Taking a break: Portal Tentacles - Angel Season 4

As mentioned on Monday I am taking a little break on the blog since I am a little overwhelmed elsewhere. In my absence, here is some stuff I have never shared from my days in the Makeup FX industry! Today I have for you the Portal Tentacles from Angel season 4.

For this monster of the week I was the lead on the design, (if I remember correctly) did some of the shop tech, went to set with it to help out, and did some of the puppeteering. All the other aspects of production... sculpting, painting, casting, and rigging were all handled by the other skilled artists at Almost Human back in 2002.

Enough talk, here is the Portal Tentacles...

Angel season 4, episode 5... most likely NOT remembered for the digital tentacles coming out of portal. Must be a really angry Grell back there... OH, did I say that out loud?

My crappy crappy crappy design.

I finally get to design tentacles professionally and this is all I come up with... SO SAD.

Things to know:

1 - I was made to add the photo of the actress by my boss... because REASONS.

2 - My signature was HUGE when I opened this file and just now shrunk it out of embarisment.

3 - LENS FLARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Another thing to know... a VERY HEAVILY Photoshopped version of my design actually appears briefly in the episode as an book interior illustration of the tentacles. Looks better here...

While most of the tentacles ended up digital... we did make several practical tentacles... some have armature wire and could be posed, one was a cable puppet, and one was designed to be cut in half.

Digital tentacles attack! RAWR! The close ups and where the actors are directly interacting with the tentacles are our work.

Ever wonder what it would be like to work on TV and movies with monsters? It is a whole lot of this... A WHOLE LOT of sitting and waiting.

And the most horrifying image I came across when digging these images out... oh look, it is a younger version of me that happens to be blonde and at least 75 pound heavier... maybe more. That tentacle hanging off there is now helping... and I am not even going to start on that hat and goggles... RAWR!

That is all for another exciting week on the blog, see you hopefully back here on Monday! Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com