Leave it to the last possible moment they say!

Well its the day before and considering my printer is broken this is probably the last possible day!

As of this message, I have 11 toys fully painted and ready to be displayed. The past couple of days have been spent doing touch ups and thinking of ways to present my work at the gallery. The evaluation is done, and I'm just finishing up my sketchbooks and research work.

Overall, the project has been a success and pretty rewarding! I can now make custom toys whenever i please :)

Mass production

Now that the toy making is in full swing, I think its time for a little bit of reflection on the whole process - the rights and wrongs, and what id do differently:

• The clay model that was used as the basis for the figures was probably to complex and not smoothed down enough. Most vinyl/resin toys are very 'boxy or curved in nature; there are no over hangs, and normally no gaps in the same piece. My clay model had an over hang for the mouth area, as well as gaps for the cheeks. The silicone mould as a result has taken an absolute battering over the course of the project. A small gap equals a small piece of silicone and as it gets used more and more, it begins to break apart. With regards to the simplicity of the head I think i should have stuck with the more square shapes I sketched in my work book as opposed to the more detailed sculpt I went with. However I have been quite fortunate that the mould came out as well as it did, so it's probably a more stylistic choice.

• I wouldnt have used the Daz clay for the ultimate sculpt. Although I found a more malleable version of the stuff, it still didnt react too pleasingly with water and it actually totally broke apart during the making of the mould. Whether this was a chemical reaction or just a matter of dampness I'm not sure. What i am sure of, is that my first 7 or 8 toys to come out of the mould had clay residue on them! Not fun to pick and sand off!

• If money and time werent issues I would have stuck with my resin plaster mix as opposed to the plaster/sculpty crap I've ended up using. Its just far stronger and less volatile aaaand takes paint far better. However it also takes an hour to dry at a time and did more damage to the mould. Oh and its about two pounds more expensive then the stuff ive used for the last batch of toys per kilo which works out to quite a bit in the long run

Considering this is my first venture into 3-d work of any kind let alone making a mould and toys, Id say im extremely happy with the outcome. Yes, the toys could be smoother in appearance and probably a wee bit more professional looking. If you would have asked me 2 weeks ago how I was feeling, the response would have been " like death". When my mould was setting it would have been " sh*****ng myself".

Now, im pretty darn pleased :)



However there were casualties along the way ( thanks Geoff!!)

Heres a quick video of the de-moulding of one of my toys and a picture of the seven made so far

Angry day :)

Today I sculpted my final model ! HURRAAAAHHHH!
I popped to a cool art shop in highbury, whose name escapes me right now, and bought a variation on the air hardening clay. It was softer and moulded together far easier with a little water added. So well in fact, I didnt even need the sculpting tools I'd bought. Using both my drawings and vinyl toys I created this monster :

The imperfections can be sanded out of the final resin casts although im considering keeping them to go against the standard look of the models ( though it could look shoddy so we'll see). Hopefully the silicone mould will be finished tomorrow and if im lucky, even a final model! Look for a photographic step by step

Oh and there will be a (hopefully) cool video posted tomorrow of me doing some work!

Excelsior!!

wax never again!

Quick update today, got to keep it basic because im busy busy busy!

• Bought some candles to sculpt from after speaking to the product/spacial tutor
• Awful stuff to work with - i heated up my tools to cut into it, melted it, shaped moulds to try and get it to bend to my will
• Judging by the negative tone I think you can tell that it just didnt go all too well!

In the end I only managed to wrangle two rough shapes out of my candle ( ill post the pics up later)

On a lighter note, my resin plaster and silicone were delivered this afternoon meaning I can finally start my prototypes for the final piece! After talking to geoff and the product guy, Ive decided to go small and make a little army. Saying that, as of right now I havent even started the making so that could all change once again.

Whoever said toys were fun?!





( On a side note, heres an amazing Tim Sale cover for The Incredible Hulk 600)

Today

wasnt quite as productive as Id hoped. Instead of designing logos etc, I ended up with a single work sheet of how the seperate pieces of the figure could possibly interact.

The majority of the day was spent phoning around for supplies with this resin malarky and speaking to a few pro's about my project and the positives and negatives. Turns out vinyl is a definate no-no as its apparently pretty dangerous and I'd need a rotocaster ( big hunk of machinery). So, after being told that my plans suck by industry experts, I decided to hit the big world of internet forums finding a GEM! www.vinylabuse.com has forums dedicated to vinyl toy making and RESIN toy making. After looking through some conversations it was time to take the plunge and buy the stuff to make my toys.

Silicon with a liquid colour for my mould, and the resin clay to create the pieces. All should be delivered in 2 days!

To wind down this evening, I decided to take part in a ten ton sketch challege . This weeks being Star Trek ( the new film is incredibly good fun ). In a total of 45 minuten I ended up with this :

Things are getting a little tough now with only two weeks to go, and no final toy close to being made. Ive experimented with wood, styrophome, clay and now plastecine so get a look and shape that im happy with.

At the crit yesterday there was no avoiding my failings which I actually appreciated. The general gist was that im fully capable of two dimensional renderings on paper, but there was clearly something lacking when it came to the 3-d work. Not laziness per se, but it was clear I didnt enjoy it and it seemed I was fighting a losing battle.

See, one of the things I stated at the beginning of the project was to NOT overlook the obvious, or just throw it to the side for being too easy. So why the hell I didnt bust out the plasticine in the first place!!? It doesnt dry super quick, and I have total control throughout the whole process.

So whilst watching the exploits of Jack Bauer last night I created this little maquette :



its got the beer belly that i couldnt get with the clay and it is far more poseable. Great success really! Today shall be spent on graphic and logo designs for the toy and packaging

Getting a little closer now to the final shape, which ive decided at this point i will probably cast in resin. Wumi sent me a link showing how to make vinyl toys yourself: http://www.mnartists.org/article.do?rid=117339

Because of budget and time contraints, I'll probably only be able to make resin replicas of my final shape, but that isnt a bad compromise at all. The resin shiz will take place at the weekend so look for pics then

clay time!

After spending a couple of days on character sketch work sheets and noting down rough shapes and methods of creating them, I decided today would be the day I bust out the ole air hardening clay.

This is the third stage of my character design for the typical chavy/ patriotic londoner(fourth if you consider drawings). The first was the awful woodcut I cobbled together last week, the second was a rough design of two polystyrene balls stuck together to give a basic and easily reproduced shape.


And today, the latest frankenstein like monster is unveiled to the world.

Presenting Bulldog 1 stage 4 :

Made from clay, kebab skewers, a knife ,sewing needles and ten ton of water. Need to give it a good cleaning up and paint when its dry before varnishing the beast. This has totally turned me off of going with clay for each toy.

I was planning on using it to give each model its own personal touches and molds, but the process is both time consuming and not as easy as I first thought. The material itself isnt clean enough for the professional look I want the figures to have - smooth, curved surfaces. I'll still see how the painted model looks but at this point injection moulding seems to be the way to go!

Tomorrow I'll be painting the good old London public as well as handing out some questionnaires to the public, friends and randomers in order to do some character building before I finalize the designs. Oh and maybe some snooping on competing toys to see what kind of packaging and graphics they utilize.

The bulldogs say goodbye, expect a decent update tomorrow!

Sunburn, doodles and Gallery Visits

Just a quick update today!
Decided to combine both weather and work today, and popped into central london to do a couple of gallery visits and draw the random folk.

Nothing of real interest with regards to the sketching. Just the standard " Multi- Cultural London folk" as Boris would be proud to say.

Gallery visits were The National Portrait Gallery to see 'Gerhard Richter.Portraits' and the Opus gallery was more of an accident, but some cool looking sculptures caught my eye.

Gerhard Richters work is INSANE! I accompanied a fellow student there familiar with the name but not the work. Seriously guys and gals GO TO IT!. Its traditionally painted work in oils on canvas, but they are painted from/ like blurred photographs. Some of the transparent overlay effects created in colour have to be seen! Not really important with regards to my project, but inspiring none the less.

The Opus gallery was one of those small ones off covent garden, but these two fellows in the window caught my eyeThe artist was not named so I'll probably go back and get a gallery guide, however there were two other artists whose work was interesting and relevant to mine.

The gallery's website says this about Hush : " ush is an urban artist who worked in Hong Kong for a number of years as a graphic designer/Illustrator before recently returning to the UK......Hush draws his influence from a wide variety of modern culture to create his work. His main interests being graphic-novels, animation, graphic-design, graffiti art, urban art and contemporary painting.

He has worked as a graphic designer & illustrator / art director in London, Edinburgh, Newcastle and Hong Kong where he worked for a few of the largest Toy companies in the world."

( http://www.opus-art.com/artists/Hush/2759 the opus gallery website)

Work by Hush

His take whilst very influenced by eastern culture, takes a number of design aspects from western work - something i can aspire to.

Remi Rough had a statue at the gallery of Solid Snake, the main character from the metal gear series. This was not sculpted by the artist however it was painted black and then tagged with graffiti and paint marks. This is similar to my idea of taking a pre sculpted work and adding my own flavour and design elements to it. Remi is a graffiti artist who was a leading member of the ikonoclast revolution in the 90's. Something to look into methinks. Since his beginnings he has spread out into art direction, music etc.

All in all, a pretty damn productive day!

Hell!

Apologies for the lack of a post yesterday! Back to business as usual from here on in. After my tutorial I decided to attempt to craft something/anything useful out of a block of wood. Now as most people know, I HATE 3-d and trying to wrangle with the problems that arise when doing it. I'm just not really a maker of physical objects.

Anyway, with my moan out of the way and a wee bit of inspiration from the South London Gallery ( see picture below), I decided to invest in cut offs from B&Q some hand tools and just go to work on wood seeing what I end up with and respond to.

Now you probably wont believe this took the better part of two and a bit hours, but I assure you it did! Im certainly not proud of this, but its a start and has thrown me totally out of this "comfort zone" everyone speaks about.

Air hardening clay still appeals to me, as I can control every aspect down to the most minute detail, and it doesnt crack like standard clay. For now though im going to use the Bandsaw to create some more interesting shapes on tuesday.

Plans for a new build. Model at S.L Gallery

English 'lout' Bulldog Version 1

quick update!

Gary Baseman is an artist based in San Fran whose vinyl toys and art youve probably seen all over the place but didnt know it. This guy is AWESOME! He is influenced ( both illustration and toys) by pop art. Mexicano and his american toys, advertising figures and sculptures from the 1920's, 1930's and 1940's - The big bold eyes are VERY Betty Boop-ish. The figures are very american, and his range of figures named 'Dunces' most certainly rifs off of this . Some of his illustrations are painted on top of typically american advertisments.



The dunce range

A little closer to figuring out how to make my figures quintessentially LDN/British

Today was pretty productive; sorted out a stronger direction for the project and the next few steps at the very least. Woodword, vacuum forming and injection moulding. NOT exactly my strongest points but a guys gotta try!

Still looking for a cool way to inject a sense of London/Britain into my vinyl toys. Ive been toying with the idea of the english bulldog as a base for all of my toys. Nathan Jurevicius managed to take a traditional japanese toy and inject some aussie heritage into it ( the mushroooooms!):

He has a highly graphic style - something that will come in handy when designing the box and graphics for the "promotion" of the toys.

I've been drawing people every day on my way to college to get character/human traits and looks down as accurately as possible. Funnily enough my "sleeping city fatcat" from day 2 was on my train again today
English bulldog says a slobbery hello! May update later if i make any progress on my first head sculpt.

SHAMELESS PLUG TIME !

Ten Ton studios are a group of illustrators who work primarily in comic books, pencilling, inking and colouring for both independant and major press.

The forums (www.tentonstudios.com/forum) is full of talented illustrators constantly posting and critiquing work. Marvel Comics regulars khoi pham and reilly brown take part in the sketch offs and critiquing work so its a definate place to hit if youre interested in the comic industry.

Ive got an ongoing sketchbook on there (http://www.tentonstudios.com/forum/index.php?topic=6591.0) so feel free to take a look and even join in on the fun!

Ingredients to make what?

This book is just awesome! Has a couple of in depth essays looking at the rhyme and reason for these high end 'art toys' and packed full of images and illustrations used in the development of the vinyl toy. Only negative is that its pretty geared towards the japanese market, we'll let em off as it kind of originated from there.

But what do these all make?

Hammer horror set

Decided to go for a 'hammer horror' sort of vibe for a college project on myths south of the river ( I got to camberwell so everything is south london centric). Mine was the vampires spotted at st.giles church.

Have a cinema room at home so what is more fitting than a bunch of B movie style horror posters?