Process Pics

Some new pics of the studio and a sneak peak at the next completed customs.

Once I knock some of these out a few new pieces will be started.

Oh, and I finally got around to starting up on the last few gift MW2 Dunny's with variant head for a few of the other artists. Man am I tardy.

Aso just ordered 10 lbs of silicone to start doing the casting on my MW3 Dunny. 10 lbs is major overkill but it was significantly cheaper per unit to order 10 lbs as opposed to 1 lb at a time. I will eventually use it all.

And...since this is done and everyone had already seen it, here is my final turnaround for my Headless Horseman Dunny that I will be submitting to Kidrobot in the near future. They did not ask me to do this, I am merely throwing my design in for consideration. It would be super cool as a Halloween release.

And one last thing. This is a design for a T-shirt that I started before Comic Con this year and just never finished it. I'm gonna finish it soon because the X-Men are dope and I don't have an X-Men T-hirt. The yellow will be the actual color of the shirt. It will probably be a 1 off and as of right now it's a 4 color print.

These Posters are the Shit

I think someone on Twitter linked to these posters and I fell in love instantly. I LOVE the Tron movies, even the new one. Legacy renewed my fake crush on Olivia Wilde. I'm supposed to be saving my money for our wedding in July but I need to get these posters. They dropped last week and it's utterly frustrating to have missed them by only a week or so and now they're going for double on Ebay. I might just suck it up and get them. I also need to buy silicone and magnets for my MW3 Dunny production.

What to do.

Tron and Tron Legacy by Martin Ansin.

Even Newer Design

After finishing the prototype I just wasn't happy with how she looked so I started revising her even more. I think it was the fact that the design on her body wasn't anything and I didn't really have a personal connection to the design...so I decided to keep the face and the babooshka because that really defines the nesting doll look but I was going to make the rest of it more relevant to me. So this is my MW3 design 4.0 and I took a little real life inspiration from my Love Amanda. Not totally sold on how the ends of the ears look yet but I am much happier with this than the old design. I think the colors are alot better too. There wasn't that much contrast on the old one and this pops alot more. It does have more detail though and will take longer to make but what the Fuck!

And I decided that it made the most sense to make a mini Dunny to go in the middle and that design is still undetermined. I'm thinking something nautical themed to go with the t-shirt. Maybe an ALbatross design so when and if someone uses it as a Zipper pull, it'll be like they have an Albatross hanging form their neck. I may be the only one that gets the reference (Rime of the Ancient Mariner) so I might have to keep thinking on that one. Maybe a little pirate. Amanda loves pirates, and she does say I never make anything for her.

MW3 Revised

So after getting a few responses about what should go inside my MW3 Dunny one of the ideas I really liked was to sculpt a Chest Burster like from the film Aliens and have that be inside her. I then figured that if that were the case the design should be altered slightly so here is a revised facial expression to better display her surprise that she is host to a deadly foreign being.

I also considered putting a smallish blood stain on the front as if the alien were in the process of busting out.

Other suggestions I liked were:

a wolf of some kind because she is reminiscent of Little Red Riding Hood.

a bottle of vodka because of the Russian nesting doll thing.

a little demon and that would go along the same lines of the alien.

In each case I think I would alter the facial expression to match the inner item; drunk if it were the bottle of vodka, scared if it were the demon or the wolf.

More Process Pics

Opti-Mummy and Mummy Bee

This is something a little different. Super7 is hosting a Mummy Boy paint contest at their store debuting next Saturday the 28th and I had time to paint up 2 submissions for the show: 1 Mascot and 1 pocket. I haven't painted alot of soft vinyl and unlike most of the work I do these are only themed by their color palette and nothing more. Most Super 7 figures have typical Japanese-like color sprays and I can't think of a single figure they did in a rub style, so we'll see how my paint application goes over with the judges of the show. Having finished several 3A pieces just a few months back I carried over that application technique to these 2 figures and I'm very happy with how they turned out.

Most Wanted 3

Ok guys. I need some more feedback. This is the final design for my Most Wanted 3 Dunny. After submitting several designs the powers at be suggested the design be more similar to traditional Nesting Doll designs so that the concept behind the sculpt comes across better. I happen to agree and out of 5 or 6 new designs this is the one that they liked the most. The question now is

WHAT WILL GO INSIDE HER?

It's gonna be a zipper pull, and I really like the idea of sculpting a miniature version of the sculpt to be the form, but I'm not sure of what the design on it will be. Traditional nesting dolls have a baby or something in the very middle, but who wants a baby as a zipper pull??? So my next thought was to make something completely unexpected. The outer design is light hearted and innocent so maybe she's like Rosemary's baby and she has like a little devil inside of her. Maybe it's that abominable snowman design I did but instead of blue and white it's black and red. Who knows. Anyway....looking for some input, some suggestions that you might like and actually make sense with the design. Let me know. PM or email..anyway you can reach me.

Work in Progress

Update on a couple things I'm working on right now.

8" U-Boat

For this piece the collector gave me a choice of a few topics and I had a choice of which one to do and then where to go with it from there. The topic I chose was "War in the Atlantic" and from there I almost immediately gravitated towards the significance of submarines in the World Wars and attempting to somehow transform the Dunny head into a submarine. This was the original sketch:

And here is the first WIP image:

I used wood to create the basic frame of the U-Boat around the head of the Dunny, I filled in as much of the walls with sculpting foam and then covered it with magic sculpt. This stage is very rough and is really just to form the basic shape of the piece. Once it cures there will be quite a bit of sanding, re-shaping and once it's ready I will use super sculpey to sculpt over the base with the finishing surface sculpt and details. I've left the inside hollow as much as possible as I will also be creating the innards of the sub...how that will happen, I'm not quite there yet.

Random workspace pic:

I'm also working on a pretty difficult and thought provoking 10" MAD-L and once I figure it all out it's gonna be very impressive. The first stage of the project is I'm attempting to create a custom tesselation that will ultimately be applied to the figure as the first stage of the application. Creating Tesselations is super hard and it just emphasizes how much of a genius M.C. Escher was. Here is the first attempt that I don't completely despise but I still have a long way to go. As you can see I can't figure out what the negative space will be and without that it's just an all over pattern that just about anyone could have made. 

First Customs of 2012

Now that I've settled into the New Year, got my studio revamped and ready to go I've started production on a number of pieces that I showed the sketches for a few months back. A couple of them are going to be some serious sculpts and I can say 2 things about these types of projects: 1. I am really loving the challenge of pieces like this as I really need to sit down and think about how I am actually going to pull it off. I always do but almost always the working process is very seat-of-the-pants as I'm working. The pieces that come to mind that I just started are the:

8" Dunny U-Boat and Fish Captain
- The head of the Dunny is being transformed into a U-Boat that will have a removable deck that will reveal the inner workings of the sub. And there will be a place on the central deck area which will be the single centered ear where the 3" Fish Captain will take his place.

3" Medusa
- Sculpting all the snakes for the head, her snake body with all the scales and then just to cover up most of it with flowing Grecian sculpey threads... this 3" figure is giving me fits.

8" Kraken
- This too will have his legs replaced with a slug like single serpent foot and unattached tail piece, 4 arms and a massive gaping mouth not to mention the surface sculpt and details. This one is in the early stages still but he is gonna be epic.

Also still working on the 3 Storms from "Big Trouble in Little China mini-Munny trio. Their hats have proved to be a major bitch but I finished Lightning and he looks sick so the other 2 should fall right in line. On deck I have a 3" Perseus, 3" Stygian Witch, 3" Constellation, custom Bubo sculpt, 3" Gundam Samurai, 3" Ox Viking, a Chuckboy Mutation, Mini-Munny Strider, 3" Chinese Warrior, Mini Munny Desert Punk, The next 3 members of the Justice League and Most Wanted 3... and much, much more. Not to mention the Jaws that has had me stalled for over a year. I need to kick that into gear ASAP. Got some awesome 1st time platforms coming in already for 2012 including a Dragon King by Kano and a Cure Boogie. And I still have quite a few 3A customs to finish as well that are mostly part of the same platoon. Quite a year to come and somewhere in there I need to find time to submit some production designs as well.

On an unrelated note, I am heading home right now to film my Survivor application video for the upcoming 2012 and 2013 seasons. I am not disillusioned in thinking I will actually make it on to the show but as lame as it sounds I would love to be on it. I'm a huge fan of competition to begin with and Survivor is a type of game that demands the best of all of ones characteristics—physical, mental and social and testing myself on all fronts is something that is very appealing. Lets hope I don't have a chance so I can stay home and finish all these toys :)

J