Thursday, October 9, 2014

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