I can’t believe that Comic Con is next week already! My husband and I are finishing up the Wolverine casts this week. He’s been doing the casting and power sanding, and I’ve been doing sanding by hand, patching, and painting. I always forget how much work casting is.
Here is a photo of the mess that is our kitchen table. The casts are so strange looking…like hardened mucus! I usually use a plastic that cures opaque white!
Just over two weeks left before I head out to San Diego. I’ve been getting all my work done on schedule, and I should be good to go with a little time to spare before I get on a plane on the 22nd (at 6:30am, much to my dismay!)
The Wolverine casts are coming along nicely! Unfortunately, the metal powder wasn’t working out and I don’t have the time/money to experiment with it right now. My husband has been casting these for me since I am super allergic to the casting resins when they are in liquid form. So that makes it even harder to experiment when I am shouting instructions from the other side of the house! Anyways, we went with plain resin and I’ve been painting them up to look like pewter. It is working out well. I’ll have some photos of the Wolverine army later on, haha. I have some photos of the unpainted casts too, they look so weird.
I printed out some test samples of the box packaging I did for these and that looks nice too. I should have a nice little package to give out when it’s all done! Today I finished up the last of my portfolios. I did 50 total, 5 of which I gave out to a few people already. The other 45 are coming with me to SDCC.
Dimensions : 6.5″w x 11″h x 8.5″d
I have been working non-stop getting ready for comic-con. It’s just a few weeks away now. I head out on the 22nd. I just finished up the Yokaiden sculpture. Man, it was a lot of work! But I am happy with the result. This was SO far out of my style, and I really loved the challenge. Check out the original illustration that I based this sculpture on. Some things were tweaked, but I largely followed the drawing bit for bit.
For those of you that don’t know, Yokaiden is an awesome manga by buddy Nina Matsumoto. Pick up a copy today. You won’t be disappointed. Nina was very helpful and accommodating during the creation of this sculpture so many thanks to her!
If you are going to be attending Comic Con on Saturday, be sure to drop by the RandomHouse/Del Ray booth (1128) to get your copy of Yokaiden signed by Nina. You can also check out my sculpture in person at that same table. The signing will be from 3-3:30pm.
Also, I will be toting some postcards promoting this sculpture as well as Nina’s manga. Vistaprint.com is great for last second, small run postcards. Just ordered them up today on priority shipping.
Had a few snags with the Wolverine casts, but my husband and I are back to work on the tonight. Gonna go do that now!
I got to work on my Wolverine mold last night. I used Smooth-On Oomoo30, and ended up using the whole container! Here are some progress photos of how I made the mold.
I make my mold boxes using 1/4″ foam core. I start by measuring out each side of the box, leaving a little space on each side of the sculpture. You don’t want the edges of the box to be too close to the edges of the sculpture or else you will get weak spots in your mold from where the rubber is too thin. I cut the pieces out using a metal straight edge and a box cutter, and tape them together with masking tape. You have to make sure you seal the inside and outside edges with tape so that the rubber doesn’t leak. I actually ran out of masking tape when I was making this so I used a little scotch tape too which ended up working just fine! I then used Super Glue to fix Wolverine in place at the bottom of the mold box. I spray the inside of the mold with Universal Mold Release so it the rubber won’t stick to the figure.
Then the fun starts! The rubber gets mixed 50/50. I use the small cups to measure out each part and then mix them together in a larger cup. Once they are blended, I pour them into another cup to do the final mixing. Then, I pour the rubber into the box. MAGIC! It’s a tiring process. You have to make sure the rubber is mixed very well, and you don’t want to mix too much at one time. So I mixed three batches of rubber for this particular mold….and my neck was screaming at me after wards. FUN!
This morning, the rubber seemed to have cured well. I won’t know for sure until I fully demold, but I am confident that it turned out ok. Here’s hoping the casting goes smoothly!
I also have a photo of all the pages of my 8×10 portfolio. The paper instructions said to let it dry for a week (!!) after printing before putting it in an album. That paper is expensive so I am not taking any chances! I should be able to put them away this weekend!
My kitchen looked like easter after all that colorful rubber going everywhere!!!
I’ve been trying to come up with a good design for the box that will house my Wolverine mini-busts which I will be giving out at comic con. I am trying to keep with the same theme (colors/fonts/etc.) as the rest of my promo material. I will be using these boxes and will be printing out the labels on 17″ long paper to wrap around the box. Probably will use spray adhesive to get them to stick, I love that stuff.
This is just a mock up as I don’t have the figure cast yet, so I am working with my progress photos. I am still tweaking it, and any suggestions would be much appreciated! Any type of package design is always a struggle for me.
I finished up Wolverine tonight. He is about 4 inches tall and done in Sculpey Firm. I will be giving out casts at Comic*Con next month. I am going to design boxes for them this month.
I am casting him in resin with nickel powder for a pewter look. I will be using Smooth-On products to cast, used them for years. Here is what the process looks like. And don’t worry, I will do my own step by step photos for this project! My husband will be taking on a lot of the work because I am horribly allergic to casting resins when they are in liquid form. I break out in hives for a month with the tiniest exposure, even fully covered. EW!
I have been working on portfolio stuff the last couple of days. I am printing out a few pages for my large portfolio tonight. I have a good prototype done for my small hand-out portfolios, now I am just waiting on paper samples. I went through 2 types of paper all ready with no luck. I am ordering some top quality stuff from Inkpress.com so hopefully one of those will work out for me.
I worked a little on my website design tonight too. My husband is nearly done coding my new site, yay! Nothing TOO big changing…a few small design elements and a more organized/simplified gallery. I am linking my news updates to my Twitter as well. I feel so modern!
The spot gloss looks great on these! I highly recommend overnightprints.com.
Real updates coming soon!
Sorry the updates slowed down a little this week. I’ve been pretty busy with work and haven’t had much time to work on my own stuff. Here is a preview of a character I’ve been working on for a while. I developed him for my book that I am writing about sculpting. I just started painting him this past week, and I should have finished photos of him soon. I am also working on modeling a base mesh of him in Maya which I will then bring into zBrush to detail.
He doesn’t have a name yet. I’ve just been calling him “cart puller” because that is his job 
I will be sculpting on Dexter and Wolverine on Saturday so look for updates this weekend.
I went to school almost 10 years ago for digital media, which included graphic design. I get bored doing layouts for my own promotional material, I can’t imagine doing it for clients day in and day out. That being said, I needed to come up with a fresh business card design for Comic*Con. My old one was outdated with old art and information. Plus, my image has changed in general. Here is what I have so far.
It will be a two sided business card. There will be another sculpture on the front side where that blank rectangle is, just haven’t finished that sculpt yet. I am going to have “spot” gloss on the sculpture photos as well as my name and the raptor on the back. I am going with Overnightprints.com this time around. 1000 cards for $50 is a sweet deal. I used to get my posters printed by them back when I did the convention thing.
Next month, I will be doing layouts for my printed portfolios. That will be fun…:)
I thought I had taken some more progress photos before I baked and primed this guy, but apparently I did not! Anyways, you can see here after the first baking, the hands were still left off. I baked him when his anatomy was done, and then sculpted the armor. I bake him again and then did the hands and staff. That last step was the most difficult part; hands are very hard, even with a ton of reference. I am pretty happy with it as far as first attempts go, but I hope to better myself a lot with each sculpture.
I threw in some photos of how I did the base because I know some people (like me!) like to see that sort of thing. I started with a wood base which I painted a flat brown. I painted on a thin layer of elmer’s glue and sprinkled on the sandy-type stuff. Once that dried, I glued down some of the “turf” in random spots and used hair spray to keep it from being too poofy. I found some small rocks outside and glued them down so it looks like he is battling over a crumbled building or something.
I see my hits spiked yesterday, thanks guys! Please don’t feel shy, I love comments and critique.
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