Samurai

The face of the samurai posed a serious challenge for a number of reasons. Not the least of which were creative differences between myself and the director of the show. That, followed with the fact that an American like myself, obviously didn't quite understand some of the things that were important on a sculpture of this sort to the Japanese folks I was working with.

What we were faced with was me trying to design something I didn't understand, and a bunch of informed Japanese trying to change the design in ways that weren't possible. We eventually managed to reach a compromise and it all came together quite satisfactorily.

As you can see from the image, a serious effort was made to capture the fierceness of a samurai warrior. We spent quite a lot of time experimenting with facial expressions. Several attempts at facial features were tossed aside until we found something everyone was happy with.

The director was being quite picky about the face, so making plans for that, he asked that the crew work on the face during the training and practice sessions in order to get a preview that he could think about for a while. It ended up being changed far more than expected before it was over. In fact, the original face was even a different color. When we started out we were very concerned about the color matching a skin tone as closely as possible. Later, it was decided to switch to the kabuki look (white face) seen on this page.

While the dimensions of the sculpture were mentioned above, the numbers seem to have very little impact on most people. In fact, to be honest, even as the designer of the figures, despite the fact that I was the one that did all of the calculations for balloon usage, the shear size of it was still rather overwhelming. As it started to take shape, I looked for ways to demonstrate it's hugeness. I think this picture of the samurai's hand does a good job.

I mentioned above the difficulty I had in understanding Japanese art. I reviewed books and web sites with images of samurais as well as other scenes to get a taste of what the staff would be looking for. The production company also provided me with a number of drawings and photos of what they wanted to see in this sculpture. After all of that, I envisioned a samurai in armor to match the fierce facial expressions they had asked for. Instead, what they wanted was a more gentle look in clothing; a nicely patterned kimono.

Kimono aside, this was a warrior, and he needed the ability to fight his mortal enemy. Therefore, a weapon was needed. All of the photos and drawings I had seen pictured a Samurai holding a spear or a sword. I chose a sword since the original plan was to show motion in the final sculpture. By using a sword, the samurai could actually slice the head off the demon. That final special effect ended up not happening, but we stuck with the sword anyway.

Assembling the pieces of the sculpture was quite a chore. The head, which was the first piece made in the practice sessions, was the very last thing to be placed in the entire construction. Positioning was therefore a challenge. I wanted nothing more than to see it in place as soon as possible. The director wanted to create a sense of accomplishment by ending with the single most important piece of the structure with all of the TV cameras rolling. That only made the task harder, and admittedly, more dramatic as the crews and other TV people started to show up and watch. Of course, that kept me in a panic with my watch in my hand the whole time. At least, upon completion, it had the look that everyone had hoped for after days of discussions and arguments.