I was terrified, but I snapped off more shots as the creature approached.  It seemed quite curious and I could not tell if it was hostile or not, but I didn't care to find out as it was quite large.  What a find it would be if this was truly something new, something unknown.  Curiosly the only thing that ran through my head over and over was would it be called "Webfoot?"

The last snapshot I got before I ran for my very life was a very clear frontal shot of the creature in its entirety.  I believe it was male, but there was no visible means to tell any more than with any other fish.  Later in my darkroom I noted the very long claws on the ends of its flippers and counted myself lucky.

I sat on these photos a very long time before I finally took them to the Cetacean Studied institute in Potsdam, New York.  I was worried about being dismissed as another Bigfoot crank.  They were very interested in the shots and apparently had been aware of this creature for some time.  With this proof they were able to get funding to bring the creature into captivity. 

The creature seems quite happy in its new home, and is well fed.  I took these photos before all my materials were confiscated for security reasons. The director of research there dubbed the creature "Formi" which he said was short for Formorian, named after an ancient race of mythical humanoids who lived long before man.  When I left, it waved at me, which to this day still disturbs me.

I think about this manfish from time to time, as I have yet to see anything in the papers or the news, or even the "X-files." I used to get a small care-package but they've stopped and the Cetacean institute was closed when I visited.  Oh well, I only hope that he's not on display somewhere under a big sign saying PLEASE DON'T FEED THE FISH, or doing tricks at Sea-World or something like that. Of course that's silly, he's probably retrieving torpedoes or doing underwater intelligence work for the CIA.  Who knows?

I found this under "Formorian" in the Zoran Encyclopedia of Arcane Knowledge: "Long before Babylon, in the days of Atlantis, the Earth was a battleground for two alien races: The Elder Gods who stood for chaos and magic, and the Old Ones, an ancient, highly advanced, non-human race who stood for order. The Old Ones created the formorians to be their warriors and slaves on Earth, and made them strong and aquatic so they could protect and tend their many undersea bases. The Old Ones and Elder Gods are gone now, but some formorians remain, preserved in hypersleep capsules." 

The formorian was pretty damn simple to make, when you come right down to it.  If you followed the blow-by-blow design page that preceded this one you'll know how many failures and heartbreaks I had trying to mold and cast flippers. But I made the mask by building up layers of fuzzy cloth with latex (a technique inspired by Super Jay's mask building methods), and I eventually built the hand-flippers the same way.  The foot flippers I built up using resin and cloth and they work beautifully.  I swear, between layering LATEX for masks and layering RESIN for solids, there is almost nothing I cannot build, cheaply, simply, easily for any suit I care to plan.  It's CRIMINAL how easy things are going to be from now on.  Latex, Resin and Silicon Rubber are a costumer's best friend. 

Formi is the most physically challenging suit I have ever had to wear.  I can dance in many of my suits, but few require me to be athletic like Formi does.  When I planned to make a swimming costume I had no idea of the physical demands it would put on me as a puppeteer and performer.  The suit allows me to swim at high speed and be totally comfy underwater, yes, but it goes against a lot of my natural swimming instincts.  The latex mask interferes with my natural instinct to keep my mouth closed when I'm underwater, so the first time I went in in it I took a lot of water.  The lifeguard was very understanding, fortunately.  Once I got the hang of it, it was great.  I got used to it very easily. Swimming without it now feels clumsy and powerless. 

Editor: and man that water was freezing! -- Formi

Another huge difficulty with Formi though is that it's designed to work in the water.  That makes it a hard costume to show.  I cannot show it off onstage (unless you know any conventions which have aquarium tanks) and it's highly possible when visiting a hotel that some officious trumped-up lifeguard will prevent me using the pool in it.  I hope someday I'll find a way to present Formi onstage.. but for now I just don't know, because the real magic of the suit isn't that it looks good, but that it actually WORKS.