That is looking fantastic! Here's a couple of reference photos if you haven't seen them already.
Look forward to it! Last year I managed to buy a resin skull casting from the Bob Burns Kong armature. It's only till you see it in person, you realise how big the models actually were. Must have been quite cumbersome to animate with back in 1933. Same with the 'Joe Young' models, pretty big for animation puppets.
You're right. Director Merian C. Cooper decided Kong should look bigger in the city scenes, so they constructed a new armature for those scenes. The jungle and city "sets" built for the stop motion animation were the same scale, but the armatures in the island scenes were 18" tall and the armature in the city scenes was 24" tall. Since Kong's exact height is never mentioned in the movie, Cooper thought a larger Kong in the familiar surroundings of New York would be more imposing and threatening.Yes, it's hard to say how big he is, looks bigger in NY than on the island..I think that's just for effect...
You're right. Director Merian C. Cooper decided Kong should look bigger in the city scenes, so they constructed a new armature for those scenes. The jungle and city "sets" built for the stop motion animation were the same scale, but the armatures in the island scenes were 18" tall and the armature in the city scenes was 24" tall. Since Kong's exact height is never mentioned in the movie, Cooper thought a larger Kong in the familiar surroundings of New York would be more imposing and threatening.
As far as I know no one has found a 24" Kong armature connected to the movie, so until that happens I don't know if there's another way to verify the story beyond what's been reported through the years. This is nothing more than pure speculation but, assuming they did film the jungle scenes first, Mr. Cooper may have viewed the footage, decided Kong should look larger in the New York scenes, and a larger armature was hastily and cheaply created--so cheaply that it didn't survive after filming was completed. Or perhaps it was intentionally destroyed in order to preserve the "secret".I've heard this before, and I'm pretty skeptical about it. To me, I think it would have made more sense just to use an existing Kong puppet and make the New York miniatures in a smaller scale so Kong looks bigger, especially since the New York animation scenes seem to have been filmed after the jungle scenes. We also have no physical evidence of the supposed 24" tall puppet, only the other two armatures. So I think it's possible they made Kong look bigger in the NY scenes, but I don't think they made a bigger Kong. I could be wrong though, and there might be a third armature out there.
As far as I know no one has found a 24" Kong armature connected to the movie, so until that happens I don't know if there's another way to verify the story beyond what's been reported through the years. This is nothing more than pure speculation but, assuming they did film the jungle scenes first, Mr. Cooper may have viewed the footage, decided Kong should look larger in the New York scenes, and a larger armature was hastily and cheaply created--so cheaply that it didn't survive after filming was completed. Or perhaps it was intentionally destroyed in order to preserve the "secret".
Regardless, even though the visual effects surely look "dated" to modern audiences, every time I watch the movie I'm more and more impressed by how well done they are for a movie made in the early 1930s.
If you want to continue the authenticity, use a rabbit pelt. That's what Delgado used on the original Kong's. He also applied it to Kong in sections. You can see the seams in Kong, which has become part of "him".
The late stopmotion animator Dave Allen has built a few Kongs true to Delgados methods and he too applied the fur in sections. I even read that he can't imagine Kong without "seams".
There was no armature taller than 19". I've been a Kong fanatic for 50 years. I've studied everything about Kong and the armature and I can say that with absolute certainty.