Thursday, May 24, 2012

Breaking News: Hovey Photo Is Not The Abominable Costume.

On February 23rd 2012 Melissa Hovey, President of the American Bigfoot Society, released a photo of an alleged Sasquatch (see photo below). Since the photos release it has been the subject of much controversy. Recently it has been suggested  that the photo is an image of the costume used in the 2006 movie Abominable. While there are many resemblances to the costume from the movie it is almost defiantly not the same as what is depicted in the ABS photo. I arrived at this conclusion by careful investigation of the facts. I have spent many hours contacting the people who were involved in the making of the film.
Melissa Hovey's photo

First a little background on the movie Abominable: 
Released in April of 2006 by Red Circle Productions
Directed by: Ryan Schifrin
Written by: Ryan Schifrin and James Morrison
Produced by: Donna CockrellTheresa Eastman Schifrin (as Theresa Eastman), Paul Spadone , and  Duane Trow
Key Costumer: Angela Tinsley
Special effects suit fabricator: Tinsley Transfers  
Creature effects coordinator:  Christien Tinsley
Creature designer and story board artist: Federico D'Alessandro 

I first contacted Mr. Federico D'Alisandro since he was listed as the creature designer. The email I sent to him is as follows.:

According to IMDB.com you were the creature designer for the 2006 Movie
Abominable. There is some debate about a recently released photo of  an alleged sasquatch. Some are saying it is the suit from that film. I would like to inquire as to what is your opinion on this. Thank you for

your time. Please see attached photo.

Mr. D'Alessandro was kind enough to reply to me with this response:
Abominable Costume

Unfortunately I didn't see the suit in person when I worked on that movie.
As a big believer in the existence of Sasquatch, I hope it's not a suit,
though I would question how the photographer got so close to the creature,
why its back is turned to the camera when it's that close, and why there
appears to be a big light shining on it (appears to be something stronger
than a flashlight).

Sorry I can't be of more help

best
Federico

I sent a subsequent email to Mr. D'Alisandro explaining to him how the photo allegedly was obtained and asking him who else I should contact in this matter, He replied with the name and email address of the director Ryan Schifrin. After several attempts to contact the director I decided to contact the producers, all of my emails went unanswered. The production company also never returned my emails. I was given a name by a user in a Facebook group of one of the puppeteers and the company that he works for. I was unable to find contact information for the puppeteer but I was able to contact the company he works for, Tinsley Transfers. Tinsley Transfers is owned by Christien Tinsley and was involved in the special effects of the movie and were also the suit fabricator. I sent a message to Tinsley Transfers and it was as follows:

 According to IMDB.com you worked on the 2006 movie Abominable. Recently a photo of an alleged Sasquatch was released by The American Bigfoot Society. Questions have come up about it's authenticity and that it may possibly be the costume from the film. Attached is the photo in question. I would like to know your opinion on this. Is this from the movie or from any other movie that you are familiar with? If it is your costume would you consider providing production stills of the costume? Any help in this matter is appreciated and thank you for your time.

Their answer was short and sweet:

Sorry to say, this photo did not come from us.

Just to make sure I understood just who looked at the photo I asked the following question:

Thank you for your quick response! If I may ask, did Mr. Tinsley view the photo? If it is not his work does he have an idea who may have done it? 

Again they responded with a short answer but one which should put the question to rest:

He did, and we are all stumped.

So according to Mr. Tinsley's company, the suit fabricators for the film Abominable, it is not their suit and they don't seem to know who's suit it could be. Their words were not many but they speak volumes. If it were their suit they would not be stumped. This does not answer the question as to if it is a suit or not , just that it is not the Abominable suit.

Steve Alcorn
SasquatchScoop.com


10 comments:

  1. Great Job Steve. So the search will continue I guess but at least this one avenue has been put to rest.

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  2. Covering their asses, or their joke.

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  3. This proves nothing though, there are many other possible suits that the photo could be

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  4. I have taken photos to try and replicate this shot.... What I have concluded is that; it's face would have had to be touching the foliage for there to be no shadow cast upon then, and for them to be illuminated as they are. I would love to see the "properties" menu of the original photo. That will tell us a lot. Apature speed, was it a delay setting? Was the flash on? Time? Color setting? The way I got my shot to look similar, was I threw a branch on the ground, laid my subject face down on them, and took the photo standing above, pointing almost straight down.

    Rev English

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    Replies
    1. Rev English, would you care to show your photos so we can compare them?

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  5. As a believer in Sasquatch I was excited to see this. However as a professional artist who dabbles in prosthetics I am somewhat unsure of the photo. If you zoom in to head region you can see the dark area to the left of the ear looks like a shadow. The shadow seems to be cast my some sort of textured support structure that is attached to a different textured piece behind it. The texture is to uniform to be pixels as two parallel lines atop of one another can be seen. Hard to explain in a paragraph and I hope I am wrong and it is real.

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  6. Under high magnification there are many round holes of different sizes, many aligned in regular patterns that makes this photo appears to have been computer generated - thus the even lighting. Look at the spots between the hair where the computer has filled in with tiny circles. I hope I am wrong, but it appears to me that a real sasquatch would have skin with pores - maybe those are supposed to look like pores?
    Jim

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  7. It is indeed a costume from a movie though.

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  8. As much as I'd love to believe in Bigfoot, when all the photos I've ever seen are either blurry or obviously fake, it gets a little tricky. This image IS NOT cgi; it is, however, Yak hair hand-punched into either a silicone or latex skin. Nice work from the viewpoint of someone like myself who is a prop and model maker by trade, but sadly still obviously a prop...

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  9. Hi there can you tell me where this photo was taken? It looks grotesque as i would expect to see after what i have heard out Elk hunting in the deep forests east and west of Portland Ore. thanks much ..Mark

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