Box dayyyy!!!!! Steve LOVES his ALL New 25-inch Ultimate Bruce 3D Big Mama Enraged Attack Pose Shark! Since everyone wanted her with her mouth posed opened a hair wider we redesigned the master to save 2 hours "reposing" work on every single copy. We ended up seriously lucking out when Romain Neophyte was gifted ALL NEW EXCELLENT Reference materials of the Bruce 3D Studio Prop and shared them with us during the refit. Every scale square inch of our master was refit to match those INCREDIBLE NEW materials. Keep an eye on Roamain's Jaws 3D fansite for those photos and so MUCH MORE at the end of the month. The 25-inch Ultimate Bruce Shark is currently being refit and will be re-released along with the fully redesigned Ultimate Brucette shark in the next several weeks. All of the sharks in the 1/12 scale 25-inch long Ultimate Bruce Shark Collector's Set are being refit with all fins molded on and increased levels of details and other upgrades. And they will be more affordable than EVER! While the rest of the collector world faces inflation and is paying $799 for 24-inch Polystone Godzilla statues from the big name companies we at SCO have found major ways to make our sharks better, more detailed, out of far superior materials! And now we've found ways to make them even more affordable than before! We are also just about to re-release the all NEW re-designed and upgraded 1/6 scale desktop Action Bruce Bust shark sets. At least one bust for every film shark, and more... It all takes time and major investment but we're doing it and right at the release point. ** The first NEW Bust is next, maybe even within the next week or two! A Huge THANK YOU to Steve and to Romain and to John Putch! ** The Clear Acrylic Display Stand Shown in the Photos above is Not Included **
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I reprint this private letter as it answers some common questions that we have been getting the last few weeks as we redesign our sale's site and release our all new 2015 Shark collectibles:
**************************************** Hi Colin, Thank you for the very kind letter. I am between things and will answer as fully as I can. And Eric is a great friend, any friend of his is a friend of mine too. We are currently reworking all the 25-inch Ultimate Sharks. They will be available in the coming weeks as we get them done, molded, and assorted tasks completed such as paint-masks, photo-shoots, figuring out correct rpms etc.. They will be slightly more affordable, detail levels greatly increased, all fins molded on and a few other cool changes. They will be numbered and limited edition runs although we have not settled on all details due to another "floating" start date on a film pre-production yet to be nailed down. We replace molds as we fill orders when I feel they are getting long in the tooth. I like the last shark collectible owner to have the same crisp detail as the first since this is what our photos advertise, and how I feel business should be done. It’s what we want so this is what we try to provide. Our sharks are not brittle Polystone [a.k.a. "floor sweepings"] but we roto-cast each on our own homemade equipment out of pure-undiluted resins. Very high quality and very expensive, but worth every penny. We use many resin types in many layers; more so with the larger sharks getting metal or wood spines also depending on their needs. They are also backed by an extremely high density resin foam as well. As we learn of new materials and techniques we implement them. Our goal is for our sharks to be inherited or at least to end up in antique stores. We made them well back in 2009 when we started this shark thing, but today’s sharks are much thicker, heavier and made in many more layers with vastly improved resins. Yes, we can certainly place you on a contact list. In fact I would like to post this letter on our Facebook and Sales site Blog as it answers many questions that have been common these last few weeks. I am thinking that we need to perhaps mass email all our current contacts as we release our 2015 sharks in the coming weeks. We are reminding that although we are working hard to list all our 2015 sharks for order or at least Pre-order that we are facing a floating start date on a film unless it is pushed back yet again. As we have done in the past for the SyFy channel FX work, when it becomes too much we’ll turn off the ‘Buy Now’ buttons on the sales site for whatever time is needed to fulfill the film’s needs while filling all current due orders as we have done in the past. I wish the film-world was run by those that planned further ahead so that we could know for sure if and when this may be needed this year. But all that order sharks get their sharks. Our first 25 inch Ultimate Bruce to be re-released perhaps even next week will be the All New Revised Ultimate Bruce 3D Enraged Big Mamma Attack pose shark. We released her months back but everyone wanted the mouth posed open-wider so instead of continuing to spend hours extra on every single shark I remodeled the prototype to have all the correct facial expressions of the final scenes Big Mamma in her most severe attack pose. Romain Neophyte of the Jaws 3D fansite will be revealing his #1 Custom Edition with Joe Alves at the End of Feb at his Jaws and Jaws 3 Special Screening in France. This became a much longer letter than intended but I think answers your questions and should make for a good shark update to FB and our site. Thank you for writing us. Contact us as needed and we will contact anyone else that wants a heads up in the email of our upcoming releases too. I look forward to building your shark and it’s great to meet a new shark friend! Mike SCO The 2013-2014 Editions of the 25-inch Ultimate Bruce Shark in 1/12 scale AND the 2013-2014 Edition of the 25-inch Ultimate Brucette "ScarFace" Shark in 1/12 scale are now closed and considered completed limited edition runs.
Stay Tuned... The ALL NEW 2015+ Editions of the Ultimate Bruce and Ultimate Brucette "ScarFace" Shark are to be RELEASED for Pre-Order February /March 2015. Featuring Entirely NEW Models, NEW POSE, NEW Features, an all NEW Level of Historically Scale Accurate Realism, AND most exciting of all ALL NEW FRIENDLIER PRICES! Check back often for more details as we are ready to release them. Mike & Cathy Schultz Well it looks like ALL December 2014 sharks landed safely to happy new friends and customers!
This November/December brought us a GREAT FLOOD of very-last-second orders several times greater than any previous year to date. So many orders that we could barely get them all done and sent out in time. A Crazy amount of work to accomplish. But like little shark-Elves we worked day and night everyday without stopping...SHWOOO, what a TON of WORK! I would like to report that we are taking a few days off but I cannot. It looks like several more weeks of work to finish these latest commissions and then we get to finalize and post up some of our ALL NEW 2015 SHARK CATALOG ADDITIONS!!!! More on the new products and prices as we have a chance to make them a priority. I wish to close out our 2014 reports by saying a heartfelt and honest THANK YOU to all 2014 customers for being so kind and encouraging and complimentary to us this year. Thank you all for making Shark City Ozark so successful! And I implore you my friends, PLEASE be careful partying on New Years Eve. So Happy New Years! Mike & Cathy The 2014 Edition Run of our HUGE End Scenes Battle Bruce Bust is now closed.
The ALL NEW 1/6 Scale "Final Moments" Battle Bruce Shark Action Scene Bust[s] are slated for Pre-Order in Quarter 1 of 2015. Other Releases for Q1 to Q3 2015 are the HUGE 1/6 Scale Scar Face-Brucette Bust, The 3-D Bruce Bust, and the Revenge Bruce Bust all in Massive 1/6 Scale. That’s right, a completed 1/6 scale Collector’s Bust Set! We also want to mention our planned release of the full-length Revenge Bruce which as you know is the final Sequel Shark completing our 25-inch long, 1/12 Scale Ultimate Bruce Shark Collector Sets. We will also finally be releasing yet more Great White Shark Maquettes as well as an all new large-scale Megalodon Shark and the most Reel-Life accurate Replica to date of the Alien-like Deep Sea Goblin Shark! In Addition we will be adding the ENORMOUS 1/2 scale Bruce Shark Dorsal Fin to our 2015 Catalog which is perfectly modeled after an actual FULL-SIZED dorsal that we were granted not long ago. As all shark fans know, the 1/2 scale of the Bruce Sharks' is actual "Life-Sized" for an every-day Great White Shark! All the impressive size and accuracy of the real thing that can still fit and be displayed almost anywhere! * We have quite a few prototypes to finally release as well as several other VERY SURPRISING products. Be on the lookout every week here for News on our other 2015 Releases. Mike & Cathy Schultz sharkcityozark.com Perhaps my previous post was not worded as fully and crystal clear as it possibly could have been due to some of the email we have been getting. When we announced that we are considering ending the runs on some of the more complicated sharks, that is all we meant, nothing more or less.
All friends that have orders in for any and all sharks will of course receive what they have ordered from us as always. Just as we have honored thousands of orders all these last many years. Nobody has ever or will ever go sharkless that has ordered from us. This makes sense, right? In fact we plan to sell far more sharks next year than we did this year. If and when we do discontinue any particular shark product this only means that we will remove it from our sales page. Naturally all orders of that product will of course be filled as always, business as usual. Our goal last post was to announce that some shark products are in consideration for being retired or replaced, just like any and all other businesses do with whatever products that they carry or make. We plan and hope for 2015 to be our best SHARK year ever, and we are thinking and planning ahead to make it so! Sorry for any fuss or miscommunication in this area. I steer everyone to our Happy Customer Feedback page. Keep in mind that most people get their sharks and love them but some are like me and like to write letters and take photos and share their joy. That's what our Happy Customer page is all about! Thank you friends. Having a fun time in the SHARKSHOP today!
We are working on getting ALL sharks that are currently Paid-in-Full for 2014 finished and ready to ship. It will take us a few weeks but we are ready to be this far ahead. Our plan is to then spend the rest of December on 3 other Scheduled Private Commissions. In the weeks to come we will be announcing which sharks we will be discontinuing from our catalog. A set of hard decisions to face. But in the end we can only make so many sharks per week and the most profitable sharks will be the keepers. *If you still want a shark shipped in time for placing it under your tree as the greatest shark-gift ever for your loved one then I beg you to make contact with us this week. These are large and complex builds and we cannot possible create, complete and ship 2 dozen sharks just one week before Christmas again like we did last year. We'll work with you as much as humanly possible but we need clear communication and mega-heads up. Thank you all for your Friendship! Mike Hi everyone!
Well here we are just 2 weeks after releasing our second new shark this year, can you believe it? And that is between 29 private commissions and FX for one Indy film to boot! We have been getting a TON of emails asking us about putting out other sharks. Hey, thank you before I continue on. Thank you for seeing that we love what we do and apparently have something absolutely awesome going here, so thank you for asking. Now; The top five sharks asked for are the Revenge Bruce in both Ultimate Collector's set scale as well as 3 foot, the Bruce 3D in 3 foot, the Brucette 2 in 3 foot and 1/6 Bust, as well as 1/6 busts for the rest of the sequel sharks. The letters all ask something like, 'Will you market X-Shark?" The answer is that we have prototypes for a lot more than just these posted here, believe me. But who knows what the future holds? Right now we are waiting to see if we are picked up for a Major shark film Q1 to Q2 of 2015. If this happens then we won't be making any sharks privately for anyone not currently on our books save for this major motion picture for all of 2015 at least. We can only do so much honestly. I ask my friends to walk a minute in my shoes. Would you continue to work 10 to 14 hours each day for 7 days a week just as we have since May of 2010 if you did not have to do it? A major motion picture released in theaters would mean more than just hitting the bigtime for us. We could slow down and finally do some things for ourselves for once. Pretty dang day-dreamy-tempting ain't it? Who wouldn't want to ease up if they could? So my advice is honest, if you see a few sharks that we currently offer that you want then act now before it is too late. No bull. My gosh, we even offer Interest-Free payment plans for Pete's sake, everything shy of some ministry to be a little funny about how easy we make things. Write us and just see what we can do with you if you will stick to some simple payment plan. And after talking to a great many happy customers I have found that ALL found that they had more than enough expendable cash sitting around that they were throwing away weekly at eating out every day and at sports every week. No Bull, many have told me that they found the cash for their shark when they realized that limited runs really meant 'limited runs'.That's not too good an idea for us to post it up either, we only eat out maybe once every 2 or 3 months ourselves! Those that want the real thing enough end up with one on their shelves. By the hundreds! And I remind again that we are already working to decide which sharks we are discontinuing at the end of this year in a few months. And as you know once we discontinue something we have to honor that. We can only do so much like anyone else. Every time we discontinue a shark we get waves of pleading emails for months begging us to release to them just one more because they wished that they would have acted when they could. Look, I have more work than I can accomplish everyday so this is no attempt at pressuring anyone into buying any shark. No bull. What this is, is our kind attempt to remind that we don't gimmick and we don't bluff. No subliminal messages or gags here either. This is what we are doing and this is what we may have come to pass in 2015. Hey, I could even drop dead again like in Oct of 2009 for all anyone knows, right? Nobody knows what the future holds, but we are sharing what we are looking forward to next year. If this motion picture survives Hollywood's funding roller-coaster then we will be deactivating our "Buy Now" buttons on our sales site. If the film is postponed than maybe we will release another shark if we have time between commissions. Which shark I cannot truthfully tell you yet. We just want everyone we call friend or customer to be in the loop is all. And this is as in-the-loop as we can be for everyone. Thank you all for your care concerns and for writing us. Of course we'll share more as we figure things out and as things come to pass. For now the All New Ultimate Bruce 3D is a HUGE success and we are still working daily to fill orders WAaaayyy ahead of target dates. Have a good day friends! Mike One dozen >SPOILER< observations of this AWESOME photo.
A.K.A. That seriously long article about that shark photo: For the production of our many filmshark collectibles and honestly from the experience of making so many actual scale mechanical sharks since I was a teen, I think that I have scrutinized every Jaws shark photo that so far has been released publicly. And many not ever seen by others. I mean seriously scrutinized too. In my day growing up there was no Google or Youtube to detail for you anything, let alone every facet of Creature Creation. You just learned by research and by doing. Sure you daydreamed, but you did stuff practically. And in my day you researched at a library and poured over and studied everything Starlog, Fangoria, Cinemagic and whatever a few other publications had to offer. To learn about materials I studied encyclopedia’s, Firefighter manuals and labtech journals. To learn the FX trade I examined photos of ILM [Industrial Light & Magic] artists working on the latest Star Wars or Sci Fi film. And I mean studied under a magnifying glass. What is that tool, what kind of paint is that, what material is that made from, what’s in the garbage can or on the floor? That’s what you studied to learn trade secrets. While others had their videotapes all stressed from pausing all the saucy scenes from 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High', my stressed tapes were all from The Making of Documentaries like Star Wars and the like. And of course you had to experiment to get the hands on side. If it didn't look or move right then it just wasn't done yet. That’s how you learn, by doing. If you needed latex rubber you had to buy it under some industrial name found only by trial and error. For rubber I often had to use a craft product called ‘Safety Back”. Sold at hardware stores and used to paint the back of rugs to keep them from slipping on tile floors. That’s what you had to do to make Stop Motion Animation dinosaurs, monster masks, severed fingers and mechanical sharks back in the late 70’s and 80’s. Either off the shelf or you had to risk the majority of your profits from your lawn mowing route on some iffy product quickly blurted at you by some corporate salesman too busy to deal with you over the phone. Products that sounded more like naval ship designations and NEVER came with good directions. I tell you it is a miracle anyone matured into the FX field it seemed so cloaked in unknowns. Here is where I plug Burman Foam Latex and thank Sandy Burman for all her in-depth and patient help well over 20 years ago. She spent more time schooling me on materials and what was used for the Jaws sharks than anybody before or since then. You modern FX practitioners owe great thanks to trailblazers like Sandy for bringing those incredible FX materials from the labs and corporate factory closets out to the weekend warriors of Practical FX like I considered myself to be. Anyway, such an upbringing makes you work for it and live it. Today my wife and I watch CSI often. And watching these guys only reminds me of all my years of actually using CSI-like techniques to glean every bit of data possible from every Jaws or FX photo that I was exposed to. Today thankfully I can take a new Jaws photo into Photoshop and torture out of it the secrets it holds in minutes instead of days. Today it is so much easier to stand on the backs of giants and reach greater heights, as has so well been said on film. So the following is the kind of material I see when I look at a Jaws shark photo. I cannot think of many photos that I cannot deduce which shark, when in the production, how old or fresh is that particular skin or paintjob, which new skin or backing experiment are they testing, which shark filming set-up is this and what other scenes was this particular shark and set-up used for etc.. Don’t let me ruin anything for you if you don’t dig this level of fandom. As if this wasn’t long enough as-is, now for the almost-main course! Foremost I have 3 main points to make. Most Major Point first - #1 Photo credit to Richie Helmer & Jim Beller, thank you for sharing with us all these incredible photos! #2 The following are my personal observations and opinions based on my study and FX work experience. Nothing here is dogmatically fact or meant to make me look any better than anyone else etc, and I only share for the sake of having some fun among friends online. If I get a detail wrong then let’s all laugh about it and not get upset about it. So no drama from the peanut gallery or any would-be armchair Jaws generals. I share with a smile and I come in peace. Read no further if you are just looking for trouble or a flaw to pry on. #3 There was a long and dreary age before the days of Facebook wherein feuds were fought over rights to every single Jaws-Shark photo. And rarely, and I mean RARELY would you see more than one or two new photos online for a year’s worth of image searches. Many a friendship was strained or broken based on who had which photos. A few odd types actually sought the attention of having but never sharing what others wanted. Something unfortunately common to all manor of fan circles that I know of. The various forums could be quite a Soap Oprah at times. That’s the way it was and to ignore it endangers the new openness that social media has to offer. My point is for all of us to learn from the past and not to repeat it. Such wisdom that is only followed by the wisest of men in any age. So wise that it could even save nations if enough folks listened. Rare is it that wisdom is appreciated let alone collected or followed. Anyway, today with the advent of social media and the numerous recent publishing's of several new books and videos us Finfans are practically bathing in Jaws Shark reference materials! There are still a few hoarders out there with their selfish excuses for not sharing with their fellow Jaws fans; however those that have shared have more than made up for those petty types with a virtual avalanche of never-been-shared before materials. And those that share are far better people than those selfish hoarder types if you ask me, simply based on their expressed level of care for their peers in other matters. I say from my experience these things. So, my personal thanks to you real authors and publishers of all of this incredible material that you have provided everyone today! You guys did not just pretend to be writing a book to gather all these rich materials, you actually went trough all the risk and trouble to literally publish your books and videos. And you have shared them with us all. The few remaining and complaining hoarders should learn from and emulate such contributions to the fan community. I am grateful to you, and well done social-media! Achievements unlocked! Now on with my bloated opinions! 2. Rare Bruce photo showing his eye Looking forward. Note the clear protective bubble over the eye. There is also a skin separation-depth to the eye socket around the eye bubble that has not been replicated by other artist’s other than us. A detail perhaps only noted by those that work mechanical sharks in the FX industry. The devil is in the details and the eye is one of the first places any beholder’s own eyes go to first, so you don’t want to get the eyes wrong even if the subject is all about the jaws, am I right? On rare shark-descending shots when the water is rising quickly inside Bruce’s hollow head, all the escaping air pressure has nowhere to go but to vent out forcefully around the unsealed eyes and upper lip area. Depending on shark angle of descent that is. Yes, one open side or the other on the platform sharks helped to equalize the air to water pressure inside, but not far enough up into the face and head on ‘drop-down’ sinking shots like the chumming pop-up sequences or sinking back out of the cabin scene. For our SyFy mechanical Ghostshark we sealed around the eyes and of course being a much smaller shark the releasing air pressure was next to nil. And I strongly point out that without the ground-breaking Jaws sharks back then, that we lucky FX workers today would be stumbling in the dark learning it all the hard way from scratch today! 3. Teeth heavily carved into that ‘Ragged/Jagged’ wilted flower-petal look mostly notable in the end scenes. In the famous boatshed footage taken by Ron and Val Taylor you can see some of our favorite men working on placing teeth into a Platform Shark, and one is whittling down with a knife an upper tooth for placement into the upper jaw. Notice how far onto the teeth that the rubber gore is actually spread. Many things were tested to hold the teeth in besides the rubber material itself, things like wiring them into the jaw-frame, to even trying at least 2 different types of glue. What kind of glues were those? 4. This is an open-sided Platform shark. The open side is on the opposite side of the shark here as clearly seen in many other behind the scenes photos of this particular shark-set-up. This image is not flipped as some have speculated as one clue clearly being the eye scar on the proper side facing the camera. Over the years to avoid watermarking it became common practice to mirror images or crop them oddly to track who was sharing photos without permission, but yet deceptively claiming credit for them. We all know the false-identity behind that decades long saga. As noted in other posts this is the Sink-on-demand Fiberglass and framework Orca 2. The Estuary Red-Rowboat attack was filmed here very close to this time and I have been told with this same Platform Shark whose paint, gore and tooth placements are very close but not exact matches to it; as well as the brief scene of the shark leaping into the camera as filmed from the primary-Orca’s pulpit. Some of these shark pop-up scenes were shot out of film-sequence-order during this same shark set-up, which was rare for this film as almost all the rest was shot in-order as far as the shark was concerned, save some pickups, longshots and of course the 4th full Bruce, the Studio Tank Hooper sharkcage attack sequences shot back at the studio much later. To explain in further detail would triple this article’s length. And besides that, Jim’s book details lots of this clearly anyway, so why dwell? 5. Note the gray & white demarcation line is far darker and more softly airbrushed. It is nearly a straight line and not a jagged hard-line stencil as earlier in the film. There are no two scenes in the entire movie wherein you will see the exact same demarcation line+ paint+gore+teeth arrangements or wounds, period. Paint did not stick on that skin any better than a politician’s promises today! I could write a book on the skin and paint alone, trust me. When I was a kid I had to make skins and paints from the craziest off-the-shelf materials, and there was only the local library for research, no Google! My personal opinion is that it is a miracle that they were able to make a paint to work with the raw materials available back then for a synthetic skin. Especially for a flexible ocean prop! Today a DIY weekend-warrior can order anywhere from at least several dozen superior elastomers online. Back then they were forced like the A-Team to adapt from off the shelf materials in extraordinary ways to fabricate these skins and paints. Imagine trying to adapt industrial materials for high-end FX work! Now imagine trying to make it all work together in-between scenes out there on the water with some of the worst weather and even some of the worse attitudes in Hollywood leering at you! 6. Upper jaw is dropped pulling upper lip forward and changing contour and profile shape of the entire snout. This explains the odd dimple in the snout and the difference in the nostril contour details that still seem to be confusing other artists today. This also pulls down and slightly stretches out the upper lip. This in turn widens the cheek area above the jowls on lower-jaw closing, and draws the skin back in on the reverse movement during the opening stroke. This can be seen in frame by frame study, or if you have made over a dozen mechanical sharks like we have then you see it all the time. The face and skull contour changes are even far more exaggerated when the upper skull is in the lowered position. There is a core shape-frame under the skin, but that skin dynamically buckles and budges all over with movement and especially with air pressure rising or dropping inside. Just another detail that contemporary artists have not understood not having actually made or operated mechanical sharks as we have. Which explains the loss of accuracy in other models wherein they are trying to copy conflicting contours and details from totally different sharks in different poses but trying to make them blend into one particular work. This is art, yes. But this is not scale model work, nor historic preservation and replication. Not even close. Which explains why artistic sharks look o.k. from one angle but nothing like historic Bruce from any other angles. Art is art, but scale models are precise all around. Our SCO sharks are mathematically accurate scale model replicas based on over 10 GB of painstakingly measured data of the location sharks. And more so than this, our models discriminate between the different sharks and their changes throughout filming. Of course my family soundly believes that we make the very best sharks. There is nothing wrong with any artist or athlete doing their best, working their hardest, and believing in their works. None of any of it possible of course had it not been for the original masters providing us great material to copy from! 7. Inner mouth details and throat are removed and/or secured back further than normal for Quint and FX access. Padding altered on lower jaw interior and exterior and tongue area as seen in other photos of this sequence. Note the Jowl has been flattened and blended closer to the face on the outer-rear cheek area, far more than in other shots or sharks. This through additional padding from behind and extra material thickly blended in on the skin’s surface. I am still not sure if this is a cosmetic change or a rip-repair. The same for the lower jaw area where it meets the jowl. It has been padded-out far more to bring it out to meet the jowl so less gap is noticeable in-between. My guess is someone didn’t love the Bruce-jowl-look like we all do today. In my opinion had any of the sequel sharks had the strong-jaw-look of these pronounced jowls that the original Bruce had, and his awesomely realistic high-detail paintjob, then those movies would have been far more successful! My proof? Jaws 2 had great actors, and good everything else for script, plot and action but the shark was no Jaws 1 Bruce... Had the first Jaws shark looked like any of the sequel sharks then I doubt the fever would have caught on much nor been anything near what it has been for 40 years! That first shark made the franchise if you ask me! 8. Many teeth missing, many are smaller here on lower jaw than in other scenes. Maybe low on replacement teeth that day? Note those teeth arrangements, there were a base of 7 types and sizes spread throughout the mouth. On average 82 to 86 teeth in all can be counted, depending on the shark and the scene. Also note their relation to the shark’s face details. The teeth were placed into the gums, not sculpted in as some of the late sequel sharks had [upper jaws]. So their position as well as the type of tooth placed in were very transient all throughout filming. Our SCO sharks are all accurate right down to the correct teeth, the right sizes and numbers and even the exact placement locations and setting angles for the exact shark modeled. There’s 86 more reasons why we think our sharks are the best right there. 9. Paint job is much darker above. All early sharks were much lighter in gray and had much less black above. Many missing paint spots around face. The bare skin color was an amber to yellow color depending on how much water was absorbed or drained from the rubber. If you see yellow-ish spots in the frame by frames, and you will, that was a paint rub off spot. Amazing how well they hid these problems for us in-between scenes with everything you can imagine like grease paint and spray paint. Often but not always, but often if it looks like a wound then that was some last minute gore to hide a fresh skin tear or paint rub-off. Absolutely brilliant if you want my opinion! 10. Pectoral fin is not blended to body at all and forward tear between facing fin and gills hidden by gore. We replicate this fit-discrepancy feature in our Bruce and Brucette sequel sharks. The more the shark’s skin got waterlogged the worse the fit between the pectoral fins and body got. In the end when gore could not hide the ragged gaps then they were just kept out of frame, underwater or covered by debris. The 4th Bruce, the Studio Tank Bruce that attacks Hooper in his cage was the only shark to have his pectoral fins fairly well blended to the body for shooting. This because it was detailed in place in the tank before water was added. Otherwise with pectoral fins on they were like trying to move Cessna airplanes with their enormous wingspans! So we copy those pectoral fin-fit problems instead of hiding them fearing that an incorrect public opinion may cost us sales. Face it, if we tried to model based on public opinion then we’d never make anything that looked like historic Bruce because everyone has their own opposing mental perceptions of how they see Bruce. We just measure and compare the gigs of reference material and leave the emotions out of the equation. Something from our providing museum displays era that I believe makes these sharks possible, let alone superior. Again fellow artists, we of course feel our sharks are best and that is normal & healthy. 11. Jowl heavily adapted and re-padded for mouth to close further than sculpted and neck area skin patched in and padded/blended to allow for extra skin stretch range for the closing lower jaw action. Originally the shark was sculpted with the mouth wide open. They found out the hard way, as I did when I made my first mechanical rubber shark at age 11, that if the mouth is sculpted wide open then you have a world of trouble closing it properly in a rubber puppet copy. For one, the skin on the neck will tear in several places trying to stretch far enough for the connected lower jaw to swing upward as it closes. For another, the cheeks bow outwards as the jaw closes. Every additional skin pulled from those first molds had to be heavily modded with extra stretchy fabric backing and basically re-sculpted with rubber and fabric around the jowl-lower jaw connection and neck area. This is why sequel sharks never looked the same. Afterwards the heads were always sculpted and molded with skulls lowered and mouths nearly closed all the way, and with the neck area more streamlined to help flex that area more smoothly when the mouth opened, instead of bagging and buckling like the original shark’s necks did. 12. Harpoon is off angle to other shots. Harpoons moved around a little bit depending on the shark used. Nothing major unless you are making a shark to sell and are claiming it as screen accurate. With Bruce screen accurate must be nailed down to which shark, when in filming and which filming set up. Because he was the grand experiment in the works and all while the camera‘s rolled! And Bruce broke ground and laid a foundation that without him and his A-Team of brilliant FX tradesmen would have left us without almost 4 decades of the fantastical creatures that those Jaws location educations granted us all. Only life begets life and it is those Practical Creatures like Jaws, and because of Jaws, that start and maintain fan communities. Please don’t take any of these comments as ‘Nit-Picks’, or some armchair general pride-fest. I love these film sharks to death and they are the main reasons why we have today such awesome practical effects that are so darn memorable such as Jabba the Hut or all of the practical and life-like animatronic dinosaurs from Jurassic Park. Not to mention the practical FX werewolves, Tremor’s worms and other practical wonders. All who owe their existence[es] to ALL the various Bruce sharks, in more than just my opinion. Ask us and we’ll declare that our sharks look so close to the historical film sharks as we appreciate and love them! We have recreated them in static display and for private commissions and for premiere films in mechanical form. So we know them inside and out and feel that we connect and understand them better than most people, save the incredibly wise and talented men that created and maintained them like Marty Milner and Cal Acord. So don’t take these observations as picking out flaws, but take them as we share them. And how I mean to share them no matter how anyone reads this is this: I am in total awe of what they accomplished for us all. Say what you want about script and actors and directors etc, had those sharks not looked so undeniably monstrous and worked so very visually well then Jaws would have been NOTHING like it turned out to be. Our hats are off to Cal Acord and Marty Milner and the other FX men behind the real success of Jaws, those first sharks! The sharks are the real story if you ask me, and that’s my 2¢. Mike V. Schultz All Rights Reserved © sharkcityozark.com Less than 7 to 10 days away from releasing our all new 25-inch long Ultimate 3D Bruce Shark Collector's set of Sequel Sharks! We still have a ton of work to complete her all the way, and we are actively finishing over a dozen orders as well as four different commission displays. But I think we can do it.
Did you know that this is actually the THIRD model I have made for the Ultimate Bruce 3D shark?! Let me tell you about that in a winding little tale of curious happenings [warning lots of words ahead!].. 2012 and 2013 were BUSY years for us. I had modeled the Bruce 3D I think in early 2012 but was never thrilled with it. Because back then I modeled it after the Sea World display shark, which as you all know is most different than all the other half dozen sharks used for Bruce 3D in the film. Maybe from the same mold but certainly not what you see on the DVD. I liked our model but I didn't LOVE it! Anyway, back then America was seeing unprecedented cutbacks everywhere from the permanently skyrocketed Gasoline prices. As everyone witnessed the National Daily Average cost of gasoline just one day before the 2009 election results was a mere $1.74 per gallon! *OH HOW WE MISS THOSE DAYS! But I digress, I will take this opportunity to brag on my family. It sure beats hearing about almost a decade of unparalleled economic decline am I right? This brings us into 2012. That sir is WHEN OUR PHONE STARTED RINGING AND RINGING! ****** >>>>RING_RING_RING_RING--BABY YEAH!<<<<****** And we all know who was calling ****** SyFy CHANNEL! 2012 saw the Schultz family BUSIER THAN EVER! In 2012 we were contracted and provided Special FX for 3 separate SyFy Channel prime-time films! Not only did we get to provide a Mechanical Bruce Shark recreation for SyFy's Ghost Shark, we also got to be on location running it with the crew; and our Youngest daughter Rae was actually an extra in the film to boot! And what many of you may not know is that WHILE we were finishing the mechanical Ghost Shark we actually [due to SyFy scheduling conflicts] were also rushing to finish the physical Alligators for SyFy's Cajun RedNeck Gators as well as the deep-sea monsters from SyFy's Beast of the Bering Sea! At one point we had in one corner of our shop the 95% completed Ghost Shark and scratch-built support equipment, and on the other side of the shop was 10 feet of severed Alligator tail, a 5-foot giant Alligator head and shoulders prop, and a 49-inch long dead baby gator prop; PLUS we had TWO chestbursters and the 11-foot Bering Sea Beast Monster-Villain as well under construction! Just think of the space all these molds takes up still to this very day!! Now if this isn't enough to blow EVERYONE'S mind let me throw another straw on the camel's back for you that we bore as a family. Are you ready for this? SIMULTANEOUSLY to all these SyFy Channel FX builds we were keeping up on shark collectible orders as best as we could; AND -------- We were also in the 11 month long process of refurbishing a farmhouse and MOVING! That's right, for 11 months we struggled 7 days a week trying to get it all done. And let me tell you the hardest part was the farmhouse refurbish. WHY? Because we are still doing it! Yep, for all of 2012 I lived at the farmhouse working on it and the SyFy FX creatures. And that was little more than camping out! This old farmhouse had been abandoned for MANY YEARS and stripped by vandals of EVERYTHING but the frame and roof! And I mean that friends, nothing left. No toilet, no sinks or plumbing, no interior doors or even trim or any light switch covers or ANYTHING but bare walls and bare floors. While GhostShark was being built I had no bed, no kitchen, no sinks, no form of air conditioning or heat, no stove, no refrigerator.. HECK not even kitchen counters or anything! I spent the first 4 months here sleeping in the back of my pickup truck on a pool float under the stars and eating out of a party Igloo container and cooking on a Coleman camp stove! Can you believe that? And what could we do but roll with it and work together? So we rolled up our sleeves as a close-knit little family does, and we sacrificed and we worked our rumps off every single day of all of 2012 and into 2013. * And I would not trade one single day of any of it! But the happy ending came. After one month shy of a FULL year of intense labor and sacrifice we were finally able to move to all be together once again here at the little farmhouse out in the boonies. What an adventure it all has been for us. And this brings us around again to Bruce 3D. That's why we didn't release it in 2013 like we wanted to. >>When in all that could we?<< 2014 has been calmer thank the good Lord Jesus Christ. Only FX for one film. And we did get to finally bring to resolution the long awaited Tow-Sled Shark release with none other but Cal Acord himself as well. Plus we finally after 8 months of furious labor are able to get our build and ship wait times down from 90 days to I think maybe 14 to 30, depending on commissions and order loads. And now for the THIRD and final release model for Bruce 3D. We finally have the time to release her and especially we have the time to carry the load of orders her release might bring us. This release is not based on the cable-controlled or animation miniatures. Nor the over-sized head build. Nor is our release based on the Sea World display shark whose head-shape, eye-size/location, paint-job and tooth placements were not the same as the end scenes Bruce 3D full size location shark. Our Bruce 3D ships out with the fins on just like the screen used full size shark. And we have her posed fluidly in motion, just like the real deal. And I will make one final point before I grant mercy and hush up. And that point is that we do not make perfect sharks. We strive to make perfect replicas of the filming models. Our sharks are not German engineered to glide if you toss them. Ours are made like historically accurate recreations of what went before the cameras. Wherever the original sharks had a wonky look or some random flaw, or one nostril higher than the other, or an odd wrinkly or repair in the rubber skin etc, well sir that is what we captured for posterity's sake. I firmly believe that is what owners of all our Bruce Sequel Sharks will see in their own Ultimate Bruce Shark's Collector's set from us here at SCO. Owners of our work see history recorded on their own collection shelves. Just like X-Plus did with their incredible line of suit-accurate Godzilla figure collectibles. Their 12-inch collectible figures are modeled right after the screen-used Godzilla suits, scale for scale. Seam for seam. Well sir, our sharks are all SUIT-Accurate so to speak. If the eyes were bulbous or the tail was wonky back then, or if the seam was visible then it is just the same for you today in miniature in all of our SCO sharks. Right down to each tooth placement and angle! That's what we all love about the real Bruce sharks to begin with. Because if you wanted 100% perfect White Shark then the Discovery Channel shark videos are over by the TV anyway, am I right or am I right!? Mike SCO |
Mike V. SchultzOn The Bench... Archives
July 2024
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