Two geological researchers for the American multinational corporation NTI find an ancient alien laboratory on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. In the lab is an egg-like container which is keeping an alien creature alive. The creature emerges and kills the researchers. Two months later, the geologists' spaceship crashes into the space station Concorde in orbit around Earth's Moon, its pilot having died in his seat.
In the West German ship, they find the egg-like container and the dead bodies of the crew. The creature appears and kills Delambre when she lags behind the escaping group. Fennel goes into shock at the sight and Bryce sedates him. When they return to their own ship, the Americans find that one of the West Germans, Hans Rudy Hofner, has snuck aboard. He tells them his crew was slain by the creature, which was buried with other organisms as part of a galactic menagerie. He proposes returning to his ship to get explosives, but the crew are unwilling to risk it.
The creature's undead victims are controlled by the creature through parasites. Unsupervised in the medbay, Fennel sees the undead Delambre through a porthole and follows her outside. She strips naked, and he stands transfixed while she removes his helmet. He asphyxiates, and then she attaches an alien parasite to his head. Now under alien control, Fennel sends a transmission to his crewmates, inviting them over to the German ship. Hofner and Bryce are sent to get some air tanks for the Shenandoah and stand guard over it, while the rest of the crew go over to the Richter ship. Hofner and Bryce stop over at the menagerie on their way, and are attacked by Delambre. The rest of the crew find Fennel with a bandage on his head to conceal his parasite. Davison insists that medical officer Oliver examine his head, so Fennel has her accompany him to the engineering quarters to feed her to the creature. Davison and Perkins notice Fennel does not sweat and go check on them. They find Oliver has been decapitated by the creature. Perkins blows up Fennel's head with his pistol.
Sladen runs into an infected Hofner. She escapes the ship, and in her haste, only puts on her helmet after exiting. Perkins spots her outside and opens the airlock. Now unconscious, Sladen is carried in by Hofner to lure the others. They fight, and Davison defeats Hofner by ripping off his parasite. The three survivors formulate a plan to electrocute the creature with the ship's fusion modules, which can only be accessed by going through the engineering quarters.
Alarms sound as a creature makes its way through the ship, committing sabotage. Sladen and Davison construct the electrocution trap, while Perkins goes to the computer room to monitor the creature. The creature arrives, and they apparently electrocute it to death. However, when Davison leaves, it captures Sladen.
Davison and Perkins follow her screaming and find her locked inside engineering. Studying the ship's blueprints, they find another entrance to engineering. Perkins lures away the creature while Davison retrieves Sladen. On the way, Perkins locates one of the bombs Hofner mentioned. The creature jumps him. Dying, Perkins attaches the bomb to the creature and sets a countdown so Davison can jettison it through the airlock. It climbs back aboard, however, so Davison tackles it, throwing himself out the airlock. When the bomb fails to explode, Bryce appears and shoots it, which sets it off and kills the creature. She recovers Davison and reunites with Sladen, who dresses Davison's wounds. The trio leaves Titan aboard the West German ship.
In January 1984, William Malone tried to get another project going after working on Scared to Death.[1] Malone and his producer, Bill Dunn, met with a potential backer who wanted to produce a movie like Scared to Death with Malone pitching a detective story called Murder in the 21st Century but the backer didn't believe there were enough exploitative elements and asked for Malone to bring him whatever else he had by the following morning.[1] Malone went back through his files and came across a two-page story synopsis he had written in the late 70s called The Titan Find and after presenting it to the backer, impressing them, Malone was able to acquire the needed funds for the project.[1] Due to the tight budget and lack of lead time the crew wasn't able to secure a studio space, so they repurposed an abandoned industrial plant in Burbank, California with filming beginning in June 25th of that year.[1] Robert Skotak of the L.A. Effects Group handled the visual effects for the film.[1]
Neil Gaiman reviewed Titan Find for Imagine magazine, and described it as "an Alien rip-off, in which brain-sucking monsters severely menace astronauts on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Lots of bone-crunching, oozings, and going into dark cabins on one's own."[3]
At the 12th Saturn Awards, held in 1985, Creature was nominated for Best Horror Film and Best Special Effects by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, but lost both to Gremlins.[4]
Sometime after the film's release, the film fell into the public domain[citation needed] and received numerous VHS and DVD releases. In 2007, Creature was shown on the horror hosted television series Cinema Insomnia.[5] Apprehensive Films later released the Cinema Insomnia version on DVD.[6]
ZBrush is brought into the pipeline to sculpt the primary and secondary forms of the design, testing the visual appeal from a three-dimensional standpoint. ZBrush also serves as a great tool for testing the lighting and mood of the character using KeyShot and creating a simple rig for the creature model for early limb locomotion tests. Ehsan also uses ZBrush for the Polypainting process while considering what the environment of the creature would be and how it would move. The final design is then rendered with KeyShot and composited in Photoshop.
Diving deep into the art direction, Ehsan demonstrates how to create keyframe artwork using real photographic plates and how to set up the lighting for creature shots, discussing everything from camera lens to color harmony. Continuing the art direction, Ehsan explores different design routes, first using ZBrush and Photoshop while offering his professional industry insights. He also uses Maya to set up a quick, non-production joint/skeleton rig and make simple locomotion tests in Maya before rendering with Arnold.
In the final stage of the workshop, Ehsan prepares the model in ZBrush and then bakes maps in Substance Painter before sending the creature to Unreal Engine 5, where he explores other shot designs and set-dressing, mood, and lighting with Lumen to bring the creature to life.
Ehsan Bigloo is a Senior Concept Designer specializing in creatures, characters, armor, costumes, and cinematic shot designs for the entertainment industry. He has worked on least 25 movies and 12 TV shows, including Men in Black: International, IT Chapter Two, Love and Monsters, Dark Phoenix, The Prey, Archive 81, Resident Alien, and Morbius.
At the time of developing the film, I was dealing with some mental health issues and death in my family. I needed an escape. The story in Creature Comfort was really born from my attempt to make sense of the world, to provide a therapeutic experience for myself, and to further my journey into the world of animation.
The film started with the creation of the creature and human characters, and from there, the story evolved naturally. My main goal was to highlight the effects mental health can have on a human being, but most importantly, that no matter the day, good or bad, we can all succumb to the dangers our psyche puts us in. With lots of rewrites, colleague notes, and doubt, I finished the script. I tried to find the perfect partner to help bring this vision to life. On Instagram, I came across the brilliant work of Aiden Whittam, a stop motion animator in the United Kingdom. His work caught my eye because it felt so authentic and unique, unlike anything I had ever seen. I reached out to him and luckily, he wanted to be a part of the project!
And the second semester, production and post, how long was that? And, given how notoriously time-consuming animation is to make, how challenging was it to get everything completed in time?
Once production concluded Coupe Studios, an amazing audio production company in Boulder, Colorado, put the final touches on the film. This was really the first film where I focused heavily on sound design and the impact it can have on the visual language of the film.
Creature Comfort was a semi-finalist at the 2022 Student Academy Awards, a Grand Jury Prize Nominee at the Nashville Film Festival, and an official selection at the 2023 American Documentary and Animation Film Festival and the New Filmmakers Los Angeles. Now, the film is out on Vimeo, where I hope those who watch are impacted the way I was while making it.
This was my first time venturing into the world of stop motion. I have always loved Rankin/Bass and Wallace and Gromit, both being huge inspirations as to why I wanted to start telling stories. I was surprised by how connected I would become with the characters within stop motion. I have worked with 2D characters, but these stop motion characters that you can physically hold really left an impact on me. The textures and overall physicality of the environment also showed me how creative you can be within animation. The possibilities are endless.
Also impressive is the way director Damien LeVeck succeeds at building tension early on. The first 30 minutes serve up a couple of good scares and make the most of the inherent claustrophobia associated with the core cast being trapped indoors during a blizzard. Unfortunately, the narrative becomes tragically overcomplicated in the second and third acts. More complexities are added in with each passing minute, making the proceedings feel muddled and unfocused.
7fc3f7cf58