Metamorhosis

Many years ago, I worked on a film called Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor, it was a low budget horror film that I worked on for over 2 years doing all the creature designs and was and effects technician throughout the production. This is the first time I finally have the transfer equipment I needed to transfer from my old VHS copy to a digital format so you can see this, it's FAR from the best copy but, it's the best I could do with my setup.

This film involved mostly live action puppets but, near the films' finale there were many shots done in stop motion of the largest creatures in the film due to the fact that there was just no way to get something that large to walk around on its' own on our budget. What resulted was a Harryhausenesque combo of shots that I think worked out rather well.

The large scale puppets and the miniatures were created by the same people so, that resulted in a good blend between the two completely different scales. The large walking creature you will see here (The Spawn) was sculpted by Paul Reilly Jr. and I sculpted the bugged out creature you'll see at the end (Spot 'The Wonder Blob'). I did the painting and finishing work on both puppets. The foam latex castings, armatures and WONDERFUL animation was done by Kent Burton.

In the film, Spot The Wonder Blob grew from a frog sized creature as a mutant until he reached the size the appears as in the end. The original plan was to shoot one of the earlier live action cable controlled puppets in a miniature hallway but, I would have no part of that! There was no budget to build another stop motion puppet so, I volunteered to get it done out of my own pocket. The director (Glenn Takakjian) was happy to take whatever I gave him so the stopmo Spot was born.

This film was shot in the pre-computer era of stop motion so, I hope you'll appreciate the fact that Kent Burton managed to get some stopmo motion blurs into the shots by actually pulling the puppets with monofilament line from off camera while taking long exposures!