‘Splash Head’ was the nickname given to the T-1000 when a shotgun blast from the T-800 splits his head in two, like cascading waves the liquid metal reconfigures from a severe impact to the head. The Stan Winston School of Character Arts reports that two articulated puppet designs were made at Stan Winston Studios. One for a back-shot of the T-1000s head springing open and another frontal model with articulation and moving parts that would eventually be combined with VFX.
John Rosengrant was Stan Winston’s right hand man and worked on the Terminator movies and is now in charge over at Legacy Effects (the re-branded Stan Winston Studios) same team different name. Here is what he had to say about the T-1000 effects on T2:
“By far, the most challenging things we did for Terminator 2 were these physical effects involving the T-1000 character. We did a lot of in-camera magic tricks for that — splitting open bodies, finger blades, heads blowing open, bullet-hit wounds. Every day, there was something new and challenging to do.”
Terminator Fan and Collector Ryan Bean is currently trying to sell what is believed to be a real cast of splash head which was used in production for T2, it is likely it was to be thrown away but saved, it isn’t an articulated puppet so if it was used, it was either used in tests, as reference material or an early moch-up of what would later become a memorable effect in Hollywood.
Ryan Bean offers us more information:
“I verified that it is an original, first-generation puppet casting by taking it to Paul Francis’ shop to have him personally examine it. It’s the same type of polyfoam material SWS used for a few different head castings during film production. Unfortunately, I don’t have any idea what they used them for – perhaps they were just test castings that would have otherwise been thrown away if somebody hadn’t saved them. I heard that the original Donut Head I recently borrowed to mold WAS actually thrown in the trash back during T2’s production, and someone snuck out and saved it from the compactor. It’s the same style of polyfoam, too.”
Check out these Exclusive Images:
Splash Head started life as a clay sculpture of Robert Patrick’s head, they then split this head down the middle and prised it apart and then more sculpting to create the ‘splash’ was done.
Molds of that clay sculpture were made and the above cast (featured in the exclusive images) is likely to be one of the different molds that were taken. The final mold however would be an articulated puppet made from foam rubber that had a hinged fiberglass core that would spring open with the pulling of a single pin. Timed perfectly with a single shotgun blast it would give the splash head effect believability of a point blank shot to the head of a liquid metal.
In the end 3 different splash heads were used to bring the effect to life on screen, they were painted and then combined with visual effects to bring it to life.
Splash Head was to be seen again in T2:3D in 3D and with the T-1000 making a comeback in the new Terminator reboot (sadly not played by Robert Patrick) Splash Head may be back on the big screen in 2015. If it is we hope they combine it with practical effects and it isn’t just complete CGI… Byung-hun Lee will play the T-1000 in the next Terminator movie.
If your interested in purchasing the splash head above you can contact the seller by emailing them at thedeathcurse@hotmail.com
If anyone from the Stan Winston team sees this and can verify authenticity of the prop seen above it would be of great help to our archive.
For more Splash Head talk head over to the Stan Winston School of Character arts website for other great content about splash head, Terminator and other great movie effects.