found some more pics of the Goro.
Did you know it was a suit ?
check the pictures and text :
Goro on set:
Goro Head:
Here is one of those classic effects artist pictures where Alec Gillis pretends to be really seriously working on a sculpture that has been done for days. You notice the really serious and intense look on his face... that is to fool people into thinking that there is some kind of dignity attached to creating a four armed martial arts fighting monster from another dimension.
Goro's Telemetry Device:
Here a puppeteer shows us the telemetry device that was used to operate Goro's upper arms. This is a somewhat lightweight casing that the puppeteer would wear. Each of his joints was matched with a potentiometer which read the movement every time the puppeteer would move his arms. He also had little controls at his fingers that he could pull and operate Goro's fingers the same way. All that information was fed to a computer which reinterpreted it and sent it back to the puppet. Basically, whatever the performer did the puppet followed.
Goro Body Sculpture
From Mortal Kombat here is a picture of Tom Woodruff watching, not sculpting, watching Norman Cabrara sculp Goro's body. Tom is watching because Norman is really good.
Goro Body Sculpture
This is a picture of the sculpture of Goro done in an oil base clay over the top of a lifecast of Tom Woodruff.
Goro Head Close-Up
Goro Stunt Suit
Tom Woodruff in the Goro stunt suit mechanism. This is a lighter weight rig which was for scenes that did not require the articulation of the full hero animatronic version of the puppet. This light weight mechanism was much easier to carry. You can see why we chose to cover the rest of the body in foam latex skin... this is one sad looking picture.
Goro from Mortal Kombat
This is a hard fiberglass copy of the suit that I wore for the character of Goro in Mortal Kombat. Since it was already based on the character from the video game we already had certain design elements that we had to incorporate into our creature but we also went a little bit further. We wanted to make it slightly more realistic and not quite as comic book inspired as the artwork we had seen up till then. We did certain things to it like the color of it's skin we changed, the look of it's eyes is different, and we removed some horns and bones that had been protruding from his forehead. We also tried to keep a realistic musculature to him given that he has four arms.
We also chose mostly for sake of time to build the creature as a man in a suit with the upper arms, head, face and neck being completely mechanically articulated. All of those actions were operated by puppeteers who were feeding their information into a computer making this the first motion control creature we got into. There was a lot of technology that was developed for this character in a very short period of time.
Ultimately the suit weighed in at about 125 pounds which I had to carry on my shoulders. We built a metal brace that went down my spine to my hips which displaced some of the weight but even with that it was still very heavy, confining and hot. My head was in the chest of the creature and he had no body armor or any kind of costume that would help us hide any type of air slits or even eye holes. We ended up building a fiberglass helmet that I wore and inside that helmet I had a small video screen so I could see what was going on. I also had a microphone and speaker so that I could communicate by radio with Alec who was always with the director. We also had tubes running up inside that we could plug into under the loin cloth so that in-between shots I could get fresh air and water I needed in order to be able to stay in this suit for hours at a time.
Instead of having a hole bank of puppeteers which is the way that puppets had normally been operated when you have moving arms and appendages we built a telemetry suit. This was basically an aluminum frame that had potentiometers so that a single puppeteer could slip this suit on and operate the movement of the arms, hands and fingers all by himself with the aid of a computer.
The Goro Suit
Tom Woodruff getting ready to go into the Goro suit. Tom provided the movement of the lower arms of Goro. The upper arms were robotic as well as the head and face. All the lip sync was done with the hero animatronic head. The hole thing was computer controled for smoother performance and repeatability. We pre-record movements and play them back. It required six puppeteers and four technicians to bring Goro to life.
source :
http://www.stampede-entertainment.com/monstermakers/a-goro-web.html
