This entry celebrates the return of our computer finally, (thanks EJ ), after a long stay in the wilderness of "what the hell is wrong with it?" and the upcoming birthday of my zombie loving grandson. I have it on the best authority that he would like a model of the Pvs Z Cherry Bomb.
Here are some initial sketches and thoughts in notebook No.16.
Apart from the lack of recent blog entries, the photography sequences are not that crash hot. It seems I have made the spherical master (from Apoxie Sculpt) and have worked out the best way of casting it in silicon rubber. Really it was so long ago, that I'm just going by the photos I have, to figure out what I actually did. I must have decided that the detail of the face needed to be directly below the inlet for the resin to nullify the problem of undercuts.
It obviously worked, as this pic shows the master between two cast cherries. A lot of work has been done to the casts as displayed here. Those tricky eyelids, that give so much character to these mean little cherries, were I remember, a pain. Too much here, too little angle there, how thick,where to finish, how much eyeball to cover, all these and more made up what is, seemingly, a very simple sculpt.
The mouths with their asymmetrical teeth were an adventure with the motor tool of similar proportions to the eyelids.
I forgot to mention that the eyeballs were plastic beads where the holes become the pupils. This is a technique I use often and it hasn't let me down yet.
The cherry stalk proved to be a problem in that it had to be correctly shaped (simple wire is too uniform) so such wire was joined, covered in putty and cast to make a natural looking twig. The junction points with the spheres was a bit of hit, miss and hope, with the help of a bit of filler.
You can see in this closeup that those teeth took a bit of filing, fitting and finishing. I felt at one stage that I'd have to create some special "plastic teeth, for the gripping and fitting of,tool", before I managed to get them into their proper place.
Of course there are no photos of the stages of the paint job, but let it be said that they put up a fight before the angry little buggers were done. All in the name of being a loving Poppy.
"PEACE" Part1
I think this is the name given to the red rider character created by William Stout. I have been a Stout fan, especially of his prehistoric art work, ever since I bought his book,' The Dinosaurs', published in 1981.
With the advent of the internet and the ability to find something about anything or anybody, I have seen so much more of his hugely varied output.
The red rider astride a weird blue bird beast, crops up whenever Stout is mentioned. It has been reproduced in many different styles, from line drawings to full oil paintings and I would like to do it some justice as a sculpture.
Here are the first stages of my process. I have a decent picture of the subject and from there I enlarge it to working size by squaring it up. As you can see it will be about 300mm high as I intend to model the base as well, blood dribbles and all!
The face of the rider is seen at an angle, great for a painting but we need more than that for a 3D piece. This means that any clues from the painting have to be interpreted into "the round". I have to know what he looks like from the front, back, side and even top. A figure if well rendered, and Stout's are certainly that, gives hints that help answer the questions about what is hidden in the flat world of a 2D picture. The angle of the neck, the twist of the shoulders, the slump in the saddle, all reveal how and what should be seen in the final figure.
The sketches in my notebook are my interpretations of various views taken from the original.
If the rider is important then his mount is hardly less so and the process of converting what is seen in the picture to a possible 3D model is undertaken the same way. The beast gave me more trouble than the rider because the clues in the picture added up to a creature that could not be proud of its profile. Three quarter shots only for you my son, stay away from side views unless you want all your enemies to die from laughter. I can see now that those ears are going to prove troublesome.
On to business. A simple armature of wire and plastic mounted on a wooden base starts the process.
Care is taken to get the width of the beast's hips correct as this will determine the rider's" seat "on its back, how wide are his legs spread and from that, where his feet will end up in the stirrups.
Most large two legged birds actually quite a narrow distance between their feet. Cassowaries, for instance, have a very narrow double foot stance for such a huge bird. This is an important aspect of the whole figure and will be most evident from a front viewpoint.
As I only had a curl of wire at the head, I needed to have an extra support for the beast's great long face and so added this structure to carry that huge hooter.
Standard procedures here with foil being used to bulk out the body. A start with Apoxie Sculpt has been made on the head.
Here is that troublesome profile shot and the first hint of a problem. In the painting the creature has fangs visible protruding below the end of the nose, but where do they come from? From first glance this animal seemed to me to be rather giraffe like, in that its drooping top lip hung quite low down, past its lower jaw. That would put the upper tooth/fang line to be well back of the nose tip. What then is the shape of its mouth and how far and how much would it be visible from the side?
Problems to be solved but isn't this why I do the things I do? Sure is, so bring it on Mr. Stout.
Apart from beast fang things, I had the whole rider to sculpt and to help in this job I decided to bite the bullet and do something I had been meaning to do for ages, make an armature for a human figure. This meant deciding on a style that would do many jobs but would be easy to cast each time I needed an armature. The sketch above was the way I decided to go, making a head, torso, hips and two sections of legs and arms as well as generic feet.
And here he is! The masters are simple shapes modelled in Apoxie Sculpt and cast in one piece moulds. The cylindrical pieces are easy to release from the mould and the larger three have the mould sliced half way down to make the release just as simple. The feet are done in a mould made from a silicon putty and are even quicker to de-mould. All the pieces are quite slim and clothing added will bring the figure up to size.
The above are a couple of views of the model so far and I'm pleased with the ease with which the cast armature pieces allowed me to find the stance of the rider. This is something I haven't done before but I am encouraged by progress so far. A lot of the foil is covered in cold porcelain just to see how it works. After a while it has cracked but any thing behaves badly in our climate, you just have to find a way around the problems.
Just to show how versatile the armature is, I made up a potential figure for, you guessed it, a zombie - but this time a real nasty!
See you soon for "PEACE" Part2
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