Making a mantis shrimp costume

growing up I was a fan of three things the soccer team Arsenal my cat Missal and the Lord of the Rings movies but my favorite player left Arsenal and my cat died but throughout all of this I stayed a wholehearted fan of Lord of the Rings and yeah Legolas was my first love I was like learning elvish and sewing elf dresses but none of that made him love me back so that's when I learned to never change yourself for a man one of the main companies that worked on the Lord of the Rings movies was wet a workshop and they made armor prosthetic makeup big atures miniatures creature design and they've also worked on movies like Avatar district 9 cool down Murdock Blade Runner 20 49 ghost in the shell' and I am mother that's up on Netflix now and led a workshop reached out to me and we're like hey do you want to build a project together and I was like q please hold a moment while I mentally pee my pants okay so what are we thinking we'll bring it to New Zealand and we'll make you a costume what do you want to be we can turn you into anything and I was like a shrimp and they were like a shrimp like a shrimp and I was like yes a shrimp but like a mantis shrimp the kings of the ocean but not any mantis shrimp I want to be a business mantis shrimp so like a mantis shrimp but it works just suit so yeah I completely choked and I grabbed at the first idea that popped into my head and that was the shrimp and then I stood by that idea with the fierce loyalty of somebody who desperately wants to look like they know what they're doing so I'm flying out tomorrow and then we have a week to build this thing and I'm also excited to like try and film a short film with this costume but yeah we'll see where we end up I'm gonna become a businessman to shrimp the kings of the ocean the creature of my dreams [Music] so before we get too deep into this video let's talk about what a mantis shrimp is mantis shrimp are these colorful violent little creatures and they're famous for having this really powerful punch that they use to open up snails their punch is so fast and so powerful that it boils the water around it so they're pretty deserving of your respect and admiration and in this case cosplay efforts and just like that I'm a New Zealand yeah we're here at what up they even gave me a key like a little blue pea thing I've just been like walking around on the workshop floor and it feels so weird to be here and I'm trying to like hide how much of a fangirl I am but I got to hold boromir sword which was a wild like the real one that they actually had in the movies [Music] photos I don't know I never get over the weirdness of it but it's a part of my job these days we've got in a room assigned where we're gonna build the business mantis shrimp and I think we're just gonna let go through some sketches and see what we want this thing to look like so how do you usually make a character so yeah usually we'll get a brief from a director sometimes I've seen through reference images and then just sort of start the kind of back and forth of debate and taking notes from your directors on board the thing is I haven't really thought that much about mantis shrimp but they're like really weird creatures really weird when I was trying to break these down the colors are so intense in those shapes are so complex that it's kind of hard to tell what's happening in it it's just chaos like fans of any of these things we work on if you get anything wrong you're gonna hear about it pretty quick oh I can imagine that the mantis shrimp community is pretty rabid by terrorists new one so I guess you've been talking about building off a helmet yeah it says we're doing this in a very limited time frame building it off of a helmet and not like making a cast of my face I also feels like it'll probably just be more comfortable yeah movement is gonna be fairly limited and your expressions probably gonna be relatively limited through there and black exterior there but um I think anything that covers up my lack of acting skills I'll just I just blame it on the on the mask here were some real emotions the progression of this idea was me trying to come up with something and I said I want to be a shrimp but then it kind of evolved to this like really sad story of this mantis shrimp that's trying to adapt to the human world and is trying to apply for a job I'm just thinking of like the business mantis shrimp standing and looking out into the ocean and being like I guess I'm one of the few lucky ones least I'm not so scared of failing that I won't try that sounds like a laugh a minute yeah wrap the whole project that was gold I'm flying back to San Francisco now I obviously did not fly back to San Francisco but I did say goodbye to Christian for now and hi to that guy lurking in the background his name is Bryce he's been at what a workshop for 15 years and I'm pretty sure he can build pretty much anything he puts his mind to or as he put it I guess I call myself a technician a technician yeah sounds like such a cut-and-dry description of what you do like a technician makes it sound like my router breaks down so you've prepared some templates and this is for arts I did so looking at Christians wonderful artwork I've taken his designs so we're essentially going to just cut these out and build up layers and then we'll just be able to carve a bit with our craft knife isn't yes that's proper name is plastazote it's normally used for insulation in packaging super lightweight and it's also non-toxic ouch and our industry is always good to find something that's non-toxic [Music] I might just so glued it a little bit that's what we call a business that's a good start yeah yeah I'll probably happily spend a couple of hours boiling on that to get it to where I would be going Wow such a good sound when you put it I shouldn't listen to this falling asleep at night this would be like my white noise machine I have no idea what I'm trying to resemble I'm just trying to like make our best guesses what all the different parts are but these are like kind of antennae that got out from the face like a little hair on a mole what are we calling these the winglets I don't know the flappers flappers and we're gonna put some kind of a fringing running around them it looks like a peacock feather yeah we're gonna find something that we can use so this is the helmet that we're gonna use as a base yeah so it's all about building our substructure at this stage everybody kind of thinks in terms of looking on the outside it's cool but it's all about the rigging and how it actually goes on to somebody it's got some thin Metris foam we're just kind of gonna build it up from there while Bryce kept on working on the helmet project manager Kylie Clayton who I am forever in debt to because of this had found me a wheel freakin or costume that I got to try on inner fangirl this one's for you good pants oh yeah such an honor I think this may be one of the most exciting things they have ever gotten to do the feeling heavy no it feels great surprisingly comfortable [Music] or diaper oh wow [Music] I think the happiest I've been in a very long time I like the smell smell of happiness clipping dreams and old men yes your socks goes perfectly use that plant it's okay okay we're making a little bit of progress yeah yeah I can probably increase that a bit more just as to make it a little bit easier for you can I put I'll put the neck piece on as well why are you why are you they don't like your shirt looking good yeah really good this is the thing about when you're not allowed to sprout your face you can't think of anything next step is coding all the parts that we've made the softer parts are getting a latex coating while the harder ones are getting covered in a cold cast urethane also did I tell you that I can't stop thinking about scratching my nose when I'm not allowed to scratch my nose yeah that's a thing do you like her [Music] hey hey hey hey hey welcome to the paint shop yeah this is your this is your realm yeah what do you want to do I mean I I'm kind of like going through different photos of mantis shrimp and they all look so different they just can't get their [ __ ] together what they want to look like but I think this is gonna be our muse as a painter that one's kind of Awesome we're quite lucky there's particular urethane loves painting so if you just scuff it up you know dull it down yeah now it's got teeth something for the paint to key into it stick [Music] it's so much fun that's amazing yeah it's so versatile you can get a lot done really quickly really hard to go like even it is but then I also think we're not really trying to get it either if you actually look at nature it's all over the show the more chaos the more randomness they're more real it'll end up looking I'm having such a good time [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] sounds like a very surreal damn all right just ignore this and you turn towards me slightly you're like go in there is that Alright yep can you say oh yeah okay okay yeah how there's that projects finished thanks Simone [Music] [Music] [Music] I guess I'm one of the few lucky ones least I'm not so scared of failing that I won't try [Music] [Music] [Applause] I'm back in San Francisco and this marks the beginning of my life as the owner of a business Manta Stream costume I feel like people should hire us for their birthday parties will come wearing this and eat all the birthday cakes and like punched some chairs so we got a mannequin but it just kept on toppling over on its stand it was just not strong enough so he's just gonna have to live his life sitting down also my friend Mel said he kind of looks like a Gary which I think I agree was so glad to have you on board Gary I think you'll find it very enjoyable to work for our company this is not much of a talker so I really wanted to film a short film with this but I ran at a time at Wetty because it's like a maker amusement park and I just wanted to do all the things I haven't even written the script yet but I think it's gonna be like a really sad movie or like a horror film I haven't decided yet thank you so much - what a workshop the crew that worked on this project are like hands down some of the nicest people I've ever met and I still can't believe that I just got to be there and build something and have all these like incredibly skilled people help out so thanks to everyone there this was truly a dream I didn't know I had come true that could be the title of this whole channel just dreams I didn't know I had coming true also Christian peers who helped design the business mantis shrimp made us these t-shirts because I told you they're the nicest people you can find the teacher in our merch story there's also a bunch of other stuff they're linked in the description if you want to check get out and yeah you know how the saying goes the world is your oyster when you're a businessman to shrimp it's an ancient Swedish program okay bye II [Music] [Music] oh it was a lot [Music]

Channel: Simone Giertz

Views: 1,284,327

Keywords: weta, weta workshop, cosplay, shrimp, mantis shrimp, orc, lord of the rings, legolas, boromir, new zealand, wellington, costume, diy, comic con, gary, gary giertz, plastazote, power filing, foam, latex, urethane

Id: bmoPYnwPKKY

Length: 17min 54sec (1074 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 09 2019