Mimicfx

Ai or not ai. That's the question.
But before we dive into that, let me first thank my fantastic crew for bringing this octopus to live. Because yes, the octopus is not ai. Not real either, because it's rubber, but you get my drift. A lot of work, by real people was done to make this creature. A combination of old and new techniques, like traditional clay sculpting, but also digital zbrush sculpting. Traditional moulding, but also 3D printing.

TRULY NAKED a movie by Muriel d'Ansembourg
Octopus designer and supervisor: Rogier Samuels
3D model: and
3D printing and animateonics: .f.mensink
Workshop crew:
vos

Intern Timofey Grodetskiy and
Puppeteers:
Rogier Samuels
Julia Warmerdam
Stephan Vos

So about ai. The botom picture was made in my workshop when the paintjob was finished, ready to be packed to travel to set in Belgium. You can still see the rope holding up the back of the octopuses head, if you look closely. Original picture, nothing changed, no ai.
The top picture has an ai background. I prompted to keep the octopus untouched, and use the lightsources of the lamps and turn them into men with tourches and place everything on a beach.

So the ethical question is: can we use ai for this?
As long as it isn't used to change or better the work itself? And with a mention of what it has changed? Should we? Knowing ai needs vasts amounts of power to feed datacenters. Vast amounts of water, cooling these centers. Should we embrace it like we have with other technological advances like zbrush and 3D printing? Using it as one more tool in our kit. Or should we stay away?
It is something I haven't got a straight answer to myself. And I'm not trying to start a never ending discussion in this post, but it is good to think about it.
So for this one I flicked the ai label on. Eventhough it is only particially ai.

The next post, if you took the effort to read this far, will be a BTS clip how we made this octopus. No ai in that one. Promise.

# octopus

Here is a teaser close-up of something we made for 'Truly Naked' from director Muriel d'Ansembourg. In cinemas now!
We shot this in 2023. Big team effort, as always. More pictures to follow as are the credits for my crew.

Evil Dead Burn. In theatres July 10.
Last year I spend 10 weeks working on this in New Zealand. Small but great prosthetic team under the guidance of HMU and prosthetic designer Jane O'Kane and Prosthetic codesigner and supervisor
It will be bloody!

TBT: The Matrix Resurrections. Sculpture of Neo's body with my focus on the organs, Lisa Riegel doing an amazing head and .eusebi masterfully sculpting the right arm. I think
pitched in tying it all together.
All done in Berlin for my friends
The crew consisted of a lot of talented people doing a lot of great work. Unfortunately most of it did not make it into the final cut.

Title: Koolhoven presenteert: Binary.
For
Actress
Director David-Jan Bronsgeest

Special Make-up Effects


Special Make-up Designer
Rogier Samuels

Mouldmaking
vos

Wigmaker


Hairwork


Additional work


On set work
Rogier Samuels

Interns/ stagaires
Marloes van den Brink
Tim Grodetskíy