Ultraman Towards the Future AKA Ultraman Great part 14

 In one episode I made a breakaway miniature agricultural shed for a Locust creature to trash.

The giant Locust critter called Majaba was made as a puppet. It had leds inside its eyes to make them glow as well as a pretty cool translucent paint job.

The puppet crew consisted of Steve Roswell, Vicki Kite, Graham Binding, Norman Yeend and Warren Beaton.

 

The picture below shows the puppet and miniature shed waiting for action to be called. The shed had to match the one filmed at the live action location.

Here, the puppet is in the middle of destroying the miniature shed.

 

The shed was built on a solid chipboard base with a balsa wood timber structure lightly superglued together.

  

Paul Fardouly (left) rigged up a press so we could stamp out corrugated sheets of aluminium fin stock with the correct scale corrugations. On the right you can see the completed balsa timber framing that has been stained a dark colour. I am in the process of attaching the miniature corrugated sheets to the structure using small dots of superglue and zip kicker. This had to be fragile to break apart easily.

 

Here I am just adding the last corrugated sheets to the front of the shed. The corrugated sheets were pre-painted before attaching to the frame work.

The puppet was also used for flying scenes and had a motorised wing mechanism built into it.

 

In the episode the creature meets a fiery demise so the puppet was rigged up with some pyrotechnic material that was electrically ignited during the shot. You can see the ignition wires running down the side of the puppet.

The pyrotechnic material was ignited and the puppet performed as designed.

Ultraman Towards the Future AKA Ultraman Great part 11

 Martian Landscape

The martian landscape was another set built by Tony Lees.

 

The Martian Lander spacecraft started as another one of my own personal spaceship projects which was donated to the production and completed by David Tremont with the addition of the communications pod and the final paint finish.

\

 

This was my original Lander project in primer before it was modified for the Ultraman production. The engine nozzles were from a Revell 1/72 space shuttle kit. I was inspired by a mushroom shaped ship I saw in a small photo in an issue of Cinefantastique magazine.

 

 

David Tremont on the set with the completed lander- seemingly asleep.

The Goudis puppet in its original form made by the puppet crew Steve Roswell, Vicki Kite, Graham Binding, Norman Yeend and Warren Beaton. It was one of the puppet creatures that eventually got re-made as a man in a suit for a fight sequence with a man in a suit Ultraman.

The cable controlled Ultraman puppet built by Warren Beaton squares off against the puppet Goudis. It was a very hot summer during the shoot and to get the depth of field for the high frame rate shots they needed a lot of light. The sun light was provided by a large Dino light, nine globes in a panel that gave of a massive amount of heat raising the temperature of the sand on the set above 55 degrees celsius (131 farenheit). There were two portable air conditioners running that failed to make any dent in the temperature in the studio. Walking into the studio from the workshop was a real shock to the system.

Goudis and Ultraman with foreground left to right, Jaimie Crooks the First AD, Joanne Parker camera assistant, Paul Nichola Visual Effects supervisor, Steve Roswell and behind him Paul Moyes miniatures unit gaffer. The people in the background I am not sure about.

 

Paul Nichola the Miniature Effects supervisor looking down the eyepiece as Adam Newcombe manipulates the Ultraman puppet.

 

This was the workshop area with the puppet crew occupying the right side corner. Visible in the picture left to right are, actually I'm not sure who that is on the far left, then Vicki Kite, Steve Roswell and Norman Yeend.

 

This was the model makers side of the room. From left to right are David Tremont, Adam Grace and me.

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.