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So...
Pilot is a puppet.
We suppose one could be forgiven for thinking there's not much else to say about the "real Life" of our Pilot. But we also know that one would be very much mistaken in thinking so! This is the story of how Pilot came to be a part - (the BEST part we think!) - of a television show called "Farscape."
Pilot was part of Rockne O'Bannons' idea for the show from the beginning - but what he would actually look like and be like wasn't determined till the Jim Henson Company picked up Farscape and decided it would be a great place to showcase the talents of their Creature Shop artists and puppeteers. And the Henson artists went wild! In the excitement of the challenge to achieve believability and seamless interaction between puppets and the live cast, characters like D'Argo and Scorpius began life as animatronic figures! Eventually budget constraints and artistic consensus whittled the number of puppets in the final permanent cast to Pilot and Rygel. They were chosen intentially for their opposing extremes in size and temperment, lthough at the time which would be the big one and which the little one was still an open question!
And so began the first step in the process of making Pilot. Conceptualization.
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<--- Baggy-Headed Pilot! An early concept sketch for Pilot - seems to have been done before he and Rygel were quite sorted out from each other! One curious side note on those two - originally it was thought Pilot would be the emotional, outspoken one and Rygel reserved and dignified.
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Weenie-Pilot! ---> Concept sketch. We can't decide if this reminds us more of an enormous wild mushroom or a giant, one-eyed, unevenly cooked ballpark frank.. Cool console idea though... We dunno.. it's a great concept But we're sure Pilot would taste great in any shape and there's something just a tad alarming about this guy... 
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<--- Go-Cart Pilot! Concept sketch. This is an interesting one - it dates from a proposal that would have had Pilot mobile around Moya on a sort of an in-house rail system. Moya with subway tunnels! Pilot able to zip around and be everywhere in person!
| Pilot the Slob? ---> Well whatever Moya feeds THIS Pilot is clearly not enough! Check out the debris strewn all over his Den - maybe this concept is from around the time when Pilot's personality was to have been that of an instellar "surfer dude" We like him - he reminds us of ourselves! 
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All this conceptualizing is the artists' equivalent of brainstorming. The point is to work out how their character will essentially look. You can see the themes that developed in these drawings - many arms, a hatlike structure on the head, a rather fishlike mouth...
Speaking of fish, you might wonder where the artists got their inspiration for Pilot. His appearance has been compared to a lobster, a crab, a dragon, an insect... but the truth is that the only terrestrial beasty that was used as a basic idea for Pilots' look on was - a billy goat! It's true - we would not make that up - if you take a good look at Pilots' face in profile or 3/4 view you can actually see a distinctly billy-goatish line going on there...
... oh the ignonomy!
-Rockne O'Bannon, Creator of Farscape, 6/24/99. 
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Once the concept of what Pilot would look like had been agreed upon the next phase in his making was to create a 3-dimensional model, or as these things are formally called - a "maquette".
| Right and below Maquette Making Don't let the angle of the picture fool ya - maquette scultping is done on a nice level surface just like any other kind of sculpting - someone was just getting aertsy with their camera. The maquette represents the 3-D, 'realistic" version of the artists sketches. Musculature, skin texture, and in this case, an extreme of facial expression. I.e. - how far will Pilots' eyes and mouth open. This will help guide the technical artists who will actually build the working Pilot figure. | 
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| We don't often get good rear views of Pilot - but he's got a lovely curved spine and a positively poetic side - all he needs is a writer to give the film crews a good excuse to show him off from all his fabulous angles! 
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| Now you may notice that there's a piece of Pilotmissing from the model - like his bottom half... No this is not an artistic oversight - Pilots' bottom half was just never conceptualized or designed. He was always meant to be a critter who is "plugged into" something, arse never to be seen. So when the script for TWWW called for Pilots' lower half to play a role in the story - a spare torso was stuck on upside down with some little legs on it! If you watch TWWW closely you'll see that the opening Velorek reaches into to get Pilots' guts is indeed the opening where a Pilot head would should be! Cheapskates! :-D | 
The finished sculpture may look a little more jowly than the Pilot we see on the show - but it's him! Supple skin, color, and a few superficial tweaks on the actual finished puppet will soften the hard lines if the model.
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The other things conspicuously missing from the Pilot maquette are his arms. The truth is that apparently they didn't quite actually get around to designing arms for the poor guy. If you look back at those concept drawings you'll notice than only one has arms that vaguely resemble the ones he has today. So where did Pilots' arms come from? Scorpius. They evidently cam from Scorpius
Remember when we said that Scorpius was originally going to a be a full-sized animatronic figure? Well the Creature Shop folks actually had worked up a model of him. He was concieved as sort of a giant cockroachish creature. Well the day came for them to be showing their Pilot model to TPTB and they had no arms - so they took the ones off the dissued Scorpius model and stuck them onto Pilot.
TPTB liked it and that Oh Best Beloved is How Pilot Got His Insectile Arms.
Isn't the creative process a wonderful thing?
:-D
| In fact - those little arms on the Scorpius figure look suspiciously like Pilots' hind legs which we saw in TWWW... 
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Finally, after the artists renderings, the model making and theimprovisation comes the building of the actual final version of Pilot, the fully articulated puppet that we see on Farscape
GLAAH!
What the -how'd that picture of my ex-boyfriend get in here??
Oh - wait - that's an early model of Pilot - just a moment -
Ah - there he is!
Our Beautiful Pilot - the exotic alien we all fell in love with!
But of course there were many months of hard work between the model stage and the finished Pilot puppet. We have no photos of the process but we do have a great verbal account of what's involved in building and bringing Our Pilot to life:
"Pilot's body is foam covering a fiberglass frame. The head is supported by two rods of sprung steel that arch up within the back of the frame. Both the rods that support the head and the main body section ride on an O-ring that is counter balanced on a pole arm.
Mario [Halouvas] is our intrepid Pilot-naut who stands up inside the body (only his legs are visible underneath the whole contraption). Once he straps himself in, the full weight of the puppet is counter-balanced at the other end of the pole arm, and he is free to manipulate.The body rides on the O-ring on wheels, so by pivoting at the waist, Mario can rotate the body about 270 degrees. By relaxing back and taking some of the weight in his thighs, Mario can also raise and lower the body about a foot. He also has a limited movement left and right off his centre mark as he swings along the arc of the pole arm.
Aside from these movements he has two bars that come off the back of the head (inside), so he can give the gross head movements - nods, shakes, cocking of the head, etc. Unfortunately there is no movement in the spine, and any perceived movement is just the combinations of the movements already described."
-Sean Masterson
Coordinator of Puppeteering
The working Pilot puppet about 18 feet long including that pole arm and 8 feet tall. It takes seven puppeteers to fully articulate him, one for each arm, one inside the body and two for his facial movement. It's like a three-legged race with seven people instead of two!
Pilots facial expressions, eyes, mouth, browridges et al are fully animatronic and are remotely controlled separately by other puppeteers who coordinate their work in part by constantly monitoring video screens simultaneously focused lovingly on every angle of Pilots face and body.
| -Tim Mieville, Puppeteer, 12/20/99 Despite poor Mario Halouvas' annual weignt loss due to the steam bath that is the interior of Pilot - the Puppeteers manage to have some fun. There are records of competition among the Arm Operators to see who can get their arm into the most scenes! Extra points are allowed for a particularly Artistic Flourish of a claw though. "There's very little CGI except to erase us from a frame." |
With regard to the Puppeteers it should be noted that the size and specifications of the Pilot puppet required working sppace for his team too. No design for Pilot would have been complete without considering how his operators would work with him. So - the design for his console was important too. The puppeteers who operate Pilots' facial movements are able to stand outside of camera view. Those who manipulate his arms take cover behind the console. Among the advantages of this arrangement, CGI costs may be lessened. | 
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The Puppeteers by the way, are considered actors and audition for their jobs just like everyone else in the cast. On the Farscape set, the men and women who operate him are considered "Pilot" just as surely as Claudia Black is Aeryn Sun or Wayne Pygram is Scorpius.
And if you happen to catch a behind the scenes clip of a Pilot scene in production, you will hear the dulcet tones of Sean Masterson himself issuing from the lips of the Great Navigator. He provides Pilots "working voice."
| Lani Tupu, who also portrays Captain Bialar Crais, is, with the help of a voice synthesizer, the Voice Of Pilot as we know it! We've got all kinds of dirt on Lani! Click HERE for a biography and an interview with him as well as a few more pix! |
"Regarding Rygel and Pilot, as well as the other non-humans guests, we view them as flesh-and-blood characters. They are written no differently."
-David Kemper, Executive Producer and writer
The use of puppetry has made Farscape one of the most unique science fiction stories ever produced for television. Pilot, Rygel and the many guest creatures we’ve met add the richness and texture of the Farscape experience.
Cheers and Kudos to the folks at the Henson Company, their Creature Shop and the entire cast and crew of Farscape for daring to take the chance of challenging our perceptions of what an empathic character can be.
And succeeding.
Lani Tupu - Voice of Pilot
Sean Masterson - Coordinator of Puppeteering, Puppeteer and Production Voice of Pilot
Tim Mieville - Puppeteer - Pilots' Facial Expressions
Mario Halouvas - Puppeteer - Pilots' Head and Torso
Fiona Gentle - Puppeteer - Queen of the Artistic Claw Flourish (you go girl!)
*The Puppeteering staff is completed by a rotating crew of seasonally employed puppeteers.
Pilot is also attendeded by a team of artists who replace his entire skin every couple months and keep it looking fresh and fine throughout production.