ON ARARANKHA

Hi everyone!

So, you saw a sneak peek at my book ARARANKHA. I haven't posted anything more, however, because it went under a mountain of peer review. So, in the future, I can hopefully post the revised chapters on my blog for you. Once I start posting, you can even discuss the story with me in the comments section so I may refuse it further.

Also, Atomic has been sent to the IYSFF. If you wish to see it, the link is posted on an earlier post.

Thank you for all your support.

Kelston Hubler

ATOMIC IS PRETTY MUCH WRAPPED UP

I have finished the rough draft to Atomic.

I have refined it, and had a bit of peer review. It still needs criticism, but currently, I'm satisfied with most of it. The animation is good, my friend is a good actor, and the green screen effects hold up, for the most part. Im am particularly happy with Kellaway, my gilasaur whose face is so well sculpted and realistic, I put him up there as one of my best models.

Remember: when building a monster head, you must try your hardest to get the eyes right(unless it doesn't have eyes, then go for the mouth). The eyes show the creature is alive, has personality, conveys it feelings. For example, Kellaway's eyes are small and the skin around them is pale, suggesting old age. The lack of expression indicates he is a reptile. Eyes are not an afterthought.

Atomic will be shown at the IYSFF, an awesome competition where young moviemakers show three minute long silent films. Though I have entered before, I have never done a film with stop motion creatures. Atomic is the result of five years of making stop motion monsters, and is my first chance to show the audience my monster making skills.

On other news, Ararankha has been fully reviewed by one of my peers, an avid techno-thriller fan, and  gave it a rave review. Though ultimately satisfied with it, the novel is riddled with spelling errors, so don't expect to see it any time soon.

Im not sure what I'll do after that. Certainly have a lot on my mind, when it comes to screenwriting and making movies. But now, Im currently focused on getting everything done.

Thanks for all the support. I really appreciate it.

Kelston Hubler

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

ARARANKHA'S FIRST DRAFT IS FINISHED

Boy, that was fast.

Indeed, the first draft of my story, Ararankha, is complete. I'm going to have peer reviews and refine it further, but I really enjoyed writing it. It's roughly 136 pages long, so not really a novel, but it's written on a big page size, so it would likely be longer in a different format.

The story is about Marika Jackson, a traveller in South America who, after a really bad accident, finds herself in a Peruvian village, and joins an expedition into the Andes in search of a prehistoric animal. While they do, indeed, find prehistoric animals, I wouldn't exactly say they have a good time finding them, considering most of them want to stuff the explorers in their mouthes.

Ararankha is my tribute to dinosaur literature new and old, a combination of the old adventure stories of lost world and new ideas on dinosaur evolution and speculative boiology. It will indeed be a very fun read. I've even included a bestiary at the end, complete with illustrations, hopefully.

What I set out to do in Ararankha is not only create good monsters but good characters. I personally believe a good character in a monster story is one that can keep you entertained through the bits the creature isn't there, so I try my hardest to do that.

Ararankha is founded on a mountain of lost world stories, from Journey to the center of the earth to Jurassic Park. It my tribute to techno thrillers and dinosaur fiction.

So, if you like interesting characters, conspiracies, and flying velociraptors, Ararankha is definitely a story you'll enjoy (once it's done, of course, editing takes forever.)

Thankfully, now I'll finally have time to get back to work on Atomic.

Happy New Year, and enjoy the Super Bowl tomorrow!

Kekston Hubler

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

It's 2015! OH YEAH!

(blows on that little thing that shoots out a role of paper like a chameleon tongue.)

Boy, pop culture has a big year ahead, with Jurassic World and the New Star Wars! So many cool new movies to check out.

Speaking of movies, once Atomic is wrapped up I'm going to work a cool fantasy epic called MU. I won't give away details yet, but it's basically set in fantasy world that progressed to the modern age. I won't give away any details, but the script is complete, and I'm manufacturing a couple puppets. More on them later.

Anywho, Im taking a crack at writing a novel, ARARANKHA. I also will refuse to disclose any information on the project, other than it's technothriller in the vein of Chrichton, and will have plenty of strange, freaky dinosaurs. It's inspired by my love of paleoart, and I have done a ton of research to make my creatures as accurate as possible.

I probably won't post again soon, production is rather slow on moviemaking. But to all those who love dinosaurs, monster movies, and science fiction:

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Kelston Hubler

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

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

UKNOWN SPECIES: BURRUNJORS AND LIVING DINOSAURS

Hello, once again!

Forgive me if my posts are far and few between, I don't often get chances to blog. Anyway, I have some updates on Kyoryu, as well as a new project, Unknown species.

Needless to say, casting was revolutionary for my work. It gave much more detail to my monsters and effects. However, my plaster was soon used up, so I took fellow animator Richard Svensson's advice and buy a more effective plaster: a dental plaster called cast&paint perfect. After several misshaps, a truly horrifying plaster spill (what is it with the Duah and plaster spills, anyway?), and using up almost all my plaster, I built my first two plaster molds, which were extreme successes.

I sculpted the chest piece for the Duah, which casted beautifully, and wrapped it across his chest. With a proper paint-job, it should look truly frightening.

However, Kyoryu is in development hell, considering it's lagging production and problematic work, and on hold for another project on my plate: UNKNOWN SPECIES.

I love cryptids. The idea of mysterious animals which may or may not exist hiding in secluded areas across the planet has always intrigued me, ever since I first read about them in Roland Smith's awesome Cryptid Hunters series, a big inspiration for UNKNOWN SPECIES. I also love technothrillers, with plowing through JURASSIC PARK and FRAGMENT to see the hard biology used to create some really scary monsters. So why not combine the two?

The series focuses on adventurer Julie Challenger's experiences in UNKNOWN, a sprawling, bizarre corporation devoted to the capture of cryptids, capturing their numbers in secret to allow them to live on long after they fade out in the wild. However, Cryptids are a varied bunch, and not all of them are safe to study. I've already got the script for the pilot written down, which got great applause to those who read it. A si-fi technothriller/horror comedy, the show is heavy on hard biology, and I studied tons of theories on proposed identities to Cryptids to give biologically plausible identities to the show's creatures. For the pilot, since I love dinosaurs, I decided my first cryptid should be the Burrunjor, a predatory mystery reptile from Australia said to be a living dinosaur. Based off a scary short story I did years ago, the Burrunjors are truly menacing predator, and I wanted to reflect that in the design.

Being biologically plausible, I wanted it to seem like the Burrunjors evolved from a smaller, opportunistic predator that survived the meteorite crash and the rise of mammals. So, he has a craning neck, large arms with claws, and a primitive jaw, similar to the allosaurs and other early giant theropods. The armature was fairly simple, but my Burrunjor, Oatmeal, is the most complex puppet I have ever worked on.

My first cast of the Burrunjor was tattered and torn, due to improper plaster mixing and not enough latex. So, finally taking a moment to plan, I sculpted and casted a new head, to great success. He even has NOSTRILS!!!

To build a lip, I wrapped the excess latex around a wire, stuffed it with foam, then wrapped it around the head.

I wasn't happy with the crocodilian look, though, so I added some skin from the previous cast and gave him a nose job. I also added avian eyes, giving him a piercing stare.

It took me quite some time to get the head right. I wanted it to be a unique dinosaur species, but still be recognizable as a dinosaur.

At last, I made the skin. Using bumpy, scaly matts, I rubbed the tinfoil sheet over it to cast the skin texture. It didn't work as well as I hoped, but he still looks good.

I also added the feathers and teeth, art supplies I gained last Christmas. The teeth were a pain, considering positioning them right so the jaw could properly close. I then cut off the ends of toothpicks, and glued them to his back to create a spine. Adds a whole level of realism.

Finally, after much pain, I got to the paint job. Again, the project should be as realistic as possible, so I took pictures of monitor lizards off the internet and used them for his paint job. Finally, I cannibalised an old puppet's bolt holes to use on Oatmeal.

Oatmeal is my most realistic puppet to date, and only one of the cryptids I plan to show in unknown species.

Some Cryptid face sculpts.

Considering how hard long it takes to work on these projects, I'm sure I'll post some test animation for when animation starts.

Speaking of that, clips of Antediluvian will be shown on the blog soon, if I can work around the glitches. The film is finished, and it has some cool, B-movie style monster scenes I want to show.

Thanks for reading, please comment.

Kelston Hubler