Episode 1 Image Gallery

Here's a selection of photos showing set-ups and lighting in the shots where FE discovers the Redhead in the tree-tops. The tree crotch is hollow and is comprised of a resin skin applied over a cardboard and paper substructure. Despite my efforts at keeping it light-weight, at roughly 4.5 feet tall by 3.5 feet wide, it was bulky and awkward to handle and to stabilize for filming. I've since devised a more manageable alternative for shots like this.

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Jack Pure-Folly. I wanted this character to be large enough to allow for some intricate surface detail and to be able to sustain a convincing close-up. I also wanted to use ball-joints instead of wire for his fingers because I didn't want to deal with replacing broken finger wires in the middle of a shot. These requirements resulted in my building a 17" tall puppet.

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The Redhead, the subject of Jack and FEs field study. A colony of these elephant-sized creatures lives in the tops of the trees, which are actually colossal succulents with huge liquid-filled leaves and soft spongy bark.

This 18" tall model has a cast resin head and a foam latex body, built up directly over the armature and covered with a latex skin. Lionel Orozco's Kong armature provided a basis for the Redhead model. To save time, I decided to reconfigure Lionel's beautiful ape skeleton.

I removed the hands, feet and skull and replaced them with newly made, suitably alien parts, made a new hip girdle in the style of my earlier ribcage for Kong and added a tail and a tie-down point in the upper back. The hands and feet have tie-down holes too, but I figured it might be useful to add another larger one in the back to allow the option of attaching a Manfrotto camera arm for use as a heavy-duty support rig.