Hey everyone, Johnny here from Tabletop Troubadour, so the announcements out for
the Dark Crystal board game which of course is to follow up to the Labyrinth
board game. I've been brought on again by River Horse and the Jim Henson Company
to create the sculptural assets and the illustration assets for this game again
and we thought it was a great time to show you some of the things that have
been going on to bring their game to life.
So the first thing I had to figure out with the three-ups was scale. As much as
the Dark Crystal is the only single perfect film that's ever had no humans
in it and is all creating a completely different world, so scale is subjective
in the sense that who's to say how big a skekis is or how big Gelfling is
I also wanted to incorporate the fact that there is a human inside
the suit and there's also a Jim Henson sized human who has a Kermit the Frog
sized hand puppet doing a Jen and then you've got Karen Prell doing Kira. It's also
a nice scale for me to push the plasticine round and sculpt in, so the
Gelflings seem a little small because a lot of the time you've got these... they are in
the foreground they've got this these close-ups a lot of the time they're
actually sized up for suit performers so I wanted to find a middle ground there.
Of course that's completely irrelevant to what you're gonna give him the board
game as you can see here these are some 3d print outs that I did just for me
because I personally couldn't wait for the board game to come out so I
printed these so I could paint them and get an idea of scale and you can see
River Horse have decided to make the Gelflings a lot bigger than they
would have been in the film which is understandable considering it's a four
player game, everybody chooses their own character. All of this information has
come from scans of these sculptures here and as I said you know so like Jen is
around the same size as Hoggle so in a lot of ways these Gelflings you should
should actually be smaller the skeskis is here but they were already
feeling a little too small so you can see the reasoning behind making them
bigger by the time they get this big. They are sculpted it in a way that once shrunk
down you're going to be able to get already great looking miniature and to
do that, all of these... a lot of the details on is already wonderfully
detailed characters have been heightened and you know the wrinkles are deeper the
proportions are played with a little bit. Brian Froud and the team that created
the skeksis and the Gelflings, everything in that movie,
everything is just covered and saturated and drenched with these amazing details
especially in the skeksis carapises, carapie, carapises... I don't
know if that's a word but however that said, the ornate coverings that these
guys wear are so detailed and so covered a little objects and pieces that I've
had to simplify a lot of that because again I'm sculpting these basically
for mold-ability, for scan-ability and also ultimately for your paintbrush.
So I started with this guy who is the Chamberlain who after Hoggle is my
second favorite creature and cinema history. All of the shapes and designs
the performance, the voice, the sculpture of the face, everything about this guy
Frank Oz originally performed this in the movie and you watch him to this day
he's not a puppet he is a character. Sadly the actor that voiced has just
passed away about a week ago but everything, every shape, every silhouette,
everything about this pompous buildup of costume that is hiding this really sad
pathetic creature underneath which is like the powdered wigs of times not so
long ago. Every skeksis us is like their own crooked politician and there's
so much character and I've always loved them. I've also been fortunate enough to
have seen this sculpture and this costume straight from the film
physically in person when Peter Brook took me around the LA Jim Henson
creature shop. You can see how big this is going to be in person you know... I don't have
very big hands either if you want to measure that into your equations.
They're already so detailed and so elaborate I'm often having to
simplify a lot of shapes because I know that they're not going to read when
they're this small but I'm also trying to sculpt something that is going to be
a treat for you to paint and this is going to work with washes and dry
brushes so even people that aren't crazy about miniatures like I am and have a
lot of painting will be able to paint these for their board game and they're
going to come out fine. This is Jen obviously the hero of the films the
challenge I set myself with on this sculpture was to do something that all
of the previous toy companies and collectibles of Jen have avoided for
good reason which is all of the the loose strings and drapery that come off
his wrist that primarily were part of the costume to hide the rods of the
rod puppet operating Jen which was Jim Henson himself.
For me overall his character is "I'm not really for this quest but I'm gonna take it on" and I
wanted to capture that in a sculpture while positioning his arms in a pose
where I could push and play around with negative space for all of these loose
strings and capture exactly what's in the film while still being able to pull
this guy out of a mold considering that he's gonna be this big in the end.
As you can see also I've heightened a lot of the design patterns on his
tunic so when thats scanned and when that's shrunk down to this level a bit of dry
brushing and a wash are going to completely sort out your painting job so
anybody can paint that and everything registers and you don't have to go on
and after the fact and highlight some of these details. Kira and Fizzgig, once
again River horse and the Jim Henson Company were really great by letting
me come up with the poses and how I wanted to express these characters
physically. The thing with Kira is she's an amazing
character she's beautiful, she's such a huge part of the film and she's a
fan favorite but from the back if she's wearing a hood, which I chose to
sculpt her in because I wanted another layer of darker color and drapery what I
wanted to do since a lot of people playing the game are going to see here
from the back just depending on me she's on the board I decided to put her wings
sticking out a little bit because there's the scene where she finally
jumped off the cliff and a winged spring up which means there's got to be some
kind of slit in her cloak anyway for them to be able to be active so they hinted at
there at the back and I love the same way with Jen meets her and she
walks in and she pulls down her hood so I wanted to capture that a film moment
and we also had to include Fizzgig, so rather than having Fizzgig as a
little fluffy tumbleweed lump at her feet I thought she could be carrying him
as she does often in the film and that also helped me take care of a lot of
negative spaces that were created in the drapery of her long cloak and more
importantly I had to come come up with a pose where I could include the long
tassels of her cuffs then again like Jen were there to hide the rod puppets
movements when Karen Prell was operating here and so both sides of how she's
using your arms we're thought about in advance of how I could keep everything
that's happening in the costume and how you could get that out of one mold.
That's it from us at Tabletop Troubadour. We hope you've enjoyed the video the
game itself is up for pre-order currently on the River Horse website so
get on that. For me personally it's been a real
thrill working on what I consider the second greatest fantasy film of all time
it's been a lot of fun. it's been very rewarding. Any questions or comments,
we love hearing from you on the Tabletop Troubadour Facebook page or under these
videos so let us know and until then we'll catch you at the great conjunction.
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