From the ground up...

This is the history of the first collaborative piece between Billy Parker and myself. We wanted to make a piece to put in the Sumter County Artists Guild annual show. The fact that we had never actually created a finished work together inspired us to take a stab at it for the show. Several hang out sessions and a few burritos later and we had decided what we were gonna make: a portrait of Cthulhu.

Next step was to decide how he was gonna look, how he was going to be presented, and how best to compose the piece. Billy championed the idea that Cthulhu was sitting in his throne awakening... just about to destroy the world of men. I wanted a more action oriented pose, with him standing as his wings unfurled. It wasn't until I set the two ideas down as sketches that the sitting pose was clearly the best one of the two.

Early Development

The next step was creating a maquette to better envision the character and for reference on how the light reacted to the tentacles on his face. I sculpted the head out os Sculpey and used it to draw the pencils Billy would paint over in the final version.

Maquette

The maquette was then painted as a reference for Billy's final paint application.

Painted Maquette

The next step was drawing the pencils that would lay the groundwork for Billy's painting. I had never drawn on canvas board before... trust me... it's a pain in the rump. Smudges VERY easily... I reccomend using gloves and/or a paper shield to protect the drawing while you work.

Pencils

Gave the maquette a thick coat of varnish to give it a wet, slimey look. Even though the maquette was just a tool for reference, it still makes for a nice piece to keep... and enter in the show!

Finished Maquette

And here's the final piece! It's one of the best things I have ever taken part in... watching Billy turn my humble pencils into the finished piece below was unbelievably cool.

Finished Painting

Well... i want to appologise for the less than detailed images of the finished painting, but I don't have a scanner big enough to accomodate the painting... I'm looking into scanning it properly eventually.

Well, thanks for dropping by and taking a look!

Charlie

Bring me the head of Batros!

Batros was a character from the old He-Man cartoon. He was kind of a lackey for Skeletor who looked like a lackey for Hordak... but he totally wasn't. His major claim to fame was the fact that his greatest crime was stealing all the books on Eternia. Yeah... the books. Shut up.

Well... I've been threatening to share my head sculpt for Batros... and here he is:

Once again... I was trying for a Mattel-ized version of the character. I like to think of it like Mattel made the toy first, and then the cartoon designers created the animated character from that toy. It helps me to give it an authentic Mattel-like quality, I think.

He's fresh out of the oven, so he's still a bit rough... I'll have him all polished up soon enough though.

Any suggestions as to what character I should sculpt a noggin' for next?

Giant, pink bunnies...

The He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon had some really goofy characters that were never made into figures.  One character was Plundor the Spoiler.  He was something of a galactic industry baron, and he went around exploiting planets for their natural resources.  And... he was a giant, pink bunny rabbit.  Yes, you heard me right.  Giant. Pink. Bunny. Here:

So I decided to take a stab at sculpting his noggin. I dunno why... I just did. If I get ahold of a pretty cheap classic Masters of the Universe figure I might just make the whole figure. We'll see.

I wanted to capture the look of the show, but the aesthetic of the old toy line.  So I "Mattel-ized" it a bit.

Here's the head sculpt:

Giant, pink bunnies. Ahhhh... the 80's.

Hello!

So, hiya!

I guess this is the next step in putting my junk online. Ok... that sounded weird. No one wants to see my junk... I guess. The internet is a weird place.

At any rate, this lil bloggie will hopefully serve as a kind of fridge on which to stick my drawings and pictures. Hope I have lots of magnets!

So... getting right to it... here are some pics of one of my latest figures:

This is a He-Man figure I made from one of those big n beefy WWF (oops... WWE) figures. I wanted maximum poseability and maximum beef. Cuz... He-Man's beefy. And stuff. Shutup.

I sculpted the head from Sculpey and made the wristbands and belt from craft foam coated in sealer. The boots and pants are made from the pleather of Van Helsing's trenchcoat (I finally found a use for that hunk of crap). The furry boot tops are made from rope. I reused the harness, shield and axe from the 200X He-Man figure. I wanted the grim n gritty oldschool Mineternia version of the character, so no powersword.

ah well... until next time,

See ya!