Despite anti virus software, firewalls and the like I picked up a trojan virus thingy and although I managed to get rid of the damn thing it has severely damaged my computer...amoungst other things it has left me unable to read anything using Flash or Javascript so I can't access 80% of most websites...including this one!!

Therefore, until I can afford to get it fixed I wont be able to answer messages or notes here, though it seems I can reply to comments left on my homepage and leave journal entries (go figure!!), so apologies to anyone who's written....I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

On the slim chance that anyone reading this has ever deliberately put a virus out on the net can I just say that I sincerely hope you contract a hideous disease and die a slow, painful and early death!!

So my New York adventure is all over and all I have left are the memories and photos....though for one of my companions he also has the legacy of a bout of the worst food poisening I've seen anywhere in the world!!....and there we were thinking you American types were nuts for hygene and stuff!!!...(beware the Cheese Quesadillios at Hooters!!!!)

I've posted some pics of the trip for your amusement (apologies for the terrible photograhy!!)...there might be more later when I get hold of some of the video we shot...no promises though!!

I didn't meet any Deviants at the show...at least non made themselves known. But I also didn't see anyone else with green hair...so if you were there and saw a small green headed guy it was probably me!! (unless he was green all over in which case that would be Kermit)

One of my first jobs on Hellboy 2 was sculpting a character called the Cat Seller, a beaky gonzo-like creature that sells barbequed cats in a troll market. As is sometimes the case with these kind of background, non-speaking characters we try and play them ourselves and this had been my plan (hopes) for the Cat Seller. As it turned out they wanted a 'roper' actor to play him (if they had seen my performance as Prince Thinkalot in the school play circa 19 hundred and far to many I beleive they would have reconsidered rapidly....but they hadn't...damn!!) so I didn't get the gig. As it turned out of course I couldn't have played him anyway since I went on to apply make up for the remainder of the movie....so maybe it all turned out for the best in the end.

However my chance for Cat Selling fame has finally come around and I'm going to be wearing the costume at the 2008 New York Comic Con....there will also be other characters and performers from Hellboy 2, some minor players like Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones and Guillermo Del Torro...but obviousely all these will pale into insignificance next to the Cat Seller (haha!!).

So if any of you are planning a trip to the Comic Con come and say hi to the poor sap hobbling around on stilts and pushing the one wheeled bar-b-qued cat festooned cart...cos it'll be me!!



I keep getting asked when I'm going to post new work...hmmmmm?......well the problem is that at the moment I have totally lost my art mojo and I have no desire at all to do anything, it's gone completely. It's not the first time it's happened (I once went about 6 years without doing anything at all) and I'm sure it won't be the last. Obviosely I'm not talking about professionally generated work...although at the moment that too is also pretty thin on the ground (bloody striking writers in the US scuppered SOOO many jobs over here!!)...just my own private artistic thoughts and doodles.
Thanx however to all who have asked, I'm always truly flattered that people enjoy what I do so much and I will honestly do my best to produce soemthing new as soon as possible.

Well that's it...it's all over...principal photography on Hellboy 2 The Golden Army wrapped in Hungary at about 3 am on Thursday 22nd November....thank f*** for that!!!!

No Hellboy make up for me this time around since the last scenes (actually some of the first in the movies story line) don't include the red monkey...so it's a different character and a different make up to get to grips with for the last few weeks (and yeah here I go again with the apologies for lack of details...sorry!!...not allowed to say!!).

As with all movies the last weeks are the most hectic...I guess someone actually finally gathered the courage to tell Mr del Torro that he HAS to finish this damn film and our hours on set reflected the frantic rush to get everything in the can before the money finally ran out.
Normally I don't mind the long hours...I expect them! But spending 4 hours applying a make up, 12 hours waiting for them to shoot on it, 2 hours shooting and then an hour taking it off day in and day out really takes it out of you. It's not that it's hard work...far from it (hey!...I used to work on a farm...I KNOW what hard work is!!) it's just the sheer un-mitigated boredom of sitting around for hours and hours that drains your energy and saps the will to live!! Mind you the only bonus was that after just over four months in Hungary our last location contained a coffee machine that actually served a really good cup of coffee (no offence intended to any Hungarians reading this...but your coffee making skills really do need improvement...and whilst I'm on the subject, REAL tea does NOT include some kinda fruit and honey!!!!.....gag!!!).

Of course the end of principal photography does not mean the film's finished...far from it. The CGI boys are looking at another 6 to 7 months work and Guillermo del Torro is going to be in London for that time editing the thing so I'm sure there will be a few insert shots, green screen stuff, effects and gags etc. I have however seen a lot of the rough edit and, biased though I may be, it looks absolutely amazing...bigger and meatier, with more of the humour of the comics (sorry 'graphic novels' that was so absent from the first...unusually for a movie I've worked on, I'm actually looking forward to seeing this one and hoping it's next summer's blockbuster (though hopes of being recalled for number 3 may be colouring my expectations...).

For any of you that have read all these journals (blogs??....never knew what a 'blog' was before...have I been 'blogging'??) you'll probably realise that I quite enjoy a bit of a party and this time round was no exception.
After much apprehension that we'd miss the wrap party (all the grown ups were threatening to send us home on the Friday thus missing the party on saturday!!...buggers!!) we decided to throw our own on Friday morning after we got back to our hotel from work AND Friday night at a small club/bar called Vespa. For me the morning session didn't last to long. Despite years of practise and people telling me that the more you drink the more you become tolerant to alcohol I'm still the proverbial '2 pot screamer' (I'm not complaining...it makes me a cheap date since after a couple of beers I'm anyones!!) After polishing off beers, red wine and vodka I retired early (late?...I dunno..it's all a blur!!) to get some sleep before the night session.

Friday night started at a favourite fish restaurant of ours with oysters, salmon, chocolate cake (the birthday remember?) and beer...not I realise a very cultured mix but then we've never claimed to be very cultured!! So full of fish and fondant icing we made our way to our main venue for the evening: Vespa night club.
Now Vespa is a rather small place but very popular, so I should really apologise to all it's regular customers who got kinda shoved aside that night since most of the film crew, including producers and some of the cast, seemed to decide that our pre-wrap party party was THE one to go to and descended en masse on the tiny establishment!
After a slightly dodgy start the evening finally got under way as the local DJ realised that Rage Against the Machine was now more likely to fill his dance floor than the local folk/pop/dance fusion ditties he'd been playing earlier. Fuelled with much vodka (and a little pharmacutical help...yeah, yeah...I know...but why break the habits of a life time huh??), we danced till dawn and beyond and only finally crawled to our beds around mid morning because we knew we had the 'roper' party to go to that night...and that's when it all started to go horribly wrong!!
With only a few hours sleep, no food for 24 hours and a sucidal urge to stir fry my last few remaining brain cells in more alcohol and er??...stuff... I headed off for the wrap party. Now I realise I'm not as young as I used to be but even I don't usually keel over unconscious after a couple of hours...but that's exactly what I did!!...lol. With only a couple of modest drinks inside me and whilst chatting to a couple of friends on the outside decking of a rather posh looking club, I keeled over and was unconscious before I hit the deck...kinda lucky really since I hit it with my head first!! Apparantly I was out for about 4 to 5 minutes...I can't attest to that since all I remember is waking up in the recovery position with my head in the lap of a very pretty young lady....(I have no idea who you are...but if, on the very slight chance you're reading this, 'thanx!!'....I just wish I woke up to such lovely visions more often!!). Being very English (and not wanting to cause a fuss) I convinced the ambulance crew that had arrived that I was fine, didn't need a trip to hospital and that the odd shape of the back of my head was perfectly normal!! Two days on I'm kinda regretting that as I'm still getting dizzy spells and the head's still oozing (yuck!)...oh well...it's not the first time I've been concussed (and probably wont be the last)...lucky I landed on my head is all I can say!!
And the rest of the party??....well I've been reliably informed that my head banging antics were the highlight of the evening and so I missed nothing...hurrah!!....but it WAS a weird farewell to Hungary, a country I shall remember fondly for many different reasons!!

I'm not quite sure what's next for me...hopefully nothing till after Christmas since I rather feel I need a bit of a rest (at least my head feels that way)...The most likely project being offered is Ridley Scott's latest, a retelling of the Robin Hood story from the Sherrif of Nottinghams perspective, so I guess it'll be more medieaval carnage, wounds and gore. I don't think I'll be 'blogging' the next one whatever it might turn out to be, I'm thinking most people by now are getting bored with this and anyway it'll probably just be another round of similar work and drunken debauchery with just a different location.
For all of you who've followed the Hellboy Hell journals; Thanx for reading and I hope it's given you a more realistic insight to movie making than you'd normally get from those dumb 'making of's' on the DVD's....or, at the very least, been a little entertaining!

Take care for now.
Peace
Dave

Once more unto the breach....

Ok...so now it's time to get off my lazy ass...boooo!!....as tommorrow (7th Nov) I'm back off to Hungary for the last few weeks of shooting.
Not really sure what I'll be up to this time since no one over there can quite decide yet..might be some more Hellboy...might be...this other dude I'm not allowed to tell you about (sorry)...or even these other geezers who (yeah you guessed it!) I'm also not allowed to tell you about!!

Hopefully it'll all be over in a couple of weeks time and I'll have a few more lurid tales of debauchery and rubber (and who's **^!!??**** who at the wrap party!!...hehe!!) to share with you...in the meantime keep up the great work and remember...if you can't be good be sure to always blame someone else!!