Cherry Bombs and" Peace" Part 1

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.

Normally I cut the resin inlet and air outlet into the dividing line between the two halves, but here have gone for two punched holes in the centre of the back of the head. This will allow the resin to pour evenly around the bulges of the eyes and mouth.

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.

Everything is shown here, master, moulds, casts and undercoated cherry bombs.

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.

Well on the way now with eyes added (black plastic beads) and the contours of the head coming along.

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

Possessed Puppets

We had been invited to a fund raising trivia night at a local school and as it is always themed, we had to come up with something appropriate. The theme was," Once Upon A Time", but in a cracked interpretation of classic fairy tales. Each table of six was given an individual title and ours was -Possessed Puppets- which was a much easier idea than' The Princess and the Pea.'
 This was mentioned to me on the Wednesday before the event on the following Saturday, so I immediately started to create a large puppet for each member of our team.

Sorry about the lack of rotation but this gives a good idea of what I had envisaged, a long, lanky body with a Tim Burton inspired head.

This is the working plan and you can see that it's about 55cm long. Against this I was able to measure  all the various body parts and there were plenty! Six puppets means six different heads, six similar torsos, twelve hands and feet, twelve arms and legs (which would be made of two sections), and assorted clothes etc.

As I said before, the faces were to be Tim burton inspired as I feel he captures the essence of "Possessed" to a tee. Here are the sketches that Google yielded up and I felt quite happy about their suitability.

This is a checklist I started for the six puppets but really all it did was tell me who was going to get what.

Because most of the work went into the limbs, I include this to show how they were made. Newspaper was rolled up, taped at the ends then wrapped in cut and measured pieces of an old sheet I found in my "rags for the use of" bag. Each cylinder was then hand stitched in three places, very quickly and with little heed to neatness (not necessary considering the subject), and a blob of super glue with a bit of kicker added to each stitch. This made the tiresome task of making 36 limb pieces quite easy.

The heads of course make the model and I would have liked to have had six styrofoam balls ( 10cm dia.),  instead of just the two I found. The grinning idiot at the top is one such ball but the cute girl and her toothy mate at the bottom were made by wrapping layers of newsprint around a set of smaller styrofoam balls(5cm). Half way through the vigorous wrapping procedure, the balls were given a good bashing with a small hammer to persuade them to stay spherical and masking tape wrapped around to maintain that shape. Due to the different material, these paper heads became quite heavy compared to the foam ones. This caused a definite 'sagging from the neck' problem which necessitated the insertion of skewer sticks into the heads and thence into the tops of the torsos - not as easy as it sounds.
Once the ball was made it was shoved into a sock (we have a wonderful second hand clothes shop in our little town) and then coated with thinned PVA glue before  hanging in the sun.
Now that could have been a real problem as the town isn't known for its sunny days, but we do live in the tropics so when the sun does shine, it is very hot! They all dried off well.

I wanted to make as many parts of the puppets the same, mainly due to the time constraints on the project but also as a unifying detail overall. Thick cardboard was used to make the hands and feet but it was quite soft and porous. This is where that wonderful stuff Super Glue comes into its own. It is great for sealing and strengthening materials like this cardboard. Here is a hand being dunked into a puddle of glue, then being hung in a row to drip and dry.

This shows a nearly complete puppet and his mate the Red Devil. Their torsos are fabric tubes from socks, stuffed with plastic bags (they are much softer than scrunched newspaper), which were sewn and turned over at the tops to tighten them up.
The legs and arms were sewn roughly but securely and each stitching joint was treated with super glue as per the limbs.

This puppet became everybody's favourite as it couldn't be placed anywhere without displaying a whole lot of attitude. I made the hair by stretching a small black sock over the back of her head, tying it off tightly with a rubber band, stitching the front down at three places and coming up with a cute widow's peak.
She was out there and away!

While making the group, I thought I would like to have at least one token zombie but that meant two different sized protuberant eyes and a gaping mouth - could it be done?
The eyes are half a table tennis ball and a section of a spare small styro ball. I tried to glue them overnight with PVA held in place with tape, but the larger one didn't stick, so back to the super glue. This had a bit of an eating effect on the foam but it held it in place that's all that mattered.
Once the eyes were in place I cut into the sock and newspaper to make the mouth. The problems I thought I would have didn't occur and I was able to carve out a sizeable mouth. This was sealed with super glue then a layer of Selley's Kneadit was added.
Teeth, made of shaped thick plastic,. were inserted in slots cut into the hard Kneadit with a motor tool.

Apart from a few minor additions, this is the final look of the group. Can you see what I mean about the pony tail girl? Zombie boy, wearing his favourite tie, is up the top with his mate the Red Devil, while Let's Get Physical is on the left gazing down at Gormless (who just doesn't get him - or life), while the original Baron Samedi (he gets a top hat at the last minute) decides to take advantage of his situation and stretches his considerable arms around both girls.

Now just because I started this project, that doesn't mean I did it all. This happy group of Trivia goers spent a lovely evening in front of the TV, stitching on hands, feet and limbs while eating fish and chips and watching Australia beat New Zealand in the Anzac Rugby League test.

See what I mean about Gormless? Staring off into space, totally oblivious to the whole world apart from the fact that she has really cool hair.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chicken Trophy and some zombies

CHICKEN TROPHY

I have a friend who is a teacher at the school where I last worked before I retired. He organises a relay race between the two school houses, where the runners carry a rubber chicken instead of a baton. This relay starts with the preschoolers and continues up through all the classes to the teachers and even to the parents who come to support their children.
He asked me if I could come up with a suitable trophy - a Chicken or Chook Trophy- to be awarded to the winning house and kept in their possession for a year. What could I say? It is such a crazy concept and should be fun to do and as I really enjoyed my time as the art teacher at that school, I was only too happy to give it a go.
This was the original idea for the trophy, a running chook in an athletic yet panicked attitude, atop a wooden base. Apart from some support items, (helping the one foot balance business), this is what they will be running for, for years to come

 

Here is a sketch of the model marking the hip and shoulder joints as well as the spine. These points will carry the major limbs and in this figure, they will convey all the intent of a running chicken.

As with the Clever Duck, I made two armatures, one for them and one for me. That is the original idea but the "me" one hardly ever gets made. Maybe this time?
A central plastic form was cut and strong soldered wire legs were added with a vertical extension of the middle toe to provide a join to the base.

 

This frontal view shows the work required to get the correct dimensions as well as strengthening  elements, for what will turn out to be quite a robust figure.

Wow! A lot has happened between photos hasn't it?

1. As per most of my models, foil was added as the bulk of the body to the central spine, defining the strong thighs and the area of the shoulders. 

2. Apoxie Sculpt was then moulded over the foil to give a near final shape to the body.

3. The sculpt of the head was then started and this was a lot of fun as it actually worked without a lot of hassle. I used large plastic, fake pearl beads for the eyes, as the hole in the bead is perfect for the iris. 

4. Once the putty had cured, I used a thin cut-off wheel in a motor tool to make a groove on the top of the skull to accommodate a plastic chicken's comb. This was covered with more putty and the wattles were added with the same stuff.

5. I wanted the wings to be a runner's arms in that they would have an" elbow" and a" wrist", both of which are important in giving drive to the athlete. I also wanted to make only one wing. This meant of course, a master and two cast duplicates. Surprise, surprise, that did not drive me to distraction with hidden pitfalls and mistakes, and they were duly done and cast. *** This reminds me why so few pics were taken. It was the wet season (up to 400mm in one day we had) and I do not like taking my camera out of its dry box in weather like that-- I've done the mouldy lens thing too much in the past thank you.***

6. The wings, being identical (as are our arms), could then be added with the curve of the feathers acting as the nicely relaxed wrist of a sprinter.

7. You can see the balsa wood support for the raised leg and this way of dealing with the various  modelling operations changed according to what needed to be done at the time. Some putty has been added to the right leg in preparation for the distinctive scaling of a chicken's leg.

 It does look a bit startled but that's to be expected, it is after all,  a Trophy Chook. That piece of white plastic used as its tongue did not last and was replaced with a sharp bit of flattened aluminium wire- so beware the sharp tongue of the chook!

Nearly there! The base was kindly donated by a local cabinet maker  as a favour to me, my teacher friend and the school. Nice bloke.
Here you can see the aforementioned support items and wouldn't you know it, a sunflower makes another appearance. This is a smaller version of the original from Plants vs Zombies, but now that I have made a mould of it, I can do a double sunflower for my grandson's collection.
The raised leg of the chook touches a point on a leaf and the strong wire stalk and with these contacts, the whole model is stable to the point of being nearly child proof. (No guarantees).

Painting. That nice timber base was massively masked with Tamiya yellow tape and standard masking tape in readiness for a white undercoat. Ha! This is where the problems began. I did not have any Citadel Skull white spray (which is superb), and I tried to do with a cheap variety. I may as well have thrown clods of white powder on it the result was so bad. In some places it stuck, in others it formed a grainy, pebbly sticky coat and in others it was just dust. The whole thing had to be sanded and that isn't easy on a complex, organic shape. 

They just don't make sanding "anythings," that can get to all the nooks and crannies that this chicken had sprouted.

A last resort was a coat of Skull white applied with the airbrush. The Citadel spray is an enamel finish which accepts the top acrylic coats really well and as I use Citadel game paints, they are, literally, made for each other.

The palette of colours for the trophy was simple and limited to, white, red,yellow and the typical sunflower colours used before. I used Red Gore then Blood Red for the comb and wattle and followed these with a coat of shiny Red ink. When this ink was sprayed with an acrylic floor polish I use for a gloss coat, it ran. The damage was limited and covered with some Vallejo glossy white, but I couldn't spray the head with the gloss and it had to be masked with a card while I finished the body and sunflower.

 

Here is the finished trophy, complete but for a final varnish coat on the wooden base. The whole thing stands about 250mm high.

I will glue a piece of green felt onto the bottom of the base. Nothing says "finished" better than a nice felt underlay.

BALL COLLECTING ZOMBIE

A quick diversion, back to the world of zombies.
I coach Junior golf, and the one thing that kids baulk at is ball collecting (at least to my satisfaction).
This in mind, I made a simple ball collector mounted on a bit of broom handle, but I needed about 10. I took the idea to an engineer friend and sounded him out as to a way of streamlining the production of the items. The talk was fruitful and I went back to making them, a little less laboriously. I needn't have bothered, for the next day he turned up with 7 already to fit into their handles!
You just can't beat a good friend!
This zombie, carrying said ball collector with a giant one on his head, is my way of saying thank you.

Poor bugger, doomed to roam the driving ranges of the dead, collecting ballzz which keep pouring out of his bag! Just as well he's got that big one on his head otherwise his BRAINZ would fall out!