Amazing Mechanical "werewolf" Claws & Stilts

More behind the scenes detail of hand and leg extensions for Farscape alien character "Namtar" for episode "DNA mad Scientist".

This was work I did working with Dave and Lou Elsey for Jim Henson's creature shop in Sydney in the 1990s. The character was performed by mold and foam specialist Adrian Getly. I made the body extensions and worked with long time colleague Matt Ward on the head. We made a counter-current flow cool suit for Adrian to wear to keep him cool under all that gear, based on system I developed on the never filmed Smiths "Gobbledok".





This is the never before publicly seen M.E.G. Gobbledok head mechanised by myself and Matt Ward, with skin and sculpt by Paul Katte and Nick Nicolau from M.E.G. It was an all new update based an earlier Gobbledok design by Warren Beaton, so we had to keep the same sort of look but make it slightly more realistic. Even the addition of he teeth was agonised over by the Ad agency. It was never intended to speak but I tried some dialogue just for fun. Take a look at my later Starwars lipsynch on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID2Fkse1bmg for comparison. Comissioned for a Smith's potato chips ad campaign the Chararcter was finished exactly at the time Smiths changed advertising agencies and not even the original advertising agency saw the final results. The character was to be worn by a short stature suit performer and was fitted with a countercurrent heat exchange refrigerating cool-suit to keep Julie comfortable. The head was fitted with video lcd goggles for Julie with a lipstick camera hidden in the forehead to feed video of where she is facing so she could see without external viewports. The expressions were mixed by computer system and able to be recorded and edited for playback. Greg designed the control system, based on a "mediamation system", later evolving into the mobile "gilderfluke" based editing/playback system used for Star Wars Ep III