Greetings one and all! Great strides were had today in my attempts to sketch a certain guardian in A Man Sees Death in Things today! I've been sketching this entire week in hopes that my pencil could stumble upon the notorious "Humbaba", whom Gilgamesh and Enkidu fight in the Cedar Forest. I wanted this battle in particular to be quite epic in its own right, and deserving of a quite epic mask.
What I came up with is something along the lines of the "mask-headdress" utilization used to give a single actor (hopefully a very large actor!) as much as a whole extra foot of height with the mask worn -atop- the head. The actor would be able to see his surroundings through a veil at the level of Humbaba's shaggy beard.
Design-wise, Humbaba ended up an oversized mask. I wanted this to give his form size and weight otherwise not gifted to normal maskery tactics. I wish to provide some imposing gloves to the actor playing Humbaba so that his fingers and hand-size might also be increased. (If there's time, I'd love to distress/wrap some boots to do the same with the feet.) The mask would be made of VERY lightweight material and will probably have to be fixed to the actor using a chinstrap to counterbalance the weight and height. I anticipate though that whomever is big enough to handle this mask should have no problem with its weight, but I hold the actor's comfort as my priority regardless. Humbaba's features are very wide, primitive, horned features. I struggled a long time with whether or not I wanted to make him "bull-like", but settled on him being a sort of hulking gargoyle/devil creature instead. His horns, I've decided, will not look as pristine as they do here, but they are reminiscent of ram horns that curve to front like mandibles. His shaggy beard will be just chock full of disturbing goodies too -- bones, beads, leaves, spit...just awesome stuff. I adore him for his grossness and hope you do too.
"The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand."
- Frank Herbert -
-Jo-
