Sibling Rivalry...?

Some time ago, my Rubber Balls collaborators Jon Rist and Ian Buchan asked if I could make - wait for it - a talking belly creature for a short film they were planning. The upshot was that I found myself one day slathering Ian's midriff with a load of soft-soap mould release, and then bandaging him up like an accident victim, so I could produce a mould of said body section.

From this I made a hard polyurethane foam 'plug' conforming to the shape of Ian's belly. Slap a load of clay on that, sculpt a weird face into it, fling a ton of plaster onto that and voila! You end up with an open mould of the belly creature, from which a latex skin is made. Using foam sheet cut into shape, I made a substructure for that onto which I attached a 'chassis' bearing cable-operated mechanisms to operate the creature's eyes (left and right movements) and mouth, the lower jaw being sprung and capable of moving up and down.

Although appearing to be a radical departure from my usual subjects,  the belly-brother's face was modelled vaguely after Ian's features, my concept of it being that it was kind of a Siamese Twin gone wrong...

Anyway, here's the film:

And here are some photos which are, hopefully, fairly self-explanatory (mainly because I can't be bothered to explain them)...