving.

So far, its been a good year. Finished my first film, Antediluvian, created cool monsters, watched the new Godzilla, and make more indie monster films!

I do have some cool stuff to discuss, but first, I must talk about something very dear to me: Jurassic Park.

I remember when I was eight. Sick of Jurassic Park 4 not appearing in theaters, I made my own version, where Malcolm and Grant are horrified to find out Biosyn has mass captured the Dinosaurs on Sorna and Nublar to create a new park on the mainland. However, safety is not exactly a big concern, and dinosaurs are leaking out into the cities. It was just me, my brother, and my plastic dinosaur collection. Sadly most of the film m is lost, but from what I remember, it was pretty hilarious, from hiding from velociraptors in a garden patch, a spinosaurus destroying a lighthouse, to fending off a carnotaurus with a machine gun. It would even end with the T-rex and Spinosaur teaming up to kill a giant, mutant sauropod-thingy created from the Barbasol can. So many memories....

They recently released the trailer for Jurassic World, the fourth Jurassic Park movie. Being a Michael Crichton fan, I have waited TWELVE YEARS for any news on Jurassic Park four. Twelve. Years. Now its here. I'm having a fan attack: a fully functional park on Isla Nublar, hybrid Dinosaurs, Mosasaur feeding shows, and trained velociraptors. Not sure if this film will get it right, my only complaint is that can't wait several more months for another trip to the park.


Anywho, I got a new camera for my birthday, and it's far better than anything I've had previously. Heres some photos of my Unknown Species critters:

See earlier posts on their creation. However, UNKNOWN SPECIES is a long term project, so I can spend some time on smaller projects. This current one, ATOMIC, is an entry for the local film festival. It is to be black and white, and take place after a nuclear war, and mutant creatures rule the planet. Here's a couple puppets:

This is Randy, my mutant living brain. All my monsters are a spin on common 50's era creatures, this one in particular a living brain. Randy is named after a character in a short story from the anthology MONSTERS: 20 TALES OF CREATURE TERROR, who's brain runs amok eating other peoples brains. Its really creepy, I highly recommend it. My brain and the broken bit of skull on the front were casted in monster clay to create a latex brain. The jawbone is sculpey, and the tentacles are wire covered in hot glue. I created a "tongue", which can come out through a hole in his mouth, its wire wrapped in string, two broken tooth picks glued to the end,m and painted. It sort of looks like a spinal cord.

This is Kellaway, my mutant Gilasaurus. He's named after Cecil Kellaway, my favorite actor from the Ray Harryhausen epic THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS, and probably on the top ten list of most hilarious monster kills. His head is based off an Albertasaurus, casted in Monster Clay. His hands reused the Honey Island Swamp Monster's hand cast, used a couple times to create creepy, leathery claws. His eyes are taxidermist plastic eyes, the first I've ev er used. His jaw is also erector set pieces. He looks awesome, my only complaint I can't get him to stand up properly. Need to fix that.

This is Bert, my giant Antmantis. Named after Bert I. Gordon, distributer of most of the 50s Big Bug films and perfect MST3K parody. BERT is an experiment, only his face is casted latex skin. His entire body is foam and cotton, coated in latex and painted. For the most part, he isn't up to par as some of my creations, and his color scheme is wonky, but the whole film is black and white, and he's still a darn cool model.

Thank you for reading, and Happy Thanksgiving!

UNKOWN SPECIES: THE HONEY ISLAND SWAMP MONSTER

Hello, once again!

Even though the scripts aren't finished and in development, I might as well make the puppets for future episodes. So, I created a cryptid near and dear to me: the Honey Island Swamp Monster.

The Honey Island Swamp monster is a beast from a swamp in Louisiana, an ape-like beast with mysterious origins. However, unlike any other bigfoot, it has webbed feet and four fingers. I'm going for something a little more original than a bigfoot, but I'll leave that to the future.

UNKNOWN SPECIES evolved from an earlier Cryptid Project, involving O'bie as the Burrunjor and Harold as the Honey Island Swamp Monster. He was widely considered my best puppet at the time, and wanted to honor him by really upping my game for this puppet.

I sculpted the monster's face in the same cast as the Tatzelwurm, and attached it to his face. I then sculpted the webbed claws, adding holes for the baked claws to fit in. After casting, I fit the casted latex around his hands and feet.

I carved the arms to look like a realistic animal, with strong anatomy. Then, i painted his face, hands, and feet, his only latex parts.

The paint job is awesome. I love his hands, which remind me of the reptile god Mbwun from the sci-fi thriller Relic. His feet, the most realistic part of a creature I've ever built, remind me of a penguin. At last I covered the whole thing in fake fur and added tons a moss and fake vegetation to the back sand seams, to show his swamp origins.

He looks AWESOME. You won't see much of him until the first episode is finished and I can finally get to the next episode, but I will give you hint about his role:

He'll square off with oatmeal, the Burrunjor from episode 1. It will be awesome.

Thank you for reading. Please Comment.

Kelston Hubler

UNKNOWN SPECIES: EURYPTERIDS AND TATZELWURMS

Hello, once again!

Antediluvian is probably not going to show on the blog. It's finished, I showed it on my birthday to great applause among family members, but I can't show it the blog due to various reasons(mainly, I don't know how to upload it yet). However, I can show you this raw footage from the film, which shows a fight between two apemen.

(note: I am also new to uploading videos. If it doesn't show, it's probably an accident).

Antediluvian was a great experience, and it has definitely given me a boost in knowledge when working on creatures.

In UNKNOWN SPECIES, when a Cryptid population is successfully captured, they are moved to the zoo, an underground storage facility ten feet beneath the pacific northwest, with simulated, fully function micro versions of their own enviroments, most of which span the length of three football fields. It is a massively expensive creation, however, which begins to be a problem, considering how few cryptids have been caught to far.

There are a few cryptids in the zoo, such as the Passenger Pidgeon and Marozi Lion. These would be built with simple photoshop techniques, since they only appear for a couple seconds on the security cameras. However, certain, stranger creatures required me to build some puppets.

The first is the Con Rit, a segmented sea serpent of the coast of Vietnam, most likely a Eurypterid, or prehistoric Sea Scorpion. I built the plated segments out of Sculpey, then drilled holes through it.

I then untwisted the ends of a wire pieces, then bends them into legs. I then wrapped string around his legs and glued broken toothpick ends to it's legs.

Finally, I ran a wire through the baked clay holes, glued the segments down, a glued the legs to the body. I also stuffed bits of miniature hay from a tiny vegetation set behind his gills, which look like hairs on crabs. Finally, I added plates to his front claws as a form of defense, like a mantis shrimp. I really like this creature, and is a quite realistic critter for the project.

Next up is the Tatzelwurm, a mysterious reptile in the Swiss Alps. A strange, Caecaelian-like reptile who burrows into trees, the tatzelwurm is a famous cryptid and a cool addition to the zoo. I designed the cryptid from a fake photo of the Tatzelwurm under a log, showed in Huevalman's on The Track of Unknown Animals. It's just a crude wood-cut, but the design is really cool and makes a great creature.  The entire skin was casted in a single piece, casted and filled with an armature, eyeballs, and teeth. I then built the lower jaw and painted the eyes.

I painted the creature, but forgot to take a picture. He is a really neat little puppet, but has trouble moving his arms since the claws get stuck un the drill-holes.

UNKNOWN SPECIES is extremely ambitious, but I think I can pull it off. I'm making a writer's room for the scripts and doing some early effects shots. I got more creatures to make for each episode.

Thanks for reading, Please Comment.

Kelston Hubler