Jeepers creepers, where'd you get those peepers
The biggest challenge for the project is the creature itself, as the mothman is to have large bat like wings, large red eyes and a large shadowy presence that would take too much time and money to recreate to re-create through stop-motion and i do want to avoid just putting someone in a costume as it would look cheesy and not very believable. Ultimately the most creative way i have decided to represent the mothman are the creatures eyes, as most eye witness accounts for the mothman is its red glowing eyes
The idea is that during scenes in which the mothman is present, it will be watching the main character in the distance coming ever closer for the kill. So to create a truly otherworldly creature staring from afar i decided to look into other movie creatures while looking into what actual moth eyes look like. Starting with The Fly (1958) the eyes are fairly large in size and how much they bulge out of the head with a shiny looking finish and divits in the eyes. This film however is what i want to ultimately avoid for the finished creature as a man in a costume would not look as good. I feel like if the creature is rarely seen and the audience get small glances at the final creature, that their imaginations fill in the gaps to create their own interpretation of the mothman.
Looking into the eyes of moths, much like any other creature the eyes of a moth seem to glow or shine in the dark when a light is shining on them, which looks utterly terrifying coming from a small winged creature and that is the type of fear i am wanting to achieve.
The prototype eyes were made from two battery operated lights and a yellow dog toy that was cut in half and glued atop the lights. For this test i decided to keep the rubber spikes on the ball to help replicate the divits in a moths eyes.
During tests unfortunately in the local dene i live near to they looked like a flashlight in a bush so ultimately decided that i would find a way to try and dim the lights and make the appearance of them look more like intimidating eyes.
The next set of eyes i decided to make more faithful to the mothman mythos by making them red. so by spray painting the eyes with cherry red bike paint i got the dark red colour i was after.
For these eyes however so that they would not look like red flashlights in the dark, i decided to snip the tips off the rubber spikes so that small portions of yellow lights would bleed out to create the divots on the eyes.
finally i decided to do the test in the dark and overall i was happy with this test as you can differentiate between the two eyes instead of them both looking like one light.
Overall i'm very satisfied with how these eyes look like in the end result, possibly in the future ill look into creating a head sculpt to fit the eyes into.