8thWonderStudio
New Member
For the last several months, I have been involved in a project in which we are recreating a limited number of the 16” hero Mighty Joe Young stop-motion armatures. These incredible armatures have been precision CNC machined using exact blueprints from an original 16” Joe armature…..we even kept all the original materials the same. I have been designing and building professional armatures and sculpting for over 20 years. I have become so impressed by the sheer brilliance of this original design that it has motivated me to go one step further and create a complete animation puppet based on one of these armatures. Joe has always been my favorite stop-motion “actor”, perhaps because I saw him when I was very young (even before I saw Kong) and I’ve always wanted to animate a similar character.
I will be using the “buildup” technique of model construction (as opposed to casting a foam sculpture over the armature) in the hopes of capturing some of the magic that the original artists, O’Brien, Delgado, and Harryhausen, created over 60 years ago. There is very little reference for this process, but some of the surviving unskinned pictures of Delgado’s work are inspiring indeed. He created muscles that stretched and flexed, and although such a sophisticated design was ultimately not used for the final puppets (perhaps due to time constraints), I think he was on the right track.
I sculpted a 16” MJY garage kit several years ago (picture shown below) and although I was very happy with the body, I never thought I captured Joe’s facial character correctly. An original Joe Young skull, sculpted by Marcel himself and cast for these new armatures, has helped me figure out where I went wrong with my first Joe sculpture: the head was too big and wide. Not by much, but just enough to where it wasn’t really “Joe.” I’ll be redoing the GK sculpture as well as creating a full-blown animation puppet.
I’ll periodically post updates and in progress shots of the puppet as it progresses. I can’t wait to animate this guy. Below is a couple of pictures of the completed armature. The rib cage is a new design (the only element that is not original) and is completely removable.
I will be using the “buildup” technique of model construction (as opposed to casting a foam sculpture over the armature) in the hopes of capturing some of the magic that the original artists, O’Brien, Delgado, and Harryhausen, created over 60 years ago. There is very little reference for this process, but some of the surviving unskinned pictures of Delgado’s work are inspiring indeed. He created muscles that stretched and flexed, and although such a sophisticated design was ultimately not used for the final puppets (perhaps due to time constraints), I think he was on the right track.
I sculpted a 16” MJY garage kit several years ago (picture shown below) and although I was very happy with the body, I never thought I captured Joe’s facial character correctly. An original Joe Young skull, sculpted by Marcel himself and cast for these new armatures, has helped me figure out where I went wrong with my first Joe sculpture: the head was too big and wide. Not by much, but just enough to where it wasn’t really “Joe.” I’ll be redoing the GK sculpture as well as creating a full-blown animation puppet.
I’ll periodically post updates and in progress shots of the puppet as it progresses. I can’t wait to animate this guy. Below is a couple of pictures of the completed armature. The rib cage is a new design (the only element that is not original) and is completely removable.
