Thursday, October 16, 2008

Captain Hook




























Captain Hook was the first character maquette I tried to do. He was a Christmas gift for a fellow Captain Hook fan. I used a bunch of drawings and sketches and pictures of actual animation art from the Howard Lowery Gallery auction catalogs. I drew the rough pose I wanted to sculpt and hung all the other pics and copies around the room for reference.














Hook has a very crude armature in his hook arm. I didn't do an actual armature in the torso or anything. I was still learning and finding out what I the sculpey material (and myself) could do. I sculpted Hook without the hat and thought I'd figure out the hat and feather later. The teeth were a challenge to get looking convincing but not monstrous. The moustache I built with some bailing wire I sharpened and shaped, then cemented into the sculpt after he was sanded.



















The drapery on his chest and the jacket itself took me awhile to figure out. Cloth behaves a certain way and if it looks wrong you notice it. I rolled and piece out flat and draped it the way I wanted and then carefully cut off the excess... and then tried to leave it alone 'til I baked it!




















The hook was simply a mug hook that I sculpted a new tip onto. After it was baked I started sanding it to its curvy flare at the end. The other hand was hard for me. I did it over a number of times to get it to look convincing.















The hat I did the hard way... I baked I piece of sculpey shaped like a thick potato chip and sanded it down to the right thickness. It took awhile. I'd do it totally different now, but that's how I shaped it back then. The feather was sculpted on its own and smoothed as good as I could get it.

















The hat was screwed into place and then smoothed over with epoxy putty. I cemented his moustache in place with putty as well. When it dried you can sand it down as smooth as you have the sculpt itself. After Hook was painted with the flat grey you couldn't tell where the patched parts are.
















"Yar...!"

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Spaz


















Spaz was a birthday gift to my good friend PeeWee (Paul Wee). After seeing some of my sculpts and models, Paul had given me a sculpting turntable for my birthday. I've used it ever since on every new sculpture I've done. I wanted to get Paul a cool gift in return.














I was up late one night and couldn't sleep so I started doodling. Out came this spaztik duck! I thought it looked really funny, so I cleaned it up. I had some extra sculpey laying around and decided to sculpt him.


















Spaz took me only one night to sculpt. I think I baked him that night too and then finished and sanded him the next day.














I was going to paint and prime him before I gave him to Paul, but then I thought- ya' know, Paul's an artist himself and he'll probably have fun painting it up himself, so I left him like this.


















Paul was surprised and thought Spaz was great. He also started using the term "Kramer-eyes" to describe my style of character eyes. Paul is one of the greatest and inspiring artists I've ever met. It's great seeing other artists faces light up when you show them your work.


















I wonder if he ever painted him...?