Thanks for giving us this latest preview adywan, and it’s great to see your WAMPA’s jaw mechanics in action!
I was curious about a few unanswered things back in this post from page 1342 - www.originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1048943/ , but I see from doubleofive’s comments that you’re actually going to replace the original puppet shot too! (I’ve included the shots above for the sake of easy reference for everyone)
I didn’t realise you were intending to do away with the great opening shot of the puppet, with it’s open-wide roar…and just assumed you were trying to get a closer approximation of it to replace the inferior-looking ‘cave’ shot of it lunging towards Luke…so that’s interesting news.
I always thought that original first reveal was terrific, and hopefully your new shot can give it equal justice.
But I still have several queries that your latest clip throws up -
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Before you film it, will you be trying to brush the hair on your version’s head in a manner similar to the tousled, mussed-up look of the original one? - I know it can’t be exact, but the original puppet looked excellent in that regard.
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And are you still intending to heavily coat the hair with ‘icicles’ like the original has? - that’s one of the best details about that original puppet, I reckon.
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And are you going to ‘dirty down’/add a little ‘dried blood’ under it’s bottom lip to your version, as seen in the top 2 shots above? - again, I think that’s a nice additional detail there.
And this is just an additional observation concerning your wampa’s HORNS - seeing as it seems you’re going to replace the puppet which had it’s horns mostly covered in hair, I was kinda hoping that your new ones were going to look a little bigger and more ‘gnarly’ than they currently are.
Personally, I always liked the ‘lop-sided’ ears of the original puppet, and the fact that they’re missing in your clip kinda makes it look like your horns are ‘ears’. Not quite, but almost, if you see what I mean. If you are indeed excluding ‘ears’ on your version altogether (like the SE ‘additional scene’ version does), then fair enough…but I just think that your new horns would look even better if they looked a bit larger and more prominent. And I would have loved to have seen them a little more ‘gnarly’-looking overall, with ‘chunkier’ segments, and with the end of one horn ‘broken off’ like the original has.
By ‘gnarly’-looking, I mean something more akin to how the horns on Luke’s tauntaun appear here -
To be honest, I was always a fan of the size of horns in relation to the wampa’s head…as seen in the original KENNER toy figure, as seen in this article - www.starwars.com/news/wampa-collecting-hoths-horrible-monsters
Either way, I know that your final filmed shots of the wampa are bound to be impressive-looking. Great work!
*(EDIT: Heh, I see the ‘ears’ issue was addressed while I typed all this out!) 😃 - but just to confirm that they ARE briefly seen during the original shot, as can be just made out above in my 3rd pic down.