Babylon 5: The Gathering

You may think you recognize this image from the cover of the National Inquirer. Or maybe you think you saw it as a grainy 8mm film recovered from a lost Area 51 scouting party. Or perhaps you just dismiss it as a snapshot of Big Foot’s bald cousin. The reality is, believe it or not, it’s none of those things! This photo is actually me, on my one day off, during the making of the original pilot for the WB sci-fi series BABYLON 5.

In my previous blog entry, I mentioned that my last production, “How to Make Love to a Woman”, screened at the Los Angeles United Film Festival. Thank you to all who attended! We had a great audience, and it was an awesome festival. Last weekend I went to the closing night’s ceremony, where they screened “The Shark is Still Working”, a documentary on the making of Jaws. Seeing all the hardship that Spielberg and crew went through to make that amazing film inspired me to do the second entry on Labou. I could never compare my film to the majesty that is JAWS, but I can say that my little green guy will give Steven’s mechanical shark a run for his money in terms of being plagued with problems!

So why is this entry not entitled “LABOU BLOG PART 2”? Well, that would be because after the screening, I ran into an old friend, Joe Fordham. I hadn’t actually seen Joe in probably 15 years or more. But I have seen a lot of his work, as I am sure many of you have, in the pages of CINEFEX. Still the best behind the scenes magazine out there. Joe has been writing articles for them for years, and his knowledge of the filmmaking process and the art of effects warranted him an appearance in the Jaws documentary sighting the still present influence of Steven’s masterpiece on audiences and filmmakers alike.

We exchanged emails, having not been in touch for years, and within a few days, Joe forwarded me a link to the past, one I would like to share with you below:

Seeing this really brought back some memories! It was so long ago. To be honest, I don’t think I had ever seen the end result of our day out in Vasquez Rocks until I received this link!

As Joe explains in the video, the concept was that there would be monitors all around the B5 space station (and by monitors I mean heavy-ass tube televisions mounted behind holes cut in the set walls to simulate the flat screens of the future. Kind of like the LCD I am typing on now. Hello, future!) and the monitors would constantly be playing newsreels, product commercials and station updates. Sounds like a good plan. But even after all the monitors were installed in the central hub set, and all the VCRs (Yeah, VCRs. Ask you parents) were synced to 24P, no one scheduled filming any of the content. I’m not really sure how the producers came to this conclusion, but it was decided that my creature FX team would join up with Ron Thornton’s VFX team and head out to the desert to film hours worth of content on our one and only free day of the entire 3 month filming process!

So there I am, fully made up as an alien. Rob Sherwood did the application. I was wearing an old “space suit” left over from ROBOJOX or some such 80’s Empire film. Snow boots and winter gloves. In the desert. In August. Did I mention full head prosthetic, snow boots, gloves and padded jumpsuit in the middle of the hottest August in California history? Now that’s how you spend your day off! And to make it even more interesting, I was wearing full scleral contact lenses that I could barely see out off. And there’s my buddy Joe, in a Next Gen uniform, asking, “Can you see that really treacherous rocky peak up there?” Me: “No, I can’t see anything!” Joe: “Okay, go climb up on I and run around!” And I still live to tell the tale!

The on-the-scene reporter was played by Edwin Rosell. Edwin and I would later go on to create the Image comic “BLUE”, with Jason Johnson and Drew Struzan. But that future was not even a thought in his head while standing in front of the famous landscape where Captain Kirk fought the Gorn so many years ago. Edwin toughed out a few hours of shooting in that polyfoam suit and fish head sculpted by Aso Gotto.

Why a few hours shooting if the clip was only 2 minutes long, you ask? Well, for one thing, it always takes longer to film something than you would think. Every action has to be filmed several times to get the perfect one, and lots of little changes are made between each take. But in this case, it was mostly because we filmed other clips, too. We did a few more bits in the desert, then we drove to Foundation Imaging in Valencia to do some of the product commercials on stage. I’m not really sure where any of that footage is, but hopefully it will turn up one day, just as Joe so kindly brought this clip to my attention.

This photo is one of the few I have from that day, as we were all to busy to be taking pictures. But it is from one of my favorite gags: Sherwood and I puppeteered this alien as it brushed its teeth with a 3 pronged toothbrush attached to a cordless drill. We kept it going until its mouth got so sudsy you couldn’t even see its face! I don’t think any of the commercials they had us do ever got used in the show.

The same can be said for so many of the 60-some-odd aliens we created for “The Gathering”. Many of them were puppets, since JMS was adamant about the “Not Star Trek” clause, which stated that not all beings in the universe resembled human form. As ground breaking as Ron’s Foundation Imaging CGI was, the Amiga Video Toasters did not have the capability to create convincing living organisms yet. The show runners wanted aliens that were obviously not people in makeup or suits. So we took what little budget we had and made some crazy alien puppets. This photo shows a handful of them in our make-up trailer at Santa Clarita Studios. That’s Edwin working lower center. But my favorite part of this pic is Criswell, to the left, talking on the MASSIVE cell phone. That thing weight like 10 pounds, and probably cost $20 a minute! Cool t-shirt, though…

Years before we had access to “cellular phone” tech, Criz and I started doing concept designs to help JMS sell the show to a network. It was a very different show then. For one thing, Delenn was a MAN! He was supposed to be a mystic from a peaceful race, with giant black eyes and an elongated body. We were going to do a mechanized makeup, with the actor looking through vacuum formed lenses and servo controlled eyelids. It was going to require someone who was fully prepared to deal with such a contraption glued to his face all day. At some point early on, I was volunteered! So for the early stages of B5, I was destined to be a Minbari ambassador. This was one of the first maquettes I did with that in mind. I still have it in storage somewhere…

As we got closer to actually making the pilot, JMS decided he wanted Delenn to have a major story arc. Physically as well as character wise. HE would become a SHE! Suddenly the execs became uncomfortable with a guy playing a character that ultimately would be a woman. They felt it should be the other way around. So over the span of one short phone call to my giant wireless brick, I was no longer a mystical alien lead in a revolutionary sci-fi drama.

Trust me, in the end, that was a good thing for both me and YOU! I am NOT an actor! I was just young and eager, and somehow everyone felt my ability to endure the torture of servos buzzing around my head all day to equal the ability to deliver a captivating performance. Luckily, within the scramble to change the direction of the character, WB brought in a pro: Mira Furlan. Mira was a famous theatre actor from Yugoslavia, and she came over to do her first American production. I think I ended up doing her head cast just hours after she arrived in the country! She looked at the maquettes and sketches, and was shocked to find that she would be wearing so much make-up! This freaked the producers out, and they instantly retracted their approval on the mechanical eyes. So the designing process started all over again, just weeks from the beginning of principal photography!

Some of you may recognize Mira from her most recent sci-fi series,LOST. She was a French scientist on that show, which was probably much more to her satisfaction than full head prosthetics!

Drawings were done. Color tests approved. Very expensive full sclera black contacts were custom made. The make-up “tests” were scheduled for 5am the first day of shooting. Sherwood helmed G’Kar in the creature trailer, and I handled Delenn in the make-up trailer. Over the course of the next two hours, Babylon 5 was changed forever.

And I’m not making that as a statement to show how I feel our work cemented itself into sci-fi history. I wish I could be so proud of that test. I actually mean that B5 was literally changed. The suits from WB made an appearance to see what was actually going to be filmed, and suddenly realized that they had committed to a sci-fi show! They were appalled at the fact that the aliens really looked…well…alien! They panicked. This photo is what Delenn looked like at 6:30am on the first day of application. Just like the drawings, just like the approved color tests. I was going for an underwater feel. Years later, Jim Henson productions would use a very similar paint scheme on a fan favorite series called FARSCAPE, but for the bigwigs at WB, my design was “To alien”. That’s an exact quote. I know, I STILL don ‘t understand it, either. Then they said, “Make him more human, flesh color.” Two very important things evolved from that statement. The first was that I ended up having to surrender weeks of design to a makeup sponge full of Patricia Tallman’s foundation, covering up as much of my blue paint job as possible and still getting Mira to set on time.

But it was the second result of that statement that really changed things. Mira suddenly shot up and said,” HIM!?! Did you say make HIM more human?” For the first time, Mira discovered that Delenn was supposed to be a man. I guess all of the descriptions in the script stated “frail alien” and “wise mystic”, but never really called out a sex. The gender change was something JMS was going to keep secret till the series needed the curve, but I guess it was kept TOO secret!

So as I’m trying to sponge BK-5 tone all over her head, Mira is having furious words with the executives, getting angrier as she learns more and more of the plan for her character, such as the fact that she was going to be overdubbed with a man’s voice! Needless to say, by the time I got to the last step, putting in the large black contacts, Mira wasn’t having it. She could not believe that the production would fly her all the way to America, completely cover her face in an androgynous make-up, give her a male voice, and hide her eyes behind black lenses. We were asked to leave the trailer, and when they let us back in, Delenn was to be a flesh colored female alien with eyes that looked like Mira Furlan’s!

I have to give her credit, there are very few actors that can take a stand like that and have so much be changed to accommodate their view of the character! True fans of the show will recognize Mira’s continuous push to have Delenn be more human, as with each passing season, there was less make up, more hair, and my alien antler design merely became a tiara!

I didn’t get completely left out in the Minbari cold, though! There were several test make-ups done on me when I was still the contender for Delenn, and I guess I proved myself worthy enough to land the role of the Minbari assassin, of whom the entire pilot plot revolves around. Which lead to a whopping one line! But I got my trading card out of it, and lots of good stories, so I can’t complain. And there are some good stories! But they might be too gossipy for my art blog. Ask me at a convention some time!

Of course, just because I got to be an actor for a day didn’t mean I was allowed to shun my FX duties. I still had to spend 8 hours painting the G’Kar appliance, and a few more prepping the next day’s Delenn. If you are curious as to why I am still painting him, er, her, blue, it’s because MJS and I decided we couldn’t completely bail on the alien factor. So pay close attention next time you watch “Babylon 5: The Gathering”. Delenn has pale undertones of blue under her fleshy skin, getting subtly brighter as they reach her antlers.

The assassin wasn’t my only on-screen appearance for B5. I also played the assassin’s first victim! How’s that for a mind bender. Again, not sure who made this decision, but it came to be that instead of us making a dummy for the dead body found in a fish tank, I would be a dummy! I had a pruned face make up, and my lame long hair was pinned up to make me look more like the actor I was doubling. Then I had to squeeze through the small openings in the top of a saltwater fish tank and hold my breath as the 1^st AD held me under. The water was freezing, and the fish wouldn’t go near me. But somehow I ended up making more money for that hour of work than I did for the entire rest of the show combined! Plus, for no real reason I can pinpoint, I got to keep the giant fish tank at the end of the show! It’s still in my house to this day…

The assassin was on B5 to eliminate Ambassador Kosh and cause another great war. I love all of the B5 aliens we created, but I think Kosh will always be my favorite.

One of these days I will do a step by step on how I created the Vorlon, along with my buddy Ron Mendell. This photo shows my WED clay sculpture of the collar, with the Bondo original of the helmet. Sadly, the finished Kosh no longer exists. But the original hard casts are tucked safely away, so fans may get a chance to see him again someday!

I have endless hours of stories to tell about making Babylon 5, and so many center around my dear friend Andreas Katsulas. He brought so much life to G’Kar, and he is missed dearly. I will definitely take the time to talk about him and our adventures on board the B5 in the near future…

I would love to get some questions about the show from fans, so ask below and I will tell you what I can about this sci-fi milestone! And thanks, Joe, for bringing back some great memories!

Eric’s Halloween Make-up

Hey, everyone! Once again, as usual, I am working on a secret project that keeps me from blogging about my current work. The good news is that it is the coolest secret project I have worked on in a while, so when I can blog about it in a few weeks, I think everyone will find it very exciting. But I did want to make an entry, so in honor of Eric McNeely’s birthday, I thought I would show you how I made the Fallbrooke front man’s Halloween costume!

Anyone who knows me knows that I usually hide on Halloween, mostly to avoid the tons of requests to do make-ups and costumes as favors! Its not that I don’t love doing it, or want to make my friends happy, its just one of those "all or nothing" type situations, and it’s hard to make costumes for everybody and still maintain the work flow. But Eric was so excited about the make-up process when we were doing the “Take Me Under” zombie girls, I figured one make-up for a huge horror buff wouldn’t kill me. Unfortunately, my schedule got crunched, and I had to wait till the week OF Halloween to do it. So, once again, here are some tips on doing a 24-hour make up…

Photo 01: Here’s Eric as he usually looks, loving every second of being attacked by a zombie during the video filming. Take a good look, ladies…this will be the last time you see him like this during this blog!


Photo 2: Told you! I would imagine that you will never see Eric on stage with a plastic bag on his head! But that’s what happens here at the BarnYard! Eric is prepped for a face cast. I will be using dental alginate and plaster bandage to make a negative of his face.

Photo 3: Here he is fully under the cast. The alginate is soft and flexible, so the plaster bandage helps it keep its shape so it will produce an accurate positive of Eric’s face. Note the nostrils remain open the entire time. What’s it like being under there? Well, I’ll let Eric blog about that himself…

Photo 4: Here’s the plaster positive I pulled from the alginate face cast. The dark areas are retaining moisture, and the whole thing needs to be baked in an oven for an hour or so to make the clay stick better.

Photo 4a: Before I add clay, I dremeled out negative “keys” in the eyes. These will help the mold register better, especially since I don’t have the time to build a flange like I did in the Zombie School steps. It’s a good idea to do this first, because you risk ruining your sculpture going in with heavy tools after it’s done!

Photo 5: I’m designing as I go, so I just started with a base of clay on the obvious areas.

Photo 6: I usually wonder around my shop and look at old sculpts, magazines, and life casts for inspiration when I am designing. In this case, Peter Cushing, of Hammer films and Star Wars fame, struck me as a cool starting point. His stark features are the perfect base for transforming a rock star into a horrific vision.

Photo 7: You can see in this photo how I started drafting features from the life cast into the sculpt.

Photo 8: An hour or so into the process, I felt like I had good structure to continue on. I started marking out where some of the details would go, but before getting to far into it…

Photo 9: I raked the whole surface to even out the overly hand-worked surfaces. Create rhythms and patterns with the rake to help match contours on both sides of the face.

Photo 10: After you feel like your surfaces all match, you can smooth down the rake marks with a soft sponge. Then begin the detail work. I carve in wrinkle patterns with a wax spatula, starting with following the flow of the features, then doing a second pass going against the flow for contrast.

Photo 11: To accent some of the heavier wrinkles, like around the eyes and on the brow, I roll small clay lumps and push them into the wrinkle pattern. Blend in the edges with the wax spatula, then brush them down with alcohol and a stiff brush.

Photo 12: I started as a painter, so I do a lot of brush work in my sculpting. I use the sculpting tools to create the forms and rough in the details, but most of the finished work is done with several brushes, ranging in shape and rigidness. Obviously, the final pass is with smaller, soft brushes to eliminate brush strokes. And avoid using TOO much alcohol, as it will make the clay mushy and hard to work with.

Photo 13: I captured Eric’s ears pretty well in the cast, so it seemed like a good idea at the time to sculpt up some quick, puffy, bruised ears. I decided along the way that this face would be stretched and stitched together with heavy twine, so meaty ears that I could sew through will help complete the look.

Photo 14: Can you still see Eric in there? The finished sculpt. Just in time for lunch!

Photo 15: The next step was to create a “cutting edge”, which entails putting clay over exposed plaster surfaces of the face cast, giving the extra foam and air someplace to escape when the foam latex is run later. I also threw up a clay wall to make the molding easier, kind of the equivalent of the kiddy rails in a bowling alley!

Photo 16: When mixing plaster, it’s recommended to allow the powdered gypsum to soak in the water, rather than mix it in straight away. This is called the “dried river bed” technique.

Photo 17: Mix the first batch of plaster to be the consistency of cake batter, then coat the whole sculpture. I usually splash it on, forcing out the air without physically rubbing the surface and risking damage. The sculpture is finished, but the clay is still pliable.

Photo 18: To strengthen the mold, use hemp soaked in plaster. I buy it in bails, which seems to add to the whole “BarnYard” thing!

Photo 19: Pull clumps of hemp and roll it into “bird’s nest”. Soak these in the plaster and apply them over the splash coat, overlapping them so there are no weak spots. This step is all in the timing. If you put the hemp on too soon, it will press through the soft splash coat and show up in the surface of your mold. But, if you wait too long, the splash coat will cure and chances are it won’t bond to the hemp coat, ultimately chipping out and ruining your negative! So make sure that your splash coat is firm, but still wet when you get to the hemp!

Photo 20: You can put several layers of hemp, but try to keep the overall thickness of the mold to about 1 inch. It helps keep temperature consistency in the foam baking process, which will result in better foam. I usually cheat a little on this rule and build up the top to create a flat surface, which makes running the foam easier since the mold won’t flail about when its turned over.

Photo 21: Here is the mold cracked open. Most of the clay peeled out in the process, but it’s important to scrub the remaining clay from the negative and positive before running the foam. Use alcohol and a toothbrush, or Popsicle sticks snapped in half long ways to dig deep clay out. Avoid using metal tools like the wax spatula, as they will cut into the plaster and add texture you don’t want!

Photo 22: Here is the cleaned mold. It looks freaky already, even in reverse!

Photo 23: So I ran the mold up to Valencia, and the magical Mark baked it out and nailed the first foam run, as always! He delivered it in the morning, giving me enough time to paint it and still have a lunch date! Thanks, Mark!

Photo 24: I wanted this creature to look more bruised than dead, so I started with a bright red rubber cement paint mix in the shadow areas.

Photo 25: I followed this with purple, darkening the deep shadows, but still letting a lot of the red poke through.

Photo 26: Ah, my old stand-by technique: Ringlets! I always tell myself I will try something new, but this approach is really fast, and has never failed me. I used the same purple shadow to airbrush rings, layering the paint to be a little more opaque.

Photo 27: You can cover as much or as little of the piece as you want with rings. I did the whole thing, making them smaller and tighter in the shadow areas, and widening in the fleshy areas. Right now you probably think this looks pretty ridiculous! Its important to remember that rubber cement is a translucent painting medium, so you have to be thinking about the next layers as you paint the current ones. I went pretty full on with the rings, because the next few layers will reduce their intensity, and I want them to continue to read. It’s a basic pattern, but it will end up reading like veins and capillaries.

Photo 28: The next step was to make a translucent flesh tone. When mixing rubber cement paint, start with a small amount of the cement, and add a few drops of painter’s tint. The more tint, the more intense the color. Mix it thoroughly, then cut it with Bestine rubber cement thinner. The more thinner you use, the more translucent the paint will be. By using different amounts of tint and thinner, you can create a wide range of intensities. I use rubber cement because it offers translucency like no other flexible paint, so keep that in mind for layering. If you want to go with straight opaques, it might be better to use PAX paint. (See Zombie School!)

I applied a few layers of the flesh, and you can see how drastically it changed the ringlets! But now he looks a little too lively!

Photo 29: To make him more sickly looking, I layered in a very thin green over the shadow areas. It allowed the reds and purples to stay visible, but cut down on the warmth is a few areas.

Photo 30: Finally, I accented the inner eyelids, and some of the scars and shadows. I am also planning on doing a bunch of modeling with rubber mask grease paint once the appliance is glued to Eric’s face, so this paint is really just serving as a base.

Photo 31: Don’t forget to powder! The paint is still rubber cement, so it will stay adhesive until a layer of baby powder is applied to it. Keep this in mind when painting, also. Touching or folding the foam while you are working on it will cause the cement to bind to itself, and that never ends well!

Photo 32: Now that it is not sticky, I poked some holes in the foam and threaded some hemp twine through the stitched areas. Anything that can be done once its glued down I will do later, but I didn’t want to be poking around Eric’s face with a needle if I don't have too!

Photo 33: Happy Halloween! Oh, wait. That was weeks ago…Well, it was Halloween when this photo was taken. We started about 6ish, so Eric could be ready for the party circuit. It took about an hour to apply the whole thing.

Photo 34: I made some quick teeth out of Magic Sculpt, and tied them onto the loose strings hanging from his chin, brow, nose, and ears. Despite the hellish make over, Eric found this to be the most disturbing part of the whole make-up!

Photo 35: Here he is in all his ghoulish glory! Hopefully he scared the crap out of you if you ran into him that night! It was a lot of fun to do, and I hope there were a few useful hints in the process for your make-up adventures. Send pictures!

Happy Birthday, Eric!