Ivan

Ivan was a birthday gift for my friend Tommy Tejeda. He was just a crazy creature I came up with when I decided to make Tommy a sculpt for his birthday one year.

Looking back now, Ivan was the first sculpt I actually started playing around with armatures. Before I hadn't simply because the sculpts I had done before were solid designs that didn't really need armatures. Ivan had that huge tongue and tiny arms and legs, so I put armature wire through whatever I thought might be prone to snapping off.

The tongue was a a small challenge because it's the biggest feature on this character. He was propped up in the oven during baking with little scupley pillars so he wouldn't fall over. Super Sculpey gets softer first when you heat it up and then starts to harden, so you kind of have to account for that when you bake it.

I gave him a coat of primer and left him for Tommy to paint up if he wanted. Tommy is another great artist so I thought he could handle it.

He even has a bit of anatomy goin' on. WHAT!?

Boba Fett costume

This is my Boba Fett costume I made as a surprise for Halloween the year of 1993 (wow) I believe. All of it was hand-made and scratch built in my one-bedroom apartment in North Hollywood. Now this was before the Internet, before DVDs (WHAT?), before you could buy a full costume from some guy sellin 'em. The whole thing was built from nothing! Which is why there is no rocket-pack... for alas- I ran out of time!

The helmet was sculpted in front of my laser disc player in pause mode. "Return of the Jedi" was my main reference, along with pictures from books and trading cards I had. Eric(Thomas) helped me make a plaster "cast" of my head and I sculpted the helmet on top of it with green plasticine (I think) clay. I figured this would be the safest way to make sure that it fit on my head.

When the helmet sculpt was done- I needed help. A friend arranged for another friend of his to help me mold and cast the helmet. I need to buy everything and just bring it to his shop. I had to ask one of my friends to help me get it there. I wanted to surprise everyone at Simpsons with it so no one would know who it was until I took off the helmet, but I had to let someone in on it. Paul Wee and I had kind of talked about how cool it would be to "make-this-or-dress-up-as-that" for Halloween and once we were thinking how tough (but awesome) it would be to make a Boba Fett costume. When I told Paul what I had in my apartment and why I needed his help he nearly fell over. So at lunch one day we drove to my apartment and with Paul holding this green Fett helmet thing in his lap, off we went! When we got there, the guy thought we dropped it because of the "dent" on top. Right on!

The cast was made in a creamy brown fiberglass so it looked like it was made out of chocolate! I filled in any pits and air bubbles with epoxy putty and finished the helmet with lots of sanding and rebuilding. It was really fun to paint it in the flat colors and then mess it up with scrapes and chips and stuff. The macroscope ratchets down over the front and was built from the leg of a Transformer toy I found in an old toy box from home in North Dakota!

The armor and gauntlets and stuff were built and formed out of styrene sheets, cut and fitted together. Lots of Velcro and hot glue anchored it in place on the cloth uniform, which was made by a friend of my Mom's back home who happens to be a seamstress. She did a great job!

Now (of course) you can find unlimited reference for Boba but back then it was hard to find really detailed pics of all his gadgets and his paint schemes and stuff. I think I got pretty close.

Everybody at worked loved it! Paul was inspired with the styrene sheets approach that he borrowed my heat-gun and made his own armor and came as a Colonial Marine from "Aliens"!
Eric was working at Universal ( I think he was just starting designs on the Popeye ride in Orlando), so I drove over at lunch to show him. This is where the pics of me in the full outfit (sans rocket-pack) were taken. Eric was dressed in full-on Pirate mode that year.

That year I didn't win anything in the costume contest back at Simpsons... Pete Michaels beat everybody! He dressed up as a trashy hoochie-girl. Can't beat that! (He looked so HOT...!) It was fun getting big reactions at all the parties that year. Good times!

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...!"

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...?