Archive for March, 2010

A few vids of some recent sculpts.

A few more concept sculpts for my werewolf idea. Variations on a theme really. I think whenever I try and do a wolf like face it starts looking abit comic book. Might be abit more disturbing if I go with a more human looking face perhaps….

I have a few weeks off work coming up and so will be locking myself in a darkened room with a ton of clay and plaster ;0)

Finally finished my sculpture course.  Quite happy with the finished piece too, especially considering it was done in about 7-8 hours.  Once we’d finished the sculpture we had to prepare it for firing which, crazily, involved cutting it in half and removing it from the armature then scooping out most of the clay from the interior.  This was so that it wasn’t too thick to be fired.  This seemed absolutely mad to me – it’s such a destructive way to work – you spend hours working on your piece getting it ‘perfect’, then you risk completely destroying it by chopping it up.

If the firing process can’t handle think layers or clay perhaps a you could sculpt it over a lump of wax or something that would melt as the clay was fired.  It seems mad to have to cut it in half.

Anyway, I decided not to get mine fired as I have no idea what I would’ve done with the finished piece, so I squished it and chucked it back in the bag of clay.

More pics available here!

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)