Studio Scale 1933 King Kong Stop Motion Puppet Replica

I just visited your thread over at the Stopmo Forum and am totally blown away! Please start a thread of your progress here. Your Mighty Joe Young is a thing of beauty!

Nick

I will definitely do so. Right now I'm experimenting with muscle contraction, stretching, different densities of foam, etc. There's no blueprint for what Marcel Delgado did with his puppets (as there is with the armature), so it's purely guess work and experimentation at this point. I've attached a couple of photos of Marcel's Joe musculature. It looks amazing.....I wish there was some better reference available. At any rate, this is the level of sophistication I'm going for.

BTW, there was a seventh Joe puppet....a large half-body ape built from the waist up only. As far as I know, it was never actually used in the film. There is picture of it below. It can be seen in the background of an I Love Lucy promotional episode, along with a 16" Joe puppet that Desi picks up while holding a lit cigarette. He mistakenly refers to it as Kong.
 
It can be seen in the background of an I Love Lucy promotional episode, along with a 16" Joe puppet that Desi picks up while holding a lit cigarette. He mistakenly refers to it as Kong.
Interesting. I think it's The Making of Star Trek that mentions an old trap door being opened on one of the soundstages, and "King Kong models" were found. (Desilu was the old RKO studio.)

But I Love Lucy was filmed a decade before at another studio. Makes one wonder, though, if this trap door legend has been mixed up in the retelling, and perhaps has something to do with this Joe puppet.
 
Well, I'm making these as display pieces only, If I was making these to be used for animation I wouldn't be using silicone, I'd use foam latex simply for it's extreme light weight. Now if anyone wants one of these for animation purposes then I would be more than happy to accommodate them!!

Will it still be posable with the silicone?
 
Yes it is fully posable with the silicone, foam latex is much lighter and far less dense than silicone (since it is whipped during the mixing process) but it will also deteriorate with time
 
A friend of mine is the lead mold maker at Laika Studio ("Coraline") and they are currently in production of three stop-motion features. He told me that there are several new silicones that are much more like foam latex, softer and lighter, that they are using for some of their puppets. I don't know much more about it than that, but it might be something worth looking into.
 
Yeah I've already looked into some of the foamed silicones that are available and will be sampling some of those very soon, Smooth On makes some that I'm going to try. For now though I'm going to stick with what I'm familiar with and what I've had success with, but I'm definitely looking forward to some R&D time with those foam silicones.
Hey man, how cool is this that there are 2 threads on the RPF dealing with recreating 2 of motion pictures greatest apes!!
 
Just caught up with this thread and all I can say is, :eek ***** PALMINO!!!:eek

Absolutely beautiful work!
 
Hey man, how cool is this that there are 2 threads on the RPF dealing with recreating 2 of motion pictures greatest apes!!

Cool indeed! I think that with advent of 3D, stop-motion is coming back in a big way. Laika Entertainment has three stop-motion features in production, and Henry Selleck has signed with Pixar to direct several films. It all started with Kong and Joe, so our timing is appropriate. I'm having a custom 3D camera rig built for the animation. I think Joe's flying tackle of the horse and battle with the lions would have been pretty amazing in 3D. I'm got some fun ideas of my own for Joe once I get him in front of the camera.
 
Interesting. I think it's The Making of Star Trek that mentions an old trap door being opened on one of the soundstages, and "King Kong models" were found. (Desilu was the old RKO studio.)

But I Love Lucy was filmed a decade before at another studio. Makes one wonder, though, if this trap door legend has been mixed up in the retelling, and perhaps has something to do with this Joe puppet.

I had heard something similar. I think Forry Ackerman originally told me the story. It's funny that most of the Kong models just happened to end up at Forry's house. Of course, now they're at Peter Jackson's house. Forry only had a Joe puppet at his house for a short time, though....I actually saw it there in the late 70's. This the puppet that was owned by Leslie Halliwell and was on display at the Museum of the Moving Image in London. Not sure where that puppet is now.....supposedly in storage while they redo the museum.
 
Yeah I've already looked into some of the foamed silicones that are available and will be sampling some of those very soon, Smooth On makes some that I'm going to try. For now though I'm going to stick with what I'm familiar with and what I've had success with, but I'm definitely looking forward to some R&D time with those foam silicones.
Hey man, how cool is this that there are 2 threads on the RPF dealing with recreating 2 of motion pictures greatest apes!!

Can't wait to get my silicone copy. :rolleyes And can't wait to see how the foamed silicone turns out.
 
Just a quick update, fur work in progress continues (what's already on there still needs trimming, patching and finessing), put new completed hand on and ears.... more to follow very soon!!
 
I don't think that's a Kong. I think that's a Young. If you don't know what I mean, I mean I think that's Joe Young from Mighty Joe Young (1949)

Those are the original two Kong puppets, which did look different. The one on the left is the long faced Kong, used in the demo reel (Allosaurus fight). It was bit taller than the round faced Kong puppet on the right. The armature for the one on the left sold at Christie's auction several months ago for about $200K to Peter Jackson. Bob Burns still has the other armature in his possession, but the word is that it will eventually go to Jackson as well, who owns most of the remaining Kong models already.
 
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