This spooky castle was created for a 1986 Budweiser print advertisement. Anton Tremblay designed and supervised the project, while Christopher Halsted and I were the sculptors. The primary material used for the fabrication was green foam, known as "green death" in the model-making industry. Carving the foam released gritty, nasty particles that were hazardous to breathe and tended to cling to our clothing. The only real advantage of using this material was its fine grain, which made it easy to carve. We typically wore disposable coveralls and used a respirator or dust mask to protect our health while sculpting. The finished model, which I photographed on stage for my records, stood about four feet high. In the final advertisement, a couple of people were composited in, positioned by the bridge and looking up at the castle (without the benefit of Photoshop, which had not yet been invented).

Here is another scale model: a garden maze created for a print ad and designed by Anton Tremblay. By 1986, I was working on many of Anton's projects, and we became fast friends. It was a lot of fun to build the maze, cut the basic shapes out of Styrofoam, and paint them green. To create the appearance of hedge foliage, we applied white glue and sprinkled on a shredded foam "ground cover" product originally made for model railroads. The grass area was actually made of carpeting, painted green and carefully brushed to give it a natural clumping appearance. For the pathway, we found that fine aquarium gravel worked well. The completed garden labyrinth model was about three feet per side in scale. I photographed this image outdoors for a realistic effect. Although I never saw the actual advertisement, I suspect it probably looked quite different from my personal photograph.

The mountain is from the 1987 stop-motion film Frog And Toad Together. In addition to being a principal animator on the production, I also constructed several of the sets. Director John Clark Matthews tended to prefer using craft store materials for his movies; for instance, most of his sets were made of Celluclay, an instant papier-mâché product. I sculpted the distant mountains and the foreground using either chicken wire or screen over a wooden support to create the basic shapes. Celluclay was then applied on top to provide a nice organic feel. After a paint job with acrylics, I added scale model railroad trees to the mountain and dressed the foreground piece with mosses and artificial ferns. To create a sense of distance for the mountain, a stretched sheet of translucent material called "bridal veil" was placed between the foreground and background. That idea came from an old special effects trick used to create the illusion of atmospheric perspective.

The frightening forest from Frog And Toad Together was fun to create. I fabricated the trees and rocks using the aforementioned Celluclay over chicken wire method. It was easy to achieve a convincing bark texture by sculpting the Celluclay. Artificial leaves from the craft store came in handy and were perfectly scaled, as the sets were 1/1 actual size; however, we adjusted the scale of the tree trunks for the desired effect. In reality, trees would look gigantic compared to the characters, Frog and Toad!

I used the same techniques for the snake cave set. Note that the Frog and Toad world included a light green sky. By the way, the snake puppet was sculpted by my buddy, Don Waller, while John Clark Matthews sculpted Frog and Toad. Nikki Matthews handled the foam latex puppet fabrication and clothes.

I was an animator on the 1987 ABC television special Runaway Ralph. I also created this grandfather clock dwelling and several specialty props for the production. The set was actually constructed inside a real clock, to which I added a couple of wooden platforms for Ralph to perform on. Then, I dressed the set with various items and weathered everything with paint to give it a grimy, lived-in look. Additionally, many of the clock mechanisms were rigged for our stop-motion animation.

I also created this custom watch for Runaway Ralph. Based on a sketch by John Clark Matthews, it depicts a superhero mouse similar to the famous Mighty Mouse character. I started with an ordinary Timex watch and built around it using Sculpey modeling clay. After completing the sculpture, I made a silicone mold and then two castings out of polyurethane. This method allowed me to incorporate both the working watch movement and the crystal for added realism. Gloss enamel paints provided detail, color, and shine. The watch band was made of a stretchy material and painted pink to resemble the mouse's tail. The final result was a prop that looked like a manufactured children's watch. I made two watches to allow for simultaneous filming on separate stages if necessary. In the movie, the watch served as a "MacGuffin" - an object of interest that helped drive the story.