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I was out of town for a week and I need to get back on schedule. It's hard to not just be lazy after a week of being at the beach drinking beer most of the day and napping whenever you feel like it. Oh, and my sister got married. So it wasn't just a random excursion smack dab in the middle of a month that  demands alot of work get done. Right before I left I ordered all the parts I needed for building my own pressure pot and it is done! Now I can cast my own flawless clear resin pieces.

What you've got here is an air compressor and a paint pot. A paint pot is intended for using with a pneumatic paint gun, like one might use to paint a house. Instead of attaching the hose where the paint would leave the pot I closed it off with a pressure gauge. Add in a few other things like another pressure gauge with a regulator, an inline dessicant and a ball valve and what you've got is your very own DIY pressure pot. I will be doing the first tests this weekend on the recasts of my Fresh Batch Dunny's and after that it's on to Skerpent.

New Stuff

I just received the Doctor Who box heads from my friend Stephen Larkworthy www.boxheroes.com and they look great.

So we've got The Doctor, which will be me and I will hopefully be able to find a passable suit at the good will, Ood, who doesn't belong to anyone yet and I might just wear it on a different day, Dalek, which my friend Mawuli is going to wear but I'm going to be keeping that one, and The Silence, which my friend John will be wearing... and his head comes with hands as well. Geoff will also be there in full glory as Cyberman which I made last year. It would be cool if full suits could have been made but in this quantity it would just be too difficult to get it all to San Diego. I'm very excited to start painting and will post pics as soon as I do.

We just received out 3D printer and if anything moves forward with my BYOZ the logistics of the project will change and might not include the 3d printer at all anymore. After seeing the results of the printer I feel that it won't yield a satisfactory product. It prints geometric things awesome but when it comes to more organic things the way it prints isn't quite what I was hoping for. All the pieces would have to be heavily sanded and in the long run I would prefer to hand sculpt all the pieces from scratch, save money on the 3d modeling, and then cast all the parts in resin. Because of the Skerpent project I'm working on now I'm about to invest in building my own pressure pot so I can pressure cast my own molds and casts and moving forward from there I could do the BYOZ project or something of that nature super clean and more of what I would want then using the 3d printer. Plus, the printer is really slow. It took over an hour to make a Coke bottle that was 4" tall. AND...at this point, I don't even feel like using Kickstarter to get a project off the ground is even necessary. I can build my own pressure pot for under $200 and the materials aren't cheap but I have alot of it already to do small runs so any pieces that get made in the near future will just go up for sale after completion. Even though the 3d printer wasn't quite what I wanted I'm still excited to be setting things up to make pristine casts.

The only thing I am making right now for the printer is a replacement spool for a table top packing tape dispenser. We have like 4 of them in the office that don't have spools so are useless so I'm making new ones with the 3d printer. 

Each dispenser will get 2 of these. The inner ring that is segmented will fit into the hole in the tape, 1 piece on each side, and then there will be a separate axis that goes through the center and notches into the dispenser. Not that big of a deal, but it will be the first model anyone here has actually made and printed as opposed to downloading an existing model, and I do not have much experience modeling. When I get some printed I will post pics. 

Fresh Batch Dunny's are getting closer to being done. All the casting is done now I just need to paint the heads and sew the cloaks. Thats all... :). That alone is gonna be alot of work. Still working on commissions as well, so, as usual, crazy busy.

Resin

I spent much of the weekend working on my Dunny's for Fresh Batch which entailed casting some clear bodies using some dyes and powders that I recently acquired and I found out the hard way that resin does not last long in a humid environment like Atlanta. I had a batch of clear that had been open for maybe a year, junk. Another batch that had been unopened that I've had for the same amount of time, junk. Then my friend Greg brought some over like a month ago and we opened it and poured some things with no luck and in just that amount of time enough moisture has seeped in to make it foam up like the rest. So I turned to the last unopened batch that I got about 2 months ago and FINALLY I got some pours that didn't foam up. Imagine those stupid fireworks things we had as kids that looked like black altoids and when you lit them they grew and grew like an ashy snake, that's what my resin kept doing... but only like an inch up out of the mold, but still annoying and useless. I had learned that the brand of resin I have been using must be moisture free and any will cause the mixture to foam. A while back I tried to dye something during mixing with some RIT dye and it did just that, foamed like mad. So I spent 3 or 4 hours mixing, pouring and praying it worked after changing variable after variable only to get the same garbage result until I got to that last batch... and it was such a relief. So I popped a couple usable casts though they need alot of finishing. The air bubbles are bad on the clear and I don't have a pressure pot yet but I think I got them minimized enough to pass especially since you will barely see the bodies on my design. but I can say the metallic dust is cool. The GID is also very potent. One of the casts that got messed up was with the GID and once I saw it foaming I yanked it out of the mold before it was done and got gooey resin on my hands. I thought I had gotten it all off but when I went to bed and turned the lights off my hands were glowing like mad. I guess it was good to know the GID was working.

Skerpent is almost standing. Need to change the angle of his stance and then add the tail and I think he'll be close to another reveal.

Wolverine

My friend John is gonna be able to order the shirts through a secondary company that does whole sale stuff so the Wolverine shirt is live for 10 bucks less as the shirts will still cost me 10. Go to the Jerk Store if you're interested.

Upcoming Stuff

What's up guys. Just wanted to let you know that I will be revisiting an Xmen tshirt design that I finished like last year at some point and I will finally get around to printing it....because I had a revelation the other day while poking around and I am now 100% confident that I will be able to register the different colors to near perfection. And it was so easy. I'll let you in on the secret since you're so kind to visit. The problem I've always had in the past has been once I print the first color on the shirt and I lift up the screen the shirt and the screen tend to stick together a bit and it stretches it out of sync with any future layers. No matter how hard I tried I could NEVER get the damn thing back in the right spot. And I'm not sure how I didn't come upon this sooner BUT the answer is..........you need to use a spray adhesive made especially for textiles and basically GLUE THE SHIRT TO THE BOARD. I had already heat proofed my boards as they are made of gator board by coating them with aluminum foil so I wouldn't need to remove the shirts between prints, but now, I spray on some of the heat resistant non transferring adhesive to the board and wallah, shirt doesn't stretch.

So in light of my new found information I am going to be doing a small run of the Xmen Wolverine Shirt. Like 5 plus my own.

I just looked at the date on the file and this design is over a year old and it's about time that it comes to life. These are going to be 4 color prints on yellow shirts: Blue, Red, White and Black. I am giving you the choice of 1 of the 3 yellows that American Apparel offers and I know their shirts are a bit pricey but they really are great and there are 2 stores here so I can run down and grab the shirts without having to wait. Gold, Sunshine or Lemon.

Because of the price of the shirt these are gonna have to be $45 plus shipping. You'll be able to choose your color and your size and hopefully I can figure that out in the store and if not then I will just have you email me your information. I'll be putting these up in my store in the next day or 2 so if you're interested be on the look out. As always, thanks for hanging out — Jared

Final Pics

Here are some final pics of the 3 3" Dunny's that I just completed. I had been working on these guys for a while. I think they might have been like...uh, a year late...hahaha, Sorry Eric. But those of you who know me and have had a commission made know that I'm not just fucking around over here. I'm slowly crafting your custom into something special and that takes time. Hopefully you know what you got yourself into and are comfortable with the wait. That said, here are the 3 little guys:

Hellboy, Leonidas and Voldemort. Hellboy was the first figure that I used that back of the head as the front, Leonidas had all the frills you could imagine and had to make his arms slightly longer and change the angle of the grip so he could hold the weapons and not interfere too much with the helmet and cape. And Voldemort was the first figure I've ever made were both arms are totally static. And I think his drapery is more detailed in sculpt than anything else I've ever done. Couple pics that I posted no where else.

Kickstarter stuff is on hold for a while. I need to marinate on that still

I've got a whole set of Harry Potter Mini Munny's coming up at the end of the month so more HP on the way. 

Have recently got some new AWESOME commissions including my first Star Wars Dunny's, some more realistic portrait pieces that will also probably have some dynamic poses like Voldemort in Legends of Boxing, and other great stuff like the Rocketeer, Mad Max and a few other original design things that will hopefully turn out great. 

Right behind these guys are some other things that have been in queue for a long while:

Adventure Time is just waiting on boxes.

Desert Punk is close to being done — just needs a little sewing and a little more paint.

A young Bob Marley complete with sculpted dreads.

The 8" 4 armed Kraken sculpt is about done and can't wait to get to the paint.

The 2 Star Fox mini's are done but their weapons are super intricate and will hopefully be done soon.

Dragon King needs a little something else that I'm not sure about yet.

Perseus is done except the paint app on his sword and shield.

Medusa needs some more detailing.

The U-Boat 8" still needs most of it's inner structure done.

And the Chuckboy Mutation is still in the old noggen. Gotta sort out the concept behind him still.

And that doesn't even cover SDCC... Skerpent is looking dope, and I still need to start the sculpt for Raydun, a custom sculpt based on the Jumbo Machinder Raydeen. I need to put together a custom box and book for a good friend of ours that will be at comic con, I have 4 Doctor Who box heads to complete, AND there is a possibility that my friend Stephen is gonna get a HUGE 12 suit commission from a guy in Spain and if that happens I will probably be painting 6 complete suits and that'll solidify the "do whatever I want" mentality at comic con as a pretty sweet pay day.

So much to do, still 3 months to go, but there really is NEVER enough time.

oh yeah, not to mention the Headless Horseman campaign. I really want to get that done before SDCC too so I might have a talking point with the KR people. Who wants to intern for me for free for the next 3 months???

BYOB

So BYOZ will be on the back burner while I explore other options. I really like the idea of the figure being modular and a friend of mine mentioned Glyos and I'm not sure why it didn't occur to me before he said that... that what I was talking about was very much like that. And I'm a big Glyos fan. Though with those figures you can assemble them in ANY configuration and with the Zombie it would ultimately build a humanoid figure each time.

My NEW idea is aptly titled BYOB — or Build Your Own Bot! I love robots and I think the idea could work in the same way but with perhaps MUCH more possibilities for builds. My initial thought would be to have certain sets of pieces for each appendage making the interface pieces only interchangeable with pieces from the same set but why limit it to just that? If all the pieces were interchangeable it would be exactly like Glyos and I'm not sure if that is good or bad. I would prefer the idea to stand alone as a distinct idea from Glyos so I need to give it some more thought.

Until then, a peek at a commission i just finished — 3" Dunny Hellboy.