Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Head progress

Here are some process photos of a head I was working on last week. I plan on casting this, which I haven't done for a long time. I'm having to learn the process all over again. Luckily, it's a pretty simple shape.


I am using a K'NEX piece that I cut down for a ball and socket joint. It starts with wire and foil to fill it out before the Super Sculpey is added. The eyes are just plastic beads.


The odd hairstyle is just an extra piece for the casting process and won't be visible in the final.

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Joust Process

Here are some process photos of the Joust Bird

I almost always start with a foil and wire frame (not pictured, sorry) before adding the Super Sculpey. Here you can see that the structure was still taking shape. I hadn't quite worked out the beak shape and hadn't added the crest. The shape of the chest is still pretty flat. 

The sculpting is pretty close to done here. I regretfully used different colors of Sculpey just because I had them sitting around. It made it hard to see what everything would actually look like once painted.  My favorite piece of reference for this guy was the tongue. I came across photos of goose tongues which have teeth-like ridges on them. In the end the tongue got a bit obscured because I painted it black, but there's a lot of detail tucked in there. 

 I love adding little story bits in the designs. There is a little scar in the feathers on the chest where the  feathers never grew back. I imagined that surviving many joust battles in the sky would leave a lot of bumps, bruises, and cuts. The figure was baked around this point before adding the helmet.

 Here I just started to add the first layer of weathering for the paint job. You can see a wash of sepia ink around the eye and neck. The spike on the helmet was intended to be a cut off beak from a bested opponent, saved as a trophy.
The paint job was 90% done here. I added the nose ring which eventually got a bit of bronze paint and some rust added using pumice texture gel. It is basically acrylic gel medium with sand mixed in. There is a little on the helmet as well. 

The paint was acrylic applied with brushes. I used watercolors and ink here and there and Minwax Polycrylic to goop up the eyes, tongue, and mouth.

JOUST


Here is my sculpt of the best 80's dueling mounted flying ostrich game out there. Of course I speak of the arcade classic Joust. This was my take on a design for the flying war birds in the game. Battle-scarred, tired, and angry. This piece started as a classroom demo. It sat for a while but I recently got back to it and wrapped up the sculpting and paint job.










Post from Chris Gethard

Here is a nice message from Chris Gethard about some fan art I did for his cable access show many years ago. Chris has a new(ish) special on HBO which is great and totally worth your time to sit and enjoy. He also has the latest iteration of the Chris Gethard show coming this fall on TRU TV. If you haven't seen the show before go scour YouTube right now! Its insane and wonderful; PeeWee's Playhouse for grown ups.