The Cthulhu Project

I mentioned this very briefly, and somewhat abstractly, over on The Monkey Rodeo Facebook page this week, that I was starting work on a new project (amongst many others) that very well might be the most awesome thing I've ever done.

And if I can pull this off, it will indeed be the most awesome thing. So, I'm going to officially state what this Cthulhu related project is, and it is a full foam latex Cthulhu body suit. For those of you suddenly yawned, this has never been done to my knowledge - there's been a few homemade Cthulhu cosplay costumes but they're nothing compared to what I want to do (with all due respect to the creators who must have spent a long time doing these things), I want to create a good, old fashion "guy in a monster suit" version of Cthulhu. It won't be scrapped together from random materials, it'll be a fully sculpted, moulded and cast in foam latex traditional monster suit.

Now comes the question "why?" Well, there's a lot of reasons, one being simply because I've never done something like this before and I think now's the time to give myself another push and see what happens. But the main reason is I've been finding it really difficult to draw any attention to what I do. I've done over 100 different Demon photo shoots, tried using more iconic characters in hopes someone might care - but nothing. I have to come to the conclusion I either actually suck at what I do or what I've done just isn't enough to stand out.

I'm hoping it's not that I suck at this and just the later that might be the case. I don't have hundreds or thousands to shell out on all these dodgy internet add things. I've tried Facebook and other than getting a few more likes to the page it has yet to translate to anything meaningful, like actual money being made from new customers. So, why not try this and see what happens rather then just resigning myself to whine about not being noticed.

Of course creating a custom made Cthulhu monster suit isn't going to be easy or cheap, which is why in the early part of 2014 I'm going to try another fundraiser. I'm hoping with the Cthulhu name attached it might be more visible and folks will be more interested. And every single reward will have a Cthulhu related prop to it, so you won't just be spending money for me to do a little monster in a suit project. I've already got a few related props made, so over the next couple months I'll be creating a few more just for this.

I've already got the guy in the suit already picked out, John MacDonald for those who might know him - I mean if you're going to make a human into Cthulhu, you want the biggest guy you know, right? I'll be moulding his entire body and the suit will be made bit by bit over the course of next spring/summer. Once it's done I've got a photo shoot planned, we'll be doing a commercial/video of sorts as well and it'll be a bit of a stepping stone in moving towards the Lovecraft/Hitchcock movie I want to do.

First comes the design phase, which I might be starting in the next couple weeks and looking towards how much money is raised I'm aiming for two versions, the "Modern Cthulhu" and the "Classic Cthulhu". The Modern is be the cheaper, easy to make for around $750, and be a Buffy the Vampure Slayer inspired character, not a full suit, but head, hands and feet in an actual suit. A little campier, but it'll still look cool. And the Classic being way more expensive and the full complete suit.

I'm not doing animatronics because I want this to be something that just stands on its own without group of people tied to it with cables following him around. Although I might see about rigging something simple like a lense that blinks and it would be awesome to develop something that shifts and wobbles the tentacles when he speaks. I have met a pretty good animatronics guy whose brains I might pick on this to see if there's something that can be done - and self contained, more importantly.

It'll be totally made using Monster Makers foam latex as well, I've spoken with the guy who runs Monster Makers briefly a couple times and I'm hoping this is something they might be interested in as well - not as a sponsor or anything, but just helping promote it since it will be their product on display should it get some attention.

So there it is, that's my awesome Cthulhu project. To my knowledge I've never even seen something like this in a movie - I'm not saying it HASN'T been done, just that I've never seen it or heard of it.