Dredgemogorath

The Dredgemorath was a project that I co-led. Thru an open call, we found a client who wanted a large 80's movie style creature for a short proof of concept film. 

The client provided us with initial sketches from an artist who had left the project. My colleague and I both produced newer models in Zbrush as design pitches to the client.

The client liked elements from both designs and wanted the head from my partners design and the tentacles from mine.

In the next step, I developed function sheets for proposed movements to meet actions indicated in the script. This included tentacle, head rise and head tilt actions.

We did a size and silhouette mock up by creating a "trash bag monster" using PVC pipes and plastic sheeting.

The mock up was useful in quickly demonstrating to the client expectations of scale for what we would deliver. It also gave us a starting point for the physical build.

We knew that our build would consist of a PVC pipe frame covered in a combination of sculpted foam, chicken wire and a coated cloth material. We had selected a cloth material referred to as bubble gauze for the skin, since it was light weight and has a texture that looked like wrinkled skin. We also had selected a 4 way stretch lycra for tentacle coverings. We made various skin samples using the cloth materials and different coatings, such as crystal gel and liquid latex. We also did some painting tests on skin samples. 

We constructed a PVC frame and for transportation purposes, separated the frame into 4 sections, top, face and 2 sides. We then covered the frame with sculpted chicken wire and foam. We reused the plastic sheeting from the size mock-up to fill cavities in the chicken wire form to hold the sculpts shape. We then covered the sculpt with the bubble gauze coated with crystal gel. Due to a budget over run we substituted the crystal gel with carpet adhesive.

For the tentacles we had planned a mix of mechanical tentacles and secondary movement tentacles. We created the tentacles from vinyl tubing, pool noodles and disks cut from foam sheeting. These skeletons were then covered with a lycra "sock". We added form and texture to the covering with spray foam, bubble gauze and carpet adhesive.

Next we began the process of painting. We used a base coat of a dark green to cover all pieces then added additional colors by blotting them on by hand according to design documents and samples approved by client. 

At the sound stage we assembled the base which would provide the head movement and secondary movement of tentacles. The base consisted of a wooden spire topped with an acetal plate. The spire fit into a platform attached to the creatures head allowing it to balance on the spire. The platform attached to the head also included an acetal plate that would allow for the head to rotate and tilt with less friction.

We had gone thru several ideas for tentacle movement. Due to budget and time we selected the most efficient methods. For the longer tentacles, the ends were moved by wire rope and controlled by puppeteers out of frame. The upper portions of the tentacles were secondary motion from both lower tentacle movement and head movement. The "mouth" tentacles were controlled by a puppeteer at the forward section of the head. I took the responsibility of head movement and acted as puppeteer at the aft section. We had a Jacobean actor standing nearby reciting lines as I read along with them and moved the head in response to lines and notations I had made in the script.