Jun 21, 2010

A little body work.

Just a quick, early-week look at Punkinheed. I'm on to the body & testing ideas. I've decided that he's a golem, though he has elements of a demon too, I think. As a golem, he'd be composed of pumpkin head & vines, sagging flesh & bone... And maybe a handful of nails.

Here, I've been trying an idea I had to weave the vines in & out of his skin. The legs are almost completely vine-like, reaching into the ground like roots.

Jun 19, 2010

Punkinheed, (update)



Here's a bit of an update on Punkinheed. I've had to rework the bridge of the nose a bit & now playing with some of the major folds and wrinkle placement.



This shot shows the second 'wave' of refinement working from left to right. Teeth are placed in rough, to be replaced later with polymer teeth. On the next detail pass, I turn the head upside down & work left to right again so that I won't overpower one side.



One more angle on the big noggin. More pics in the next day or two.

Jun 16, 2010

Punkinheed

Finally got back to a bit of sculpting yesterday. I feel like I'm late getting onto the Halloween work for this year already... crazy, I know. I've finished the basic massing on the pumkin-headed prop for this year & started a bit of basic detailing in the eyes, etc. The eyes are always important for me. I can't get the rest of the sculpt in mind unless I can look it in the eyes.

This head is about 3/4 human scale I'd say, but it's a huge noggin for a body that's only about 2' tall from shoulder to foot. I'm working in Chavant NSP medium for this & loving it as a material. I'd always used Plastilene in old prosthetics sculpts, but Chavant seems to have a much more 'waxy' feel to it which works well for me.

A couple of quick progress shots from yesterday. Today's task is balancing, detail, and getting some flesh on that body armature.



Jun 13, 2010

catdemonthing

I seem to have promised myself I'd try a sketch each week so I've just started this one, continuing the ideas from my last post. Same idea as before, I've only replaced the fluffy clouds with flames for the inspiration.

Jun 4, 2010

All those teeth in the clouds!

After a small accident where I managed to bruise & sprain both wrists recently, I had a bit of a forced vacation from sculpting. I decided to have a look at learning some digital drawing to keep me from going any more nutty than usual.

It needs to be said that I'm even less of a 2D artist than I am a 3D one. I admire those who can work up a good creature concept on paper before they ever dive into clay and took this as an opportunity to at least learn a few techniques.

The first idea I'm trying comes from Aaron Sims' Gnomon Workshop video, 'Creature Design in Adobe Photoshop'. I managed to borrow this one from a friend & it's filled my skull with more than a few ideas! Now I'll be buying it to remember all the bits I've already forgotten, but one idea really sticks with me... finding inspiration in clouds. Just like we all did as kids, he shows a technique for the imaginatively-stumped (That's me) to look for designs in photos of clouds, smoke, flames, etc.

I'm using the cloud example from his dvd. Having spotted something interesting in there, I fired up my trusty but ancient Photoshop to mirror the picture as a starting point for the drawing. I won't even attempt to try to provide a tutorial, but I'll show you both my cloud 'base' & the work in progress so far. I'm having a lot of fun with this idea & I'll keep trying these as a weekly excercise I think.