Creature Suit Analysis - Part 6 - Comparative Anatomy

[Guest Skeptical Greg]

Heel at 90 degree angle, while rest of foot appears to be flat on the ground.

How are you coming up with that, when the rest of the foot is not visible ?

As far as where the foot is flexing is concerned; if we are looking at over sized rubber feet,

they would appear to flex closer to the mid-foot, rather than the ball .. ( if the heel of the wearer is flush with the heel of the fake foot )

Edited March 28, 2008 by Skeptical Greg

[Guest Remember November]

How are you coming up with that, when the rest of the foot is not visible ?

As far as where the foot is flexing is concerned; if we are looking at over sized rubber feet,

they would appear to flex closer to the mid-foot, rather than the ball .. ( if the heel of the wearer is flush with the heel of the fake foot )

As I showed above, we have an idea of where the rest of the foot is from the preveious frames. And also, with the heel at that angle where else would the rest of the foot be?

If we are talking about an over sized rubber foot and the real heel is flush with the fake one, how do the toes splay, or press into the ground?

(if you accept, that the film subject left the prints)

[Guest Skeptical Greg]

I think you're being a bit dismissive here. Who exactly stated a stick created the bump, and how would they know? You think a stick created this?

Unless you ascribe to the tracks being created separately, then flopping rubber toes don't create deep impressions in the substrate. Flexible AND rigid? I dunno.

If that bend wasn't caused by stepping on something ( a stick, a rock, lump of earth ) elevated above the surrounding substrate, why would the foot flex ?

[Guest Remember November]

I think I'm wrong about this being the frame where the toes splay.....sorry.

[Guest Skeptical Greg]

(if you accept, that the film subject left the prints)

I don't ..

You are illustrating quite well how the subject appears to be putting the heel down, rocking forward on the toes and

pushing off on the ball.

The prints look like a foot was stamped vertically into the ground, with no indication of a pressure ridge that would be created

when pushing off on the ball of the foot..

One more point.

There are no toes visible in the frames, where you indicate they are splaying..

Edited March 28, 2008 by Skeptical Greg

[Guest Remember November]

You are illustrating quite well how the subject appears to be putting the heel down, rocking forward on the toes and

pushing off on the ball.

Show me how the heel in this position is anything other than midfoot flexation? The rest of the foot must be flat on the ground, based on the previous frames, where else would it be? How does a human lift only it's heel, and keep the rest of the foot flat on the ground....I do'nt know what you are seeing, but thats what I'm seeing in this frame.

[Guest Remember November]

I just had a thought,

if Patterson intentionally made a suit that had midfoot flexibility and then fabricated footprints that intentionally displayed mid-tarsal breaks,

why did he cast the two flattest prints?

First of all, it's only because of modern technology that we are able to see the film subject displaying midfoot flexion.

Not much is visible at full frame. Why add a dynamic to the suit if you can’t even see it on the film?

Why add a feature to a print if you're not going to cast it?

[Guest]

That's right. Patterson didn't know anything about mid-tarsal breaks. Which implies he didn't knowingly incorporate this feature into the suit or the tracks. Could a foot stamp create them? If so, then, as you mention, why go to the effort of "rolling" a foot stamp to simulate a dynamic foot then casting the flat tracks? Incorporating any amount of foot flexion into the tracks doesn't make much sense unless you cast them. IMO, any form of foot flexion in the film and tracks is the skeptics' achilles heel. They have to claim it was either a fluke or an illusion. Otherwise, Roger added it into the equation, yet pretended to be oblivious of it and allow it to be discovered years later. Whether he used flexible rolling stamps or hinged costume feet, that Roger was one very clever fellow. Or flukey.

[Guest SoundMan]

Bill,

You asked about whether anyone knew of mid-foot flexibility prior to Patty. I recall the young Dr. Krantz on the "In Search Of" series stating that he spoke to Patterson about some of the characteristics of the foot and noted that Patterson "didn't even know what he was talking about" as Krantz suggested that the tracks couldn't possibly have been faked. Did he at that time pick up on this mid-foot flexibility issue? I would think so. But to me it presents the logical idea that because so few were aware of the details of the tracks at this time or had the seriousness of studying them, or interest in them, besides the overall size, that those details would have had a miniscule chance of showing up in a hoaxed track or cast, until much later, if at all.

Just a thought.

Soundman

[Bill]

Soundman:

I would tend to agree with you here.

Seems people trying to hoax something would tend to look for the details the real investigators claim as "proof" of being real, and then try to fake those traits. But if real investigators were not yet aware of a trait, I wouldn't generally expect a hoaxer to try to put those traits into a faked effort.

Obviously there's the "Mission Impossible" senario where the genius team puts in the most minute details to trick the brilliant villian who finds the most obscure clue and thinks its real because he can't imagine anybody smarter than himself, but that's Hollywood fantesy for the most part.

Bill

[Bill]

Reviewing the Thread

Repeating portions of my Review introduction from the Part One notes, I feel a review and evaluation of this thread may be of value.

So I decided that I would post an appraisal of each note set, re-reading the original, seeing if I would change anything, based on the comments and discussions, and offering the readers a fresh look at what I feel are the most relevent issues and ideas. Each group of summary notes will be different, but this brief introduction will be repeated first.

Part Six - Comparative Anatomy

In this thread review, the issue of positioning the Poser Figure so it appears to overlay and thus "fit inside" the PGF figure, that issue was primarily focused on fitting the human body overall into the overall "Patty" body.

In that regard, fitting the human head into the "Patty" head was approximated, simply using the apparent top of the Patty head as the top limit of the human head, and estimating the eye position. In that respect, I don't see anything I would change if I were to do it again.

But since that posting, I've spent more time studying the film and frames, and thought about the head shape. And I have seem the LMS DVD and the RealVision website on their work visualizing "Patty". I have also done some radio interviews where speculation about anthropological origins of "Patty" were made, if we first assumed that "Patty" was, in fact, proven real.

But as I continued thinking this through, especially when I and Wolftrax compared frames of the film as our choice of what we thought was the fairest representation of Patty's head shape, I began to wonder if one frame can in fact be used to determine the head shape.

So I thought about another method, which I now offer for consideration and debate here. An illustrated chart below shows the method I employed.

My feeling was that there is a significant discrepency between head profiles in various frames, but we may reasonably assume the head itself was essentially the same in all the frames. So the film grain/duplication/enlargement processes have introduced distorting artifacts to individual frames. In that sense, perhaps a composite of multiple frames may "null out" the distortion and allow for a more reliable estimation of "Patty"s head.

So what I did was take eight individual frames where the head was apparently in a profile or close to profile orientation to camera. The reference numbers by each frame are (in red) the actual film frame number, and (in white) the reference number of the shorter frame sequence I was first supplied with and which all the files within my computer now reference. So if you, the reader, want to reference any of the frames, you will presumably use the red frame numbers.

Then I outlined (in light blue) an approximation of the head shape in each frame, and added an estimated eyeball position (white circle).

Then the eight outlines were layered one atop the other ("A" bottom row). Some were tilted downward more than others, and were rotated slightly (as the head may rotate up/down in real life, so this adjustment isn't anatomically improper).

Then these eight outlines were aligned with orientation of the eye circle as the anchoring point.

From these varied outlines, one composite outline (in purple) was drawn ("B" bottom row), averaging out the areas of greatest discrepency (when the eight blue lines made one real thick mass, I chose to draw the purple line about in the middle of the blue lines mass).

The facial contour did have some basic estimations of mouth position, nose, and jaw projection based on primate anatomy.

The human head is the same Poser male model used in the original study, and the scale relative to the heads remains as originally studied, so the human head is a reasonable estimation of size in relation to the composite drawn head (Seen at far right overlayed on a film frame from the DAZ Studio render). Suffice to say, human heads do vary, but this model is a fair average head shape.

Traditionally, if the figure is a human wearing some kind of costume mask, the human inside looks out of the eye openings of the mask, so aligning the human head to the composite "Patty" head through the eye location is a reasonable starting point, as was done in "C", bottom row.

The height of the human head, at or higher than the "Patty" head, clearly presents a concern about the prospect of a human head inside the "Patty" head. Additionally, we must consider that if any substance or structure is worn by the mime inside or added to the mask interior, this material will also require more space, which apparently is not available.

The concern is certainly not conclusive because the composite head is using an estimated methodology. Alternate methodologies may yield different results, and I would welcome seeing other methodologies used and what results they might suggest. If other methodologies are developed and offered, I would be willing to post mine along with the others so interested people can more easily compare the methods and make their own determinations.

But for this discussion, I will continue to rely on this methodology.

Other ways to position the human head inside the composite head are tested.

The easiest, from a human anatomical posture, is to set the human head back further and a bit lower in the head ("D", bottom row). This satisfies the need to enclose the human head fully inside the composite head for a successful costume mask. But this option raised a real concern about the vision of the person inside. While occasionally, human mimes have worked "blind" (meaning they could not see out of the mask while performing) or worked with a wire mesh viewscreen (common for Theme Park stroller costumes, with people looking out through a wire mesh in the open mouth or neck of the costume). But setting the human head that far back does create a sense of "tunnelvision" for the mime, and makes the mine's mobility harder, since the person has more trouble seeing the ground he/she is walking on.

In the last image, "E" bottom row, the human head is positioned forward but lowered so the top of the human head is safely inside the PATTY head outline, but closer to front than in "D". But this positions the human eye so that if the human is looking out the expected mask eye openings, the mine can only see up and out, not down and out, making it exceptionally hard to see the ground where he is walking. If a hole in the mask lower were made for a viewscreen, the face as seen in the "look back" sequence should show those viewscreen areas as darkened, but the face in those frames shows strong highlights instead. Those highlights are clearly not what a eye opening viewport might appear as. That would suggest this "E" position is not used.

This study does not allow for a conclusion that a human can/cannot be inside "Patty". The estimation of composite head shape is clearly that, an estimate. But each human head position inside the estimated Patty head outline does present concerns about whether or not a human mine may be wearing a mask for a hoaxed film event.

Where this estimation of the shape of Patty's head may have further value is in the issue, discussed in other threads, of some known Hollywood masks which have been described or suspected of being the actual mask used to film the hypothesized hoax. If there are any known photos of these suspect masks, particularly in clean profile photos of those masks, the profile photos would be of value to compare with this potential Paty head profile analysis.

Clearly, others may disagree with this analysis. And I would welcome seeing other methodologies of how Patty's head shape and size might be determined or estimated from the film.

Bill

[wolftrax]

Bill,

Your blue outlines in the top row are clearly cutting into the forehead and top of the head of Patty.

[Bill]

Wolftrax:

Well, as I stated, I was estimating an outline for each. The color shifts of the grain around the edges were uncertain in my perception, so I didn't push for what I felt might be artifact induced edge colors.

Bill

[Bill]

Wolftrax:

Attached is a sample of the conflicting considerations I was faced with in doing the outlines. I took the frame 341 (top right) frame and it's reproduced here in four panels. Upper left is the frame itself for reference. Upper right is my outline from my chart.

The two on the bottom were arrived at by following specific shades of color in their exact contours, and guessing if that exct color was Patty or background. Following the exact color patterns gave the worst results, as far as being anatomically impossible shapes for a face.

As I noted in the text part of the post, I welcome seeing other methods or differing ideas about how to determine head shape.

Bill

[wolftrax]

Bill,

Can you post the sequential images used in "PG Film Head Profile Study" without the drawn outlines?

Edited May 1, 2008 by wolftrax