This is the quick sculpt I did of a deformed wolf.  It’s actually meant to be a deformed wolf embryo.  Imagine it straining against a backdrop of internal organs and glistening membranes.

Unfortunately it does look a little like a demented fox.  Not quite as evil or disturbing as the idea I have in my head.  Still, not bad for less than an hours doodle.

Kinda between projects at the minute, which is a little odd for me as I’ve been busy for the last six months or so.  Don’t really know what to do with myself (fnarr).   I’m also nearing the end of my sculpture course – only one more week to go.  It’s kinda flown by (how did it get to march exactly?) but I’ve quite enjoyed it.

We’ve been working on our portraits again this week.  Mine’s coming along quite nicely.  As I mentioned previously I’ve steamed ahead with this as the sessions aren’t that long.  I’ve got the proportions as close as I can in the time given.  The tutor’s had us pay particular attention to measuring the model in order to get our sculpts as close as we can.

This is something abit new for me too – I’ve never sculpted from a life model.  Any sculpts I’ve done previously have either been done over a life cast (in which case the measurements are automatically there) or created from scratch in which case you’ve more leeway to make things up as you go.

Having someone to actually measure up is useful, but weirdly kinda counter intuitive in someways.  I’ve found myself sculpting something that looks right to the eye, but then having double checked my measurement found that the models head is in fact smaller than I thought.  Weird.

I’ve been working on the details this week – we only have an hour or so of next session to finish the piece – so I’ve been concentrating on the eyes and ears.  I’ve not tried sculpting likenesses much in the past, but when I have I’ve found that it only takes a very small angle or piece of clay here and there that really makes (or not) a sculpt look like the person in question.  In this case having got close to what you might consider a finished sculpture, I suddenly realised that the nose was pointing up slightly too much.  Whacking a few bits of clay on there to make the underside a little more of a right angle to the lip suddenly made the whole sculpture look alot more like the model.  It’s not an exact likeness by any means, but I’m certainly fairly happy that it has a passing resemblance at least….!

New Project

The course is finished after next weeks session which will really leave me with no projects on the horizon (a melting head I was going to do for a film promo fell through due to lack of cash), I do have an idea for the next one though which is going to be a werewolf transformation sequence.    I’m still running through in my head exactly how I’m going to do it.  I think it’s going to be a small video sequence abit like the oldroid video though likely a little shorter.  I’m probably going to make a couple of rubber puppets and I think it’s gonna involve another old dude for the simple reason that they’re more fun to sculpt!  You can get some great textures doing all the wrinkles.

I’m not sure it’s possible to do a completely original werewolf transformation – everything’s probably already been done by now,  I do have a few ideas to give it abit of a twist though……..I did a small experimental sculpt of  a deformed wolf head recently, it kinda looked abit like a manic cartoon fox though.  I really wanted an evil look to it.  I’ll stick a pic of it up later anyway.

We’ve been doing a portrait on my sculpture course for the last two weeks.  I’m quite enjoying this one – we’d previously been doing full body sculptures, portraits I find a little easier as there’s less to get wrong!

As each session is only 3 hours long I found myself running out of time on the previous sculpts (it usually takes me weeks to get things right) but I’ve sped ahead with this one and it’s come out quite well.  Not sure it looks exactly like the model, there’s a passing resemblance though I think (hope).

We’ve another week on this one so I should be able to get this more or less finished – the basic shape’s there so I can concentrate on details next week.

I’ve finished my Oldroid video.  Came out quite well, abit longer than anticipated, but no bad thing I guess.  Already thinking about the next one, which will feature werewolves ;0)

Been filming my ’short’ Oldroid video.  I had only intended it to be a minute or so long, it’s getting on for about five minutes now!  I’ve done an arm for the Oldroid which he’s been lacking up to now.  This was sculpted in chavant and I decided to do a quick mold with plaster as I didn’t want to spend too much time screwing around with it, however as it turns out using plaster worked out really well as chavant doesn’t stick to plaster.  Having spent ages recently cleaning chavant out of fibre glass molds this is abit of a revelation.  Even better, platsil also doesn’t stick to plaster either.  Awesome.

I was worrying that I’d made the hand abit too big after all that, however I’ve found that if you have the camera above the model it looks OK (phew).

Also had abit of a problem painting the platsil – as it’s platinum based rubber rather than tin based my bathroom sealant / oil paint/ white spirit method won;t adhere to it.  I’ll have  to have abit more of an experiment with that one.

Anyway, just doing the sound effects then the video should be done, wahoo!

Just making a hand and arm for the Oldroid, which he’s been lacking up to now.  Should be able to start filming this next week hopefully :0)

I’ve been experimenting with the lighting for my Oldroid project.  No idea what I’m doing here really, just fiddling around to see what I can come up with.  I’ve bought a couple of gels so I’ve taped various colours over my photography lights to see what I can come up with.

I’ve not been able to find much info on this online – for example are you supposed to use red gels if you have a red model, or the opposite?  No idea.

I’ve found using green and red seems to work OK, with a blue spotlight.  Guess they’re all the primary colours so maybe they cancel each other out, or combine somehow.  God knows.

It’s been complicated slightly by the fact that my SLR and Camcorder both react differently to light levels (that should’ve been obvious I suppose thinking about it) so I’ve had to have the lights one way to take some stills and another to shoot some video.

I think to keep things simple I’m going to do it all on my camcorder.  There’ll be a few stop motion bits in it which I’d considered using my SLR to do but I think there’s going to be quite a stark difference between the SLR and Camcorder footage if I do that.  The camcorder has a stills  mode on it anyway and the footage looks much less grainy once you get it on the computer.

I needed a miniature gramophone for my latest film project and lo and behold, look what I found.  Amazing what you can get on ebay – it’s from a shop in india and it’s just about the right scale for the Oldroid.

I’m gonna modify it slightly – feed a rod through the base up to the turn table so the record can actually turn, make it a little more ’steam-punky’ (glue a load of cog wheels to it basically ;0)

Awesome.

This is probably a little boring unless you’re into such things, however I’ve been testing the new rubber I bought – I didn’t want to cast up anything without having a go with it first.  Some types of silicon are inhibited from setting by certain materials so it’s a good idea to get used to using them first before you try anything major – you don’t want to turn your mold into a huge gooey mess and waste £xxx of rubber in the process (this  stuff ain’t cheap).

Luckily Tinsil seems pretty good stuff.  It’s a little less viscous than the old stuff I was using which makes it a little easier to mix and inject into the mold.  The colourant is also really good.  I had been using a combination of talcum powder and makeup powder to make the rubber opaque and give it a flesh tint, however the colourant makes the rubber completely opaque and flesh coloured with a small amount which is great.  It also seems to act in the same way as the previous silicon I was using which means I can carry on using the same method to paint and glue it which is also great.

Next step is to give the Platsil Gel I’ve bought a go.  This stuff is apparently a little more picky about what it chooses to react with.  It’s also very quick setting (about 6 minutes) rather than the 12+ hours for the ‘condensation cure’ silicons I’ve been using.

We’ve started a new sculpt on the course this week, which I’m quite relieved about as I wasn’t really that happy with my previous one.  This time we have a lady model and I started this sculpt without worrying too much about measuring out proportions which is how I usually go about these things.  I just started sticking blobs of clay together and let things progress.  The tutor had us take the slightly unusual step this week of working on each others sculptures for a time.  I think the idea was to try and give us a different perspective on how other people view things.  I think everyone felt abit uneasy about interfering with someone elses work at first, but we eventually got used to it.  When I got back I found someone had actually added to the back of my sculpture which I’d been working on and started the arms which was nice!  I’m quite pleased with the way this one is going actually, so I’m looking forward to next week.

Artists

We’ve also been asked to give a short talk about two artists as a kind of small research project I guess.  I volunteered to kick things off and I think I’m going to talk about Stan Winston and H.R. Geiger.  Both are obviously abit‘filmy’ as you may expect and perhaps not the ‘traditional’ artist that the tutor may have been envisaging, however I think they have  something over more ‘traditional’ art and artists.  While your ‘average’ sculptor make create his piece perhaps in clay, then fire it, at that point he’s pretty much done.  Your FX artist will sculpt it in clay, but then cast it up in rubber, paint it, add articulation to it and turn it into a living breathing character (more or less).   Then it gets lit and filmed, and perhaps augmented by a dude with a computer (or these created entirely on computer, but that’s another story ;0).

There seems so much more to it in the film world, or is it just me?

Rubber

In other news I’ve ordered 5.5 L of TinSil Gel silicon rubber and 2L of PlatSil Gel plus some pigments.  This may not seem particularly exciting, but believe me this is abit like christmas.

The  reason for this rubbery splurge is that the place I get my usual silicon has stopped selling it as the manufacturers gone bust so I’ve been forced to go elsewhere.  This is kinda good as TinSil and PlatSil are the more ‘pro’ types of silicon so I’ve bought these partly to finish off a previous project, but also to have abit of a practice with them.  I may start this werewolf idea I’ve had knocking about in my head as well.

Should probably finish off the Oldroid one first……