A SAMPLE OF ARARANKHA'S BESTIARY

Finally, my early draft is complete. From what my family has read of it, it has received rave reviews. I have developed some quite good digital art work for the story, and I hope one of my family members will read it soon enough.

The novel is basically a lost world story; explorers go to an uncharted area of the map to find animals long extinct. And, like all good paleofiction, the animsalds try their hardest to kill and eat the explorers.

While it is a fairly used concept, Ararankha is a fun exercise in world building. I love world building, it my opinion, it only builds to the credibility of the story to add a ton of detail and research to your creatures. I also love field guides, full of gorgeous artwork on strange creatures. One of my books in my collection is World of Kong, a WETA art book on the concept art of creatures in the 2005 movie, presented as a field guide. With absolutely beautiful artwork and some excellent world building, it is one of my personal favorite books.

So, my own book comes with an illustrated field guide to the lifeforms present in Ararankha, not all of them in the story. I have decided to show a couple creatures to you, some creatures present in the field guide.

Ararankha comes out basically whenever Im satisfied with it. Please comment.

Thanks for reading!

Kelston Hubler

UNEARTHING ANTEDILUVIAN

I'm happy to say most of the animation in "much to fear about summer" is complete, but I still have to cast actors and shoot the film this summer. So, what film do I make in the mean time? Well, I recently regained my love for Hollow Earth stories, so, prepare for a new short film, ANTEDILUVIAN.

ANTEDILUVIAN is based off the myth of the hollow earth, in which the world is hollow, and prehistoric life and advanced civilizations live there. Antediluvian is inspired by these tales. Although the world is not at the center of the earth, it is an entire a network of caves beneath a mountain. It's inspired heavily by the works of Jules Verne, whose book was so cool, I almost made a movie out of it once, my first true stop motion epic, who I'm certain that my pipe-cleaner plesiosaurs and Icthyosaurs are still lurking in my closet somewhere. Of course, I'm not going to make new puppets for the project, I'll just use ones I've made already. However, I did make one puppet for the project: the antediluvian gorilla:

This creature has an interesting backstory. In Jules Verne's novel Journey to the Center of the Earth, there's a mysterious chapter only included in certain editions of the book. It describes a dream sequence about a fight between a prehistoric ape and some sort of dinosaur. This is insanely weird, because:

1. This mirrors King Kong, but I've read books about the subject, and Verne's novel was never mentioned.

2. The creature is supposed to be a prehistoric gorilla, but no prehistoric gorillas were discovered at the time Verne wrote his novel. Perhaps, as David Standish suggested in his book HOLLOW EARTH, the ape is a representation of Verne's opinions on Progressive Creationism (God slowly changing creatures from one species to another to fit his plan), the ape regressing over the generations from it's prehistoric ancestors for new creatures to emerge.

So, he mystery of the Antediluvian Gorilla continues. The prehistoric gorilla in my movie was made from wire, foam, and black wool. The pictures above show his his face, restored with clay after it was all but destroyed during the animation process. The gorilla, Verne, will battle Harold, my swamp ape, as a sort of battle of the missing links, a tribute to king kong animators willis O'brien and Marcel Delgado.















There will also be a boneyard and mammoths, another reference to the story. The sets were simple green screen composites with plastic dinosaur bones and clay mushrooms. The mammoth, who sadly was torn apart before I could get a picture of him, is a mammoth skull with clay and wool wrapped around it.

Also, Ray is returning for the picture.
















Speaking of Ray, here's some test footage for Much to Fear about summer.
















When it's finished, I might even make a sequel. It's a fun little story with various references to Journey to the Center of the Earth and Edgar Rice Burrough's Pelucidar.

Please Comment. Hope you Enjoyed it!

My tribute to Ray Harryhausen

I know it's a tad late, but here's my tribute to Ray Harryhausen, who passed away last year at 92. He was very influential on my career, so here's my tribute.

While I was a huge fan of dinosaurs, I never really knew who Ray was. Frankly, I wasn't sure there really were too many dinosaur films out there. I recently came into a fascination with Greek Myth, so mom rented Clash of the Titans and Jason and the Argonauts on Netflix. Coming from an era of CGI, I was a tad jaded, but, frankly, his creatures Medusa and Talos were some of the few monsters to ever scare me. They didn't even need to explode out of a doorway, screaming at the top of their lungs, the sheer mood and movement of the creatures genuinely creeped me out. This is coming from a kid who forced his Grandma to play Jurassic Park 3 every Friday, a film where Velociraptors pin down mercenaries and split open their skulls with their claws. A few years later, after a bit of research on the subject, I came across Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger on television. The death of Trog and the Saber-Toothed Tiger affected me more than any monsters death, even more than the original Godzilla.

Well, I didn't hear much about him until my old teacher put on a video on about him. I think that's when I was certain I wanted to make stop motion dinosaurs and animate them. I already had a stop motion program I got years before, but that video made me certain about what I wanted
 to do. I went through many trials and tribulations, from baked sculpey creatures, to pipe cleaner plesiosaurs, to plasticine Godzillas, to Patchy, to Malcolm, to O'bie, to Ray (get it?) . I eventually was able to buy the Beast from 20,000 fathoms, a beautiful movie with a fantastic monster, a combination of Ray Bradbury's short story and Ray Harryhausen's concepts. I also was able to record a strain of Harryhausen movies, and git to watch 20 million miles to Earth, First Men in the moon, and Earth vs the Flying Saucers. It was awesome.

When one of my teachers who also loved his work broke the news, it was terribly sad. But I'm happy to know that people still care about his craft and continue it to this day. Richard Svensson's working on his Lovecraft Projects, Phil Tippet's making MAD GOD,  ML Tharme is working on Wildlife on Mars, Peter Jackson recreated the Spider Pit sequence from the original KING KONG, and I'm working on MUCH TO FEAR ABOUT SUMMER.

His work inspired all of us. Thank you, Ray Harryhausen.