Ultraman Towards the Future AKA Ultraman Great part 3

 Gigasaurus and the grassy plain environment.

 

Adam Grace and myself also built this grassy plain environment for the Gigasaurus episode.

We didn't have much time to build these sets so we needed solutions that were expedient. To get an instant grassy landscape we came up with the idea of using coconut matting used in the garden industry to make hanging basket liners. We managed to obtain a full roll of the stuff and just rolled it out over an array of raised rostra (wooden platforms) we constantly used throughout the show. Because our monsters were puppets we needed space underneath the sets to operate the feet of the creatures.

Shredded foam lumps were painted green and scattered with model railroad ground foam across the landscape for random plants and texture variation.

The coconut matting was brown in colour so it was painted in various shades of green using simple pump action garden sprayers and thinned water based paint. The distant hills were just scrunched up newspaper arranged in a pleasing formation under the matting and sprayed with bluer shades of green to make them appear further away on what was really quite a small set.  The picture below shows me wielding one of these sprayers. 

The road was just a simple piece of painted plywood screwed down over the matting into the baseboards of the platforms. The other notable aspect to this set is the sky backing, it's a really exemplary piece of work. We had two scenic artists on the show, the first was very junior and not quite up to the mark, the second was a more senior artist and was extremely talented. Good scenic art can make all the difference to a miniature.

The puppets were generally cable controlled using levers. The feet were operated with rods up through slots cut into the sets. As the puppet action was shot high speed all the puppeteers had to move pretty fast and be highly co-ordinated. It was sometimes quite comical to watch.

Two of the puppeteers Ross Browning and Ravi Prasad at the control levers with Steve Roswell one of the puppet makers.

The slots in the set had to be invisible to the camera for down shots. In the picture below Adam Grace is  hiding the edges of the slots cut in the matting.

The Gigasaurus puppet was also outfitted with a freezing breath gag which used liquid CO2 vented from its mouth.

 

Gigasaurus destroying an electrical sub-station with its freezing breath.

The puppet was supported by a steel pole which was mostly hidden by its tail. All the control cabling and the hose for the liquid CO2 freezing breath effect came down this pole.

The picture below shows Adam Grace (right) and myself attending to the rigging of the power lines. These were made from stainless steel fishing trace and had a nice weight to them so that they hung down realistically. they were also very strong and could withstand the inevitable entanglements with both puppet and the crew.

Gigasauraus supervising Adam Grace's work.

Two scales of transmission towers were scratch built by David Tremont plus a third smallest scale from plastic model railway kits.

Paul Nichola the visual effects supervisor shooting a POV shot from one of the Hummer flying vehicles with the puppet blasting its freezing breath at the camera.

 

 

The same set was also used for a night scene. We used a string of the 24 volt figure eight lighting on sticks for a perimeter effect with small Phillips 12 volt halogen spotlights mounted on the set pointing at the critter. A dry ice mist added to the cold effect.

The Gigasaurus puppet along with all the others on the show was fabricated by a team consisting of Steve Roswell, Vicki Kite, Graham Binding, Norman Yeend and Warren Beaton.

 

Thanks for looking.