Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here. This isn’t exactly news, but it sure is cool. All the explanation you need lies in the letter below:
Hi, Harry Knowles: By way of introduction, I'm a movie character designer and concept sculptor with over thirty years experience in various fields, like museum exhibits, toys, action figures, garage kits, puppets, creature costumes, props and miniatures and have worked in both TV and feature films. I've been involved in designing and creating characters for Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, The Dark Crystal, Return of the Jedi, Gremlins, Howard the Duck, Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and more recently, I was hired by Doug Chiang to design Grendel and the Dragon for the Zemeckis version of Beowulf. I'm now working on the current Zemeckis project for Disney, but I can't discuss any details due to the usual NDA restrictions. Anyway, during a hiatus on the Beowulf project, I finally managed to finish a short stop-motion test film, inspired by a sequence in the original '33 King Kong. It was really a proof-of-concept project, since I opted to use digital, rather than film equipment, to record and combine the various elements comprising each shot. My sequence is loosely based on the scene where Kong props Ann in the crotch of a dead tree, then heads back to the ravine to deal with the sailors following him. My version begins with Ann waking on top of a ceremonial statue in a jungle clearing and then being menaced by a flock of pterodactyls. By contemporary standards, it's definitely an old-world approach, but I've always loved the O'Brien/Harryhausen stop-motion visual style enough to try to emulate it, but do so using DV equipment. The clip can be viewed at my site. Click on the Animation heading for viewing options; I've received a lot of positive reaction to it so far, including a "very well done" response from Ray, and I thought you might find it interesting too, since I get the impression you're also a big Kong fan. All the best. Tony McVey
