Maurice Carvajal's Balawis
After graduating from college, I joined a start-up company owned by Maurice Carvajal, a special effects director who brought his Hollywood experience to the Philippines with the purpose of modernizing the creature and prosthetics special effects used for its entertainment industry. Those days, it was hard to get investors or film companies that would shell out the budget needed to create high grade effects work for a feature film. It was a hard ordeal for the company and for most of us in the craft, but for all its worth, we learned the value of innovation and tenacity.
The puppet head was cable operated utilizing aluminum bars, rods, bicycle parts and accessories. I was usually the puppeteer on set operating the mouth and eyes while an assistant operated the ears and moving spikes.
At first the story required a creature the size of a medium sized dog, but the producers wanted the creature to be bigger, so it was decided that the monster would be a combination of puppetry and a stunt guy in a suit.
The whole rubber suit was heavy and was worn by a 4'9" performer. There were two sets of it where one was used for beauty or close-up shots and the other was for stunts.
The project being a B-movie, we had to resort to using what ever is available in the local market, be it for key sculpture, or animatronics and even for the rubber skin. The only high grade stuff we had that I could remember was the Pros-aid and slime.
Mid Paint job to finished puppet
Other requirements were making mummified victims of the creature and I was assigned in creating the prop heads.
In the movie, the creature would hunt its victims and suck them dry until they are all wrinkled up and somewhat mummified.
First time making rubber hand puppets
One of the film's major characters was going to fall victim to the creature which requires us to make a full head cast of the actor. Unfortunately, the actor was claustrophobic and I had to copy him by sculpting from zero.
This movie was a project where I learned tons of skills such as concept art, storyboarding, sculpting, molding, prosthetic make-up effects, etc.
Freshly drained victim. It doesn't look much without slime and blood.
The occasional prop extremities