Guest Book Comments If you have any comments or wish to contact me click the link above. There are also comment links after each entry in the blog. I will add selected comments to the blog. Links: StopMotionAnimation.com StopMoShorts Stop Motion Works Trikfx Stopmotion- studios and independents: Nick Hilligoss Mind Over Pixels Animateclay.com Zombie Pirates AngryPuppetFilms- Ethan Marak Juergen Kling Tatu Pohjavirta Kuvastin (Reflector) Carrot Kid Ron Dexter Screen Novelties Tennessee Reid Norton Private Dick plog Notes from the Box- Misha Klein Downtime films- Tom Gibbons Time and Time Again- Mike Bates Webfilm sites: Atomfilms IFILM Slamdance Anarchy Archive.org Undergroundfilm.org ZeD-Stopmotion The New Venue Suppliers- lighting/grip: Setshop Stage Lighting Store Theaterfx-Par Cans Star light and magic Musician's Friend-stage lights Suppliers-tools/materials: McMaster-Carr Smallparts Harbor Freight Northern Tool National Balsa Mister Art Tutorials/resources: Kathi Zung-foam latex 101 video/DVD Atmosphere in stopmotion Animated cartoon factory Quicktiming.org Flicktips

News and Updates: or ...Welcome to my Blog! Click here for archived blog pages May 13 2005 Givin' you the Biz Sorry for the silent treatment these last few days.... things have been pretty hectic. The game plan has changed... I've been furiously fabricating my blacksmith puppet for his debut appearance. Trying out lots of new ideas and techniques... sort of dangerous with the 15th right around the corner, but it's been working out pretty well. A few minor mishaps that I had to hurriedly re-do, but for the most part everything is working out nicely, and new ideas are whispering themselves into my ears as I go. This is far and away the best puppet I've made yet... this guy emotes even just standing there! I still have to whip up a few pesky props, or reasonable facsimiles thereof. And fear not, I've been taking pictures along the way, which I'll post after the event. Meanwhile, since there's nothing going on in here, take a little time and wander the gallery of Adam Bizanski. This guy Rocks! Browsing his site is like playing a crazy round of Resident Evil, but instead of getting chomped by flesh-munching zombies you score sweet stopmo nibblets. Many thanks to my far-ranging field agent Shelley Noble for finding this one. Comments May 10 2005 Downloads and upgrades Spent too much time last night researching SLR-like cameras that can be used for stopmo. I'm working up a little spec sheet comparing the different models. Not sure why I'm so into it... partly just because Kelly posted the info the other day and it got me going, and partly because the riddle of the digital still cam for stopmo has been a major problem on the SMA board for about the last year (at least). Inquiring minds just want to know... plus I have a deadline looming large, and something about me and deadlines just doesn't agree... I just have to put everything off till the last possible second. Three days left till my film needs to be done and uploaded, and I did almost nothing today. Instead I spent some time upgrading to Panther v 10.3.9 and QTPro v7. Apple has come up with a nifty new codec called H.264 designed for watching HD content that boasts better quality than Sorensen3 at lower filesize. I tried it out, and it blew the doors off the competition! I encoded the exact same clip with both codecs at the highest quality settings, everything set the same, and both clips look pristine... but the Sorensen clip was twice the filesize. The name has gotta go though... it's not easy to even remember, much less type. I don't know what its compatibility is like... that's one of Sorensen3's strong points. I think I'll try it out for a clip or 2 to post here, and see what the reaction is. I wasn't entirely serious about getting nothing done on my film. The blacksmith puppet is progressing, though with the deadline approaching, I think I'll have to restructure the film so he's not even in it anymore... that's my StopMoShorts entry, not the Ahab film. I'm too tired to get out a camera and snap pics now, they'll be forthcoming soon, but I got his neck all fabbed and one hand armature nearly complete. I cut a section from the finger of a latex glove to cover the neck, and painted it up using some Pro-Adhesive that I stippled on with a paper towel and then blotted over with a mix of the adhesive with some acrylic paint. Looks pretty good too. But I really wish I could make a sculpted neck... I'm really looking forward to my next film, which will feature foam latex, at least for heads. This is version 2 of the blacksmith's neck... last night I tried it using some of the Duo surgical adhesive to attach the foam to his head, and it just isn't strong enough. So I cleaned it off and busted out the Barge. That stuff is awesome! Stinks to high heaven though. Comments May 9 2005 Bad blogs Wanna see some really great animation, from an exciting film that's in progress now? Check out the rough cut of this scene from Bad Bullets by Misha Klein: Bad Bullets. Be warned... it's full 640x480 resolution and not very compressed (so you can see it in all its glory). Better have high speed... this thing weighs in at a hefty 18 megs. Misha is one of the awesome animators on Robot Chicken, breathing life into plastic action figures for Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, and he's a friend of Tennessee Reid Norton. These guys are all part of the big, dysfunctional stopmo family and in between professional gigs like RC or Disaster!, they work on their own personal projects. Some, like Misha and Tennessee blog their progress... man, I love these times we live in, and this here internet! These lucky bastards get to use totally choice equipment (that they didn't have to buy) and network with other pros who stop in and help them out, or drop off props and equipment. Meanwhile here I sit, slowly working the day job to pay off all my little purchases so I can get to work making all my props, puppets and sets all by my lonesome. Oh well... it's all good. I've tried the collaboration thing before, and it's not for me (unless I get to be the boss, and I don't have enough money for that). This way I get complete artistic control, and there's nobody to conveniently blame when things go wrong. Ethan Marak is another one of them, working on his film, which currently doesn't have a title. He just started his own blog at AngryPuppetFilms.com. Misha's blogger addy is Notes from the Box. I don't know why I post all this stuff in here.. these guys just make me look bad in comparison! I hate them all.... Here's a thread on the SMA board that Misha started yesterday, and today he gave some great advice on acting for animation. I can really see why Tennessee and Kelly both rave about this guy... he's obviously a force to be reckoned with. I'll be counting down the days till Bad Bullets is released! (or at least till we get another glimpse) Comments great stuff. I am seeing a huge improvement in you animation. I have secretly been checking your stuff out here and there. I think animating fast is the best way to get more confident (looser %26 better). Use the whole puppet (the knees, elbos, wrists, neck) Take real risks so that it becomes more expressive and less mechanical. If you want to animate more like Trnka, express in the pantamime. Keep pumpin out these little shots. I love your character by the way. You are a sculpter. -mish Wow, great to hear from you Mish! Thanks for the schoolin'. : ) Mike For the record. I bought all of my equipment myself. I am currently going into MASSIVE credit card debt so that I can finish my film. I work alone, lighting, building, animating and doing all my own post. The computer I own is sitting on a credit card. Stay hungry and do your art (by hook or by crook). You just have to keep you eyes on the prize...you'll get there, bro. Much love and respect, ~mishmash Ok, yeah, I guess I spoke out of turn about the equipment issue and all. I know Ethan Marak is using his own equipment too. I was mostly thinking about Tennessee, who started off using the camera from Disaster! (I think) and then it got snatched away and he had to get his own Nikon D70 using some donated money from his co-producers. Yeah, we're all definitely in the same brotherhood... it just gets lonely sometimes squatting in our own little bunkers scattered across the globe. I'm in the same plastic boat too, but I've been slowly bailing it out. Thank god for Paypal... now that more sites accept it, I don't have to rack up the finance charges on everything. Mike Yo - DarkStrider! Please don't be hatin' ! Yes I got into this industry because for me, filmmaking is about collaboration. I am most inspired when I trot out my little ideas to my colleges and they help me bring my vision to life in ways I would not have thought of alone. I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth! For the record I am still paying off credit cards from my FIRST film Lizard Whomper. Yes I am VERY GRATEFULL for all the help I have, and to me, it is a two way street. You notice( because you are kind enough to follow my PLOG) that I took a full week off of my own production to make a puppet for my pal Musa's needs, staying up till the wee hours so he could shoot on schedule. The amazing thing to me was the feeling of satisfaction combined with fatigue that I felt when I saw him bring BLING! to life. Like Misha, I have followed your work online and am much impressed with what I see! Keep the faith brother! So here we are all just Bozo's on the Bus, breathing life one frame at a time, and communing in the process thru cyberspace! Future, -T Not hatin, more like green with envy! It's all good though... thanks to the internet and SMA, I get to network with pros and semi-pros now, like you and Misha, and that's not too shabby. You guys rule the stopmo continuum. Good to hear from you bud! Keep rockin the dick. (I can't believe I just said that... I think I'll leave the dick jokes to you). ~Mike May 7 2005 Committing Ok, I'm now officially working on a StopMoShorts entry for the 15th. Not entirely sure I can get it done, but I have a nice little scenario in mind, and I've already made most of the props. I'm discovering new working methods as I go... it's incredible what a little hammering will do to base metals.... ; ) The biggest part of the job remaining is finishing the puppets... Ahab needs a new pair of hands, a foot and a peg, and the blacksmith is just a bare armature right now. But I just got my order in from Monstermakers, consisting of a quart of slush casting latex, a tube of Duo surgical adhesive (latex based) and Pro-Adhesive, a cheaper Pros-Aide substitute. Now I should be good to go. Oh, the big latex tubing idea for the necks didn't work out so well.... it ends up looking like big latex tubing. Kelly sent me this URL: PSP Video 9. Apparently it's not a simple matter to play movies on the Sony PSP... you have to have the right software to convert your video files into a format the PSP can read. Fortunately the software is free. Here's a list of prices for the Memory Sticks... and there are also links to discount sites selling them for less. The Memory Sticks come in three speeds... the faster ones being more expensive. The only way you can benefit from the higher speeds is if you transfer your video using a flash MS reader... if you're using USB you might as well go for the cheaper regular flavor anyway... and they're not all that atrocious. But geez... the 1Gig stick will run you $200... as much as the PSP system itself! The smaller ones are a lot more reasonable though. Comments May 6 2005 Cameras from the ID Well, now that I've got mine, I guess it's safe to make the announcement... B&H Photo has the Sanyo iDshot on sale at the ridiculously low price of $149! Any of you who frequent the SMA boards are well aware of this already, if you've even peeked in there in the last week or two, but this is to spread the news to those few readers who don't lurk there, and to report that it looks like it's going to work nicely in the way Lionel Orozco of Stop Motion Works predicted so long ago. Eric and Streit Reign (Sorry Keith... don't know your last name) have already tested it for everything except it's possibly best function, using the live analog video feed for a framegrabber reference while simultaneously capturing high-res uncompressed Tiffs (or Bitmaps) to compile as your animation. The reason the other guys haven't been able to test this function yet is you need a signal converter to turn the analog video into digital for the computer, which my Canopus ADVC-100 does nicely. I won't try to give any kind of comprehensive review here on the blog... Eric's got one coming up in the next few days at StopMoShorts. He's a lot better with all the tech stuff than I am anyway. I just wanted to say that yes, it looks like it's going to work. I've had mine for one evening, and it took me several hours to familiarize myself with all the various functions to the point where I was able to get it all set up and get a single gigantic image downloaded onto my hard drive. There were a few problems, that I hope are from my lack of knowledge of the camera and related software... such as an error when I tried to transfer the image onto my hard drive. It told me the disc was locked... no idea what that means or what to do about it, but I was able to save the image and send it to a folder on my computer. Strangely when I did, the Tiff options didn't even offer an uncompressed setting, so I used an uncompressed Bitmap format and then opened it with Preview and exported as an uncompressed Tiff (which strangely was about twice the filesize of the original picture). Hopefully I can learn how to get around these issues... but even if I don't it will still work. Another issue I had was a lot of blue-ish pixel noise in the image and a faint red line running down the left edge, which all look suspiciously like artificial gain artifacts to me. I'm sure I can figure out how to shut that off. I still need to learn how to use the shutter speed and exposure settings- I was able to set them manually, but the preview image remained bright, rather than showing me what the actual picture would look like (makes me miss the Hitachi, which actually has an iris in the lens, so you see exactly what you're going to get). Everything works the way I hoped it would though... while the camera is connected to the computer by firewire (for downloading the large still images) and via composite video cable to the Canopus converter and thence into the computer, you can use the live video feed to run Framethief and, when you've got the puppet posed properly for the next frame, use the tiny remote ( looks like it would be easy to lose) to snap off a massive still image onto the camera's Optical Memory disc. At full 1360x1024 resolution, it will only hold 255 images, which is about ten seconds of animation, and then you need to take a break and download them to the computer. Hmmm... just thought of something... you'd need to then format the disc before you can continue animating... not sure if you can do that without touching the camera and risking a bump (probably not). While I was playing with my new toy, TCM was showing a bunch of Louis Bunel movies, including The Exterminating Angel and Simon of the Desert. I caught the end of another one, not sure what it was, but it was just beautifully filmed, as was Simon. I went to see about buying the DVDs, and was stunned to see they're not available, at least that I could find. Wow... if I knew that, I would have been recording! Ok, I messed around some more, and it's easy to download the Tiff images onto my hard drive. I can just open the folder in the camera and drag and drop them into a folder on my computer... easy as pie. I don't think there's a way to format the disk without touching the camera, but that shouldn't be too big of a problem... what with the framegrabber to make sure everything's still aligned perfectly. There might even be a way to bypass the optical memory disc completely and capture the Tiffs directly onto the hard drive... not sure about that though. Eric might know. Just did my daily check over at Tennessee Reid Norton's Private Dick Plog, and found a link to my site! Cool. That's where I check to see what a stopmo production blog should look like. Comments 05 05 05 Red Nose Studio I discovered Red Nose Studio, home of illustrator/animator Chris Sickels a while back, but haven't checked in for some time. And now all of a sudden, Shelley sent me over to check it out, and at the same time, Jeremy Spake clues me in that How magazine did a big interview with lots of juicy pictures. Wow, he's been a busy busy boy! Check it out: rednosestudio (or just click on the image... either one) The site's been majorly revamped... it's a lot easier to navigate now, and I love the little popup puppet buttons! And he's added new content... a couple of little movies and lots of images. This guy is one majorly talented illustrator! I wish I was bold enough to distort the figure the way he does. He began as an illustrator, and rapidly discovered 3d illustration, basically making puppets and sets and taking still shots of them. That's just one little step away from stopmotion. And he took the step, not surprisingly. I believe he makes his puppets in a porcelain doll sort of technique, similar to the way wire armatured cloth puppets would be made, only less beefy and not designed for extensive movement, just to be re-positioned a few times. I'm not sure how he manages to get tie-downs in those tiny feet! Here's a little snippet of a recent interview he did in How magazine, a design rag for which he is a regular contributing illustrator: "Usually the head will kind of start it, because that head is the emotion. In a lot of my pieces, the characteristics in the face are the soul of it. So the face is usually one of the first things to get done." He makes the heads from super sculpey and the armatures are made of wire and covered with foam. Clothes are sewn right onto the bodies. He says he's always on the lookout for cloth with a very fine weave. Now, I must say it... his animation is very crude and has an amateruish look. I'm not sure how much of it is intentional. I discussed it a bit with Shelley, and she feels that it makes for a crude charm that's perfect for the look of the puppets. I see where she's coming from, and I agree that a somewhat herky-jerky awkward style would perfectly suit the puppets, but I'd much rather see them done with a Trnka-like approach... his animation wasn't flawless at all, it was loaded with little pops and stutters, but the acting is what brought quivering life to them. I'm really curious to find out if Chris has studied the principles of animation, or uses a framegrabber. But I'm afraid to contact him and come across sounding like a complete ass. But there's just this certain pose-to-pose animation technique the Eastern European masters used that I think of as insect-motion... it's like flow-pause, flow-pause.. little bursts of fluid, extremely rapid movement punctuated by holds on expressive poses. I think this kind of movement would be perfect for these little guys! Comments May 4, 2005 A little elaboration on sketch#7 Sorry, no bloggie last night... got floored by sleep deprivation. So I'll make up for it today with 2 entries. First here's a little behind-the-scenes explanation on the making of Sketch #7: Here's one of the little tricks that make sketch #7 work so well as far as I'm concerned. The animation is kind of crappy, but what it's got going for it is cinematography. I created a sense of complexity, and of the space extendimg beyond what's seen onscreen, by modelling it with shadows. And this little device is the chief protagonist. It's a little makeshift lighting card rig cobbled together from a cheap adjustable corner clamp (the kind used for gluing together picture frames), an X-Acto knife handle (with the blade still in it... kids, don't try this at home!) and a christmas card Eric sent to me last year. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, one of the incredibly useful little thermometer clamps from Lab Depot. What made me think to do this is that there was already a shadow cast by the camerajack across part of the set... at first it annoyed me until I realized it made things look better, not worse. These incidental shadows create the mystery... the darkness that allows the viewer's mind to wander and conjecture. So often in the kid's stopmo shows like Bob the Builder or the Koala Brothers (as excellently as they're done) everything is brightly lit, brilliantly colored and shown in perfect detail. It makes things seem toylike and cheery... not the effect I'm looking for. I also want to discuss the way I created the set. I've been wanting to find a way to design the background elements as I go, so I can make more expressionistic sets as opposed to the more common flat wall/backdrop kind of thing. My first idea was to basically build a miniature ship deck, very much like the way Marc Spess did for Zombie Pirates. Mine wouldn't have been so bright and cheery, obviously, and I wasn't going to make quite so large a section of the deck, but I hated the thought of how the shots would come out... not enough mystery. I wanted more of a sense of theater... of suggesting the set with simple props rather than explicity building it. The key is darkness. Once I got ahold of this nifty little Hitachi camera and learned how to use Tiffs rather than the default Pict files in Framethief, I was able to get the right degree of contrast and darkness to suit the spooky, atmospheric look I was after. And the sketches are what finally freed me from the standard method of planning, designing and building everything before filming. Since these are just little abstractions, I was free to do whatever I want, and so I decided to just build my background with light over a field of darkness. I started by just piling some ropes and aiming an orange-filtered light so it illuminated them but not the shelves of my table in the background. Heh... it's funny, and I'm almost ashamed to admit this, but if I were to lift those coils of rope, underneath them are little piles of tools and materials. Yeah, I'm not the fastidious neatness nut that so many stopmotionists are! So I found myself in the position of having a dark background with brightly lit, orange-ish masses in front that I could easily reorganize however I want. I thought it needed some verticals (actually somewhat diagonal) so I strung up some ropes, including the extreme foreground one that's actually tied to the camera and held against the lens with a chunk of fun-tack. Probably not wise, as it could easily have shifted the focus or even moved the camera, but what the heck... it's only a sketch! Anyway, with some hindsight now, having seen the results, I want to go farther... take out some of the ropes and substitute other props like some barrels and harpoons. Also, I think a little lighted area in the far background would complete the sense of depth and complexity... maybe a board (could be foamcore or just cardboard) with a door or window shape cut out, and a dim light behind it so you can see a hint of deeper space and a few barrels to suggest another compartment in the hold. I'm going to go ahead and do it, but rather than just a sketch, I think I'll make a StopMoShorts entry for may 8th. It just so happens I have a little wooden chest sitting here.... Portable movie-viewing bliss And here's a little item I posted today on the SMA boards: "For some time I've been looking for a good way to carry my films with me so I can show them to people on the spot. My current solution is an old Sharp Viewcam with a fairly good sized LCD screen, but it's bulky and heavy and just doesn't look very cool or high-tech today. It's definitely 90's pre-digital technology. I've looked at a few of the portable MP3 type devices that also offer jpeg viewing and video on a tiny screen, smaller than a matchbook. It's almost as bad as watching a tiny little low-res web movie... hardly showcases the innate beauty and quality of your work. So I recently discovered the PSP... the PlaySation Portable. It's main use is as a gaming console, but they built it for versatility, and its secondary use is as a really good widescreen video viewer. The entire thing is 6.7 inches wide, and the screen is 4.3". It's a 16:9 aspect ratio, making it resemble a miniature High Def tv screen (oh so modern and trendy... it makes me salivate just thinking about it!). From what I've read, the image quality is crystal clear. Pixel resolution is 480 x 272. Its main memory device is something new called a Universal Media Disc, or UMD. Each UMD can hold 1.8 GB of data, but those are read-only memory, and can't be recorded on... they're just for storebought games and movies. However, it also includes a Memory Stick Duo slot, which lets you import video files via USB from your computer. It's USB 2.0, but if I understand correctly, that's a backwards-compatible media format, meaning you can send normal USB over it as well. Included in the box is a 32MB Memory Stick Duo, but you can buy them up to 512MB. There are screen protectors available as well as good sturdy carrying cases, both of which are recommended to protect that magic mirror of a wide screen. I looked at a few reviews on amazon, and everyone says it's excellent for watching movies... far superior to any portable DVD players or other similar devices, but there's one problem (isn't there ALWAYS ) ... dead pixels. Many people have reported this problem, and some said they had to send the unit back for replacement several times before getting a good one. So if you must have one now, be prepared to play the shell game with Sony until you get a decent one. At $223, assuming you get one with all its pixels alive and kickin, this sounds like an ideal solution for portable viewing of all your downloaded and self-created animation bliss!" Comments Great posts Mike, I love your thesis of theatricality for the Ahab set. Right on! And great research on the portable player!! You rock and then you sleep. Shelley Noble May 2, 2005 Stopmo sketch#7 Sketch 7 click here for a larger (2MB) version. This is an elaboration on the last sketch. I wanted to add some depth and complexity to the set... but it's still pretty minimal. I wish the rope in the foreground was more well defined. Keep in mind this is just a rough sketch, I don't mind the few pops... what I was concentrating on was the timing and the action itself. Overall I'm fairly happy with it, but when he starts wrapping the rope around his arm things get a bit crazy. I didn't completely lose control the way I did in sketch#6 (heh... there was more to that one, I cut the end off), but it's not nearly smooth enough. {EDIT: actually, watching it a few more times, the rope animation itself is surprisingly good... it's just the way he dips his head so fast a few times right at the start of it that sucks. Heh... if only you knew how rigged the rope animation was... for the most part I was just holding it with one hand just off camera!} I definitely need to develop a method for working with rope like this. But it does look like these realistically proportioned puppets will work with some degree of "trikfilm" effects, which is what I wanted to know. I was afraid they would only work for completely realistic action... a thought I found quite depressing. This shot is almost 20 seconds long, and I did it in about two hours. Quite a change from last time! But the last half of it is rushed... especially when it came to animating the rope flying through the air and his exit, I just lost my patience. Got to work on that. Comments Woo hoo! Boy is this exciting to see! You're animating!! Cool. Ahab looks and feels like a person to me. He's really there!! Oh-THIS-is-going-to-be-great! Well done. Shelley Noble May 1, 2005 it's all in the wrist... again Got this comment from Shelley: Hi Mike, great work on the tubing. Is the lead (be very careful not to touch that by the way) wire still inside the tube connecting the hand to forearm so you can freeze a wrist position? Or did you use the hot glue alone to join the parts? By the way, you may, may, may want to consider using a paint medium that enables you to paint, even a translucent color on top of the latex and the tubing. I say this because you may be happier at the end of the day with having more control over the look of the puppet's flesh. There are several varieties of mediums for every surface, let me know if you like the names of a few that I know. Actually there are 3 strands of twisted aluminum wire inside the latex tubing. Take a look at the picture below it and you can see it clearly... but darned if I didn't mess up and not get that hand pushed down far enough, and the wires didn't go into the aluminum tube at all! One hand was alright, but the other had a broken wrist... and not only that, but the thermoplastic (hotglue) that I filled the latex tube with made it a little too stiff. So I pulled all that stuff off and decided to try a new approach... and actually found a use for that really small tubing. I'm going to get some slipcasting latex from Burman's and just coat the hands and wrists with it a few times, after probably wrapping the finger wires with some latex-soaked cloth. So, Shel, whattya got for painting latex? I've heard it will take adhesive-based paints, like maybe pros-aide, but I'm interested in hearing what you know. Comments April 30, 2005 it's all in the wrist Well I got some latex tubing... this is the same stuff they make slingshots from... and I think it'll work great for wrists and necks. Those are the biggest problem areas on a human puppet that's covered with clothes (aside from the hands). If you're using a good armature with nice joints, it sometimes looks good to let them show, but twisted wires (or in this case a single strand of thick lead wire) don't look so good showing through. So for some time I've been wracking my brains trying to think of some material already in a tube shape. I finally decided to try the surgical latex tubing, and McMaster Carr has it in a wide range of sizes. My judgement was a little off though... the 3/8" OD tubing I thought would work for the neck is the right size for wrists, and the 3/16ths is almost small enough for fingers! (an interesting idea there... I remember seeing a Trnka puppet with tubing fingers once...). Heh... I was able to just sort of twist-pull the hands out, leaving a plug of hot glue inside the forearm tubes that I pulled out with some mini pliers. I noticed how flexible the hot glue is, so after slipping a piece of the latex tubing over the forearm I jammed the tip of the glue gun down inside and just filled it up and quickly jammed the hand into place. I compressed the latex tubing a bit when I did, so the end won't pull back when the hand is bent into an extreme position. As an added bonus, compressing it caused the end to sort of turn inward, making for a nicer edge. Now if I use regular yellow latex for the hands the color should blend nicely. I've ordered some 5/8" for the neck that should be in on tuesday or so. More pics to follow. Oh, and the "foam tubing" I ordered... turned out to be a very hard, slightly flexible transparent amber plastic. Absolutely useless! I now have a 2 foot long billy club with a hole running through it. ; ) Comments Next page Ψ