« Del Toro’s ‘Pinocchio’ in Limbo – Selick & Co. seeking investors for ‘The Shadow King’ | Home | 2013 Oscars – Stop Motion Animation SHUNNED »
‘The Las Vegas Monster’ – Help Create Trailer for Re-make
February 13, 2013
UPDATE / CORRECTION: This is not a remake. ‘The Las Vegas Monster’ was never made but existed as brief stop motion tests & story fragments. I am not as deep into hardcore stop motion trivia like some of my animation comrades 
. A momentary brain fart and I confused an old stop motion classic The Black Scorpion with this one. In the readers comments below, read David D’Champ’s reply with further details.
Recently received message by fellow Stop Motion & classic special effects aficionado Langley West, about this project on Kickstarter. It is a remake or re-imagining of the old classic ‘The Las Vegas Monster’. Update – This will be first time that ‘The Las Vegas Monster’ will have a chance to be realized as a feature. Langley said, “It’s like crowd funding but for talent instead of money”. So any monetary contribution will help provide the talent some compensation but I am guessing, that the ‘talent’ might be offering services at very generous discounts because of passion for this project & classic special effects.
The objective: To raise funds to create a ‘Las Vegas Monster’ Teaser/Trailer as a tool to help sell the full project to investors (or more contributors). When you go to Kickstarter site and scroll down, you will see the talent listed. I responded to Langley and said to feel free to include my name ‘Lionel Orozco – Stop Motion Armature Designer & Engineer’, but I do not see my name listed yet? 
Anyway, checkout the Kickstarter Las Vegas Monster info and you will also get some historical perspective of the original classic B-Movie. Are you tired & bored with mundane CGI homogenized over-slickified entertainment in the current market, and yearn for real fun & escapism recalling the retro days of past B-movies? Help spread the word about this project ….
‘The Las Vegas Monster’ Project at Kickstarter
Of course today with more advanced Stop Motion techniques, any new creature character animation would be significantly more sophisticated with perhaps newer, different, or much more finessed design interpretation of the ‘Monster’. Here is original concept tests animation of the Las Vegas Monster done in the late 1950’s…
P.S. Although SMW News did a past write-up & commentary about Crowd Funding sites in general, I really do not know the details how it works. I assume, if the funding does not make its goal then all funds contributed so far, goes back to zero? I am assuming one can start-up another crowd funding effort for the same project? You know, give it more chances to get funding for a worthy project.
LINKS: Pete Peterson – Stop Motion’s Forgotten Man
Topics: Dynamation, Films - Shorts - Animation, Special Effects, Stop Motion | 3 Comments »
Lionel, thanks for this bump. It is really appreciated. I need to clear up one thing though. Pete Peterson’s The Las Vegas Monster was never produced as a feature film. All that ever was completed was a short animation test around 1958/59. Additional animation tests for a what was called The Beetlemen was done in 1960. These two animations and the story fragments that surround them (as found in the Peterson trunk by Dennis Muren, Jim Danforth, David Allen and others) is what has been used to create a new, original script, based on the story fragments left behind by Pete Peterson. We feel it is better to celebrate his life by completing these projects for him as a documentary on his life would be nearly impossible as virtually nothing is know about him. This is a celebration of what he did as a stop motion artist and what he might have done had he survived. We need to remember one of the forgotten, fallen heroes of stop motion.
You’re name’s on the list now LIO!
And so are a few other luminaries and return-of-dynamation heroes – probably no need for me to offer to do any puppetmaking or animation, considering who is already on board. (I just know who will be after the job of animating the large vegas monster.)
If it gets funding, the stopmo component will be great, it’s up to the live action director not to let it down.
Looking at Pete’s old test animation, the movements are amazingly fluid (and quite slow) for the Fifties, or any time in the pre-framegrabber era.
Pretty fluid animation, there. I like the fact Pete used the truck miniature from MJY. I wonder if it is still around?