Sammael, the desolate one, son of Nergal, hound of resurrection, harbinger of pestilence, seed of destruction...
I've always been a fan of creatures and monsters. I'm a bit of a mythology geek, so a love of monsters kind of goes with the territory. For quite some time I wanted to create a nightmare creature in the true spirit of Halloween. Halloween was originally a time to dress up as one of the spooks or monsters in order to avoid their unwanted attention, after all.
This is where Sammael comes in. I had vaguely known of Hellboy through my best friend, who is a huge fan of Mike Mignola's work. She's a fellow animation student and had several printouts of Hellboy art taped to her desk at school. The seed was planted in my mind, and when the Hellboy came out in theaters, I decided to go see it to get a taste of what this Hellboy she was so fond of was about.
I loved it, to say the least. And again, being the monster fan that I am, I adored Sammael. The first time I saw him onscreen I got a big goofy grin on my face and all I could think was "wow...that is one of the most kick-ass monsters I've ever seen!". It took awhile, but the idea eventually crept into my head that Sammy would be that perfect nightmare creature. Things just took off from there as I started thinking up ways I could pull off a rubbery skinned creature without all those wonderful professional materials that are way out of my price range. I schemed and planned, and eventually came up with something that would (hopefully) work.
The construction began in mid-July, though there was a lot of planning and sketching involved before that stage began. In the end, it took over two hundred hours of my spare time over four months to get the costume finished.
The costume was mostly made with inch-thick upholstry foam pieced together with hot glue and carved with a small pair of craft scissors. Once carved, the each of the pieces were coated with a rubberizing liquid to make them more durable. It was painted with watered down acrylics, using an airbrush. The teeth are Sculpey, the base of the mask is plastic canvas. The eyes were pieced together from the clear outer casing of a rubber ball, bits of coloured plastic (from another ball) and fabric. The eye membranes are paper clay. The tentacles were made with a braided wire armature, quilt batting and spandex. The joints in the costume were bridged with spandex as well, and held in place with hot glue and velcro. The arm extentions under the foam are copper piping.
Pictures:
Concept Drawings:
Preliminary full body concept art for the costume, though things changed as I worked.
Motor City Comic Con: October 16, 2004
The nearly finished mask was hauled around on my shoulder all day. The picture is courtesy of Guy Davis and Rosemary VanDeuren.
Campus Halloween Bash October 28, 2004
A big thank you to my friends and classmates, Jamie, Kevin, Jazmin, Jim and Phil for acting as my demonkeepers and for taking these photos.
