Studio Scale 1933 King Kong Stop Motion Puppet Replica

Finally ready for plaster, he looks shiny because of the coating of crystal clear I gave him which makes it a bit difficult to see all the detail in the pecs and face. There's still some minor adjusting to do to him but I can do that after he's cast in silicone.
 
Wow, nice detail - watching this one carefully. I just ordered the King Kong Blu-Ray released on Tuesday and I think Willis O'Brien would be smiling.
 
Here's the finished mold!! I'm sorry, but I completely forgot to take pics of the final sculpt. I did quite a bit more tweaking since the last pics and when I finally got it to where I wanted it I was in such a hurry to get it in plaster that by the time I had the first couple of splash coats on it I realized too late that I hadn't taken any pics...... so you guys will have to bear with me and wait until I get the first casting, which I plan to have by the middle of next week.
 
Just been cleaning up and tweaking the armature and test fitting it in the mold. Since I had to drastically alter the armature from before, the only thing left to do now is to change the hands (make them bigger to fit the sculpture) which my armature guy is working on now. I'm going to go ahead and cast him up before the new hands are done and then make separate hand molds from the cast hands and then cast the new hands from these individual molds and attach them to Kong later (I did the same thing with the Tauntaun puppets). This will of course only be done for this prototype (since I'm impatient and don't want to wait for the new hand armatures for this first casting), and the Kong armatures that follow will of course have the proper hands already made and ready for casting altogether.

Now I just need to wrap the armature in sheet foam so as to take up the majority of space inside the mold so the puppet will be lighter and easier to move........ since he's so friggin big!

More progress pics to follow soon........ stay tuned
 
That's a great update! He's really coming together. Good idea to make a foam filled silicone puppet for weight/mobility... that's my only complaint about the tauntaun.

Why not pour the skin separately, the slip it over the armature and foam fill it? I have always assumed that's how stopmo puppets were made.

Mikw
 
Well Mike, we learn how to improve with each new project, and yes I wish I had done this foam wrapping with the Tauntauns too, but we'll see how this works with Kong since this is all still experimental with me. Well, here he is, all wrapped up and ready for casting, for this first prototype one I'm just going to try wiring the lips (also ready to go here) to see what kind of mouth expressions I can get....... this is also experimental for me
 
Looks great mate, your experiments are better than most peoples final results Jim. Cant wait to see how this turns out.

Tried calling last week, Its been too too long mate. I'm slowly getting my life back after a very hectic summer, its about time we caught up.

When you hoping to have the skin on this baby?

I just got the new Empire making of book, old George is a sneaky bast@*±O, it seems anything thats current here on the boards has got new ref material in the book but only the smallest pics you could imagine. There is a few new Taun pics but really small.

Back to KONG
 
Threw a little color on the gums and teeth, it looks a bit brighter in these pics, much better to the eye. Will have the first finished cast tomorrow!!!!!! Cross your fingers (and toes)
 
Well, here it is, my first casting! After popping in some quickly made eyeballs he really is starting to come to life!! The next step now is to make the separate hand molds and I have a few minor armature adjustments that are being handled by my armature guy. The foam sheet wrapping method worked really well for easier movement of the limbs, but since Kong is such a big boy he still weighs quite a bit. For this prototype casting I'm having beefier ankle joints made to help support his weight, but I'm also going to experiment with some "foam silicone" that I discovered for the next cast. I'm probably going to wind up using a combo of both types of silicone for the future runs, we'll see how the foam silicone works..... I think it will really help decrease the weight but for now the beefier ankle joints will handle this big guy just fine. The gap in the neck is from cutting out the silicone to free up movement, the gap will be filled with polyfoam when I'm ready to apply the fur, I'm also going to cut gaps in the shoulders to free up more movement as well. It's all now just a matter of finessing and fine tuning to finish bringing the big guy to life. I'll take some more close-up pics of the face and chest later today so you can see the detail a little better, I know it's hard in these pics with him being tinted black but the next batch of pics will show the detail much better
 
Ok, here are some better, more detailed pics..... I was able to get the lighting a little bit better. Bear with me, there are a lot here but I wanted to cover as many different angles as possible so you can see most of the detail since it's harder to see it with him being black and this camera being so cheap! Here goes...
 
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