Ink Slime and a T-shirt

In the script for "The Book Eater," everywhere the monster book goes, it leaves trails of inky slime.  We were shooting in real locations, so we couldn't just spill anything that might stain their walls or furniture.  I had a few different solutions that I'll share in this post.

This was a rehearsal of a scene exploring the aftermath of the book tearing through a storage room that we see previously stacked floor to ceiling with boxes of books.  I was rather pleased with the way it all turned out, though it looked better in the real scene than in my pictures.

The ink on the boxes was clear Elmer's glue tinted black.  I laid out a torn up box and dripped ink over the parts I thought the book monster might have been in contact with.

I had my assistant (whom I had the producer upgrade to Art Director because he was so helpful throughout the shoot) grab discarded pages from the university library's printer room to tear up and blot with black paint to simulate monster-ravaged books.

The ink blobs were a bit of trial and error, but I ended up making them out of hot glue painted black with a gloss coat for wetness.  Once peeled off of the bathroom counter, they can be positioned and repositioned as needed from set to set.

One of the bookshelves we dressed with the torn paper and ink blobs.

There was one other method of ink slime, which I'll get to in a future post.  It's pretty cool.

Last for today is one of the actors in the shirt I made, based on the director's concept.  He's supposed to be a fantasy/sci-fi geek kid.  Craft paint via custom stencil on a $3 t-shirt.  I went with craft paint because it would be a more matte finish than fabric paint...just don't wash it.

More "Book Eater" to come...