I started this blog almost 3 years ago at the beginning of my Special Effects degree with
the idea being that I would record all the things I made and the other cool stuff I imagined I would
see along the way. That is pretty much how it has functioned although it does occaisionally wonder off
into ramblings about days out, baking adventures and pretty things I find on the internet. Sorry...yay for scroll bars!
Besides sculpting a robot, here is what I’ve been up to lately…
In spare hours I have punched all the leather from the minotaur project and then taken it to work to stitch. I’m gonna find a moment in the studio this week to make the stone so I can finally get the belt finished.
Also at work I have been sketching, mostly studies of people in the Odeon Magazine, in biro on scraps of old time sheets.
Work has also allowed me to read ‘The End of Mr.Y’ and start Harry Potter 5 (which I picked up in the charity shop for £1..yay!) in the last couple of weekends.
I bulked out the feet of the robot and that seems to have turned the corner for the project. I’m happier about it now and feeling excited about things again. It’s still lop sided which is causing me a headache and I think someone stole some of my clay which sucked but now I have new clay and am hoping to make significant progress this week.
My Blue foam nightmare is over. I have moved downstairs to the sculpture studio where I found this randomly lying about >>>
I was very disappointed to find that it just seems to be a leg and a ribcage, other wise I would be wearing it in those pictures.
The robot is coming on a bit, I got a layer of clay on, no point in showing the pics since it looks just the same as it did in the last ones but covered in clay. I tried to order more Chavant today but mouldlife say they have a 3 week wait on it due to snow in New York delaying their order. I really hope this does not signify a national shortage, that would be very uncool right now. I will go by Tirantis on Saturday to see if they have some.
I am still not having a great time on this project, I think I am too impatient to sculpt something this big. I feel sick when I think about it and I think about it a lot.
In happier news we are trying to raise £4000 for our degree show(s) and as a part of that a bake sale was had and these amazing sesame street cakes were made by someone on the course. (unfortunately I wasn’t there, I was in Cov so I stole this pic off Alex’s facebook)
So I am finally making some progress with this thing. It might not look like much but it took a shed load of effort to get here. I still need to finish off the feet and I left the legs gluing over night but I can start getting the clay on tomorrow…yay! Finally feeling good about this project.
I altered the design a little in the process, mainly just by slimming it down in profile, partly due to laying the guide image on the foam at an odd angle and partly just cos it needed to be slimmer. Luckily it is easy enough to adjust the drawing to fit and I’m gonna wait till the big one is finished till I make the little ones so they match all the better.
Here is the process so far…
1. mahoosive block of foam gets delivered. 2. print off full scale drawing. 3. Chop foam down and hash together in to roughly correct sized block.
1. + 2. Stick drawings to block. 3. Proceed to hack away at it with a saw until shape emerges.
Continue hacking, sand a bit with a surform, same process for legs though I cut out feet on the band saw. Dig out spaces for armature and glue together with ‘no more nails’.
The clay sculpting part is daunting but I am looking forward to it now.
I also took up a whole sofa in Starbucks for half an hour this evening, felt good until a random girl came and sat down on one of the comfy seats opposite, this is the second time this has happened to me, what is it about comfy seats in coffee shop that makes people abandon privacy and etiquette as priorities over slightly less squishy seating?
I finally came up with a name for this toy line, I’m still hoping I can think of something better but for now it’s ‘Zillabots’ in relation to my illustration site, plus they have horns which could be a trait of something godzilla-ish/reptillian? Any better ideas would be much appreciated.
Resolved to dye my hair blue again and purchased dye
I probably should have gone to uni, I didn’t because AJB had a day off and I justified that with the fact that the robot project and the minotaur costume both need completing in the same time frame so the order in which things get done doesn’t matter that much. Plus going to get coffee with him is just about my favourite thing at the moment, shame it was ruined by the 2 mums who not only don’t understand that it is NOT OK to bring young kids to coffeeshops but that it is just ridiculously uncool to trapse 2 pushchairs up to the 2nd floor with you to achieve this. How the fuck did you get them upstairs? Why would you go to so much trouble to ruin my afternoon? See how your kids are stomping around the ENTIRE room and squealing at the top of their lungs? That’s cos they’re bored and they’re bored because coffeeshops are for fucking adults. Generally I’m sympathetic to parents of young children, I get that it’s a demanding thing to be, but seriously, go to McDonalds or stay at home, but stay the fuck out of Coffee Shops.
But yeah, thinking of writing blogs at the end of the day that lists the things I did really aids productivity. Apologies if this seems pointless and boring. I am also trying to give up my (moderate) addiction to Coca-cola by walking around reciting the manta ‘make better choices’ in my head, I don’t know where I got that from or why I thought it would help, but it is! 5 days with no coke!.
It is only 10pm so with the rest of my day I aim to
Sort out the topsy turvy pictures in the last few blog entries
Finish the entry I started 3 days ago in the other blog I started about SFX
I had a couple of really “off” weeks just then where I felt that the super-excitement that I have been carrying with me since I did my first work placement at Hot House 18 months ago had left me. I lost all interest in and motivation for my project. As a result progress has been slow. I did not finish the little robot yet, because I received my delivery of blue foam for the armature of the large scale robot and started making that instead. Last week my days mostly consisted of staying in bed till lunchtime reading old blogs and generally wasting time, then turning up at uni and hacking at this giant lump of foam with a saw and then a surform for a few hours and then going home again at the first moment I thought the roads would be reasonably clear. Hacking and filing down blue foam whilst you have zero enthusiasm or motivation to apply is hard. I would spend 5 minutes sawing or sanding and then feel like I had to rest for half an hour, I didn’t but I did consume a lot of coke and chocolate and half price Starbucks Lattes which all required fetching from far off vending machines and outlets etc.
My loathing of doing things also extended to my work at the cinema, which isn’t really doing things, I just appeared to be in no mood to be locked in a box for 2 days at a time.
The best thing about the last 2 weeks has been Sunday morning coffee which occurs because this is the only time both AJB and I start work at the same time. We get the tube to covent garden and are early enough to get the comfy seats in Nero’s and if we are lucky the use of someone else’s discarded newspaper. Last week I learned many an interesting fact about North Korea from the Observers travel section. Did you know they have a functioning socialist economy providing free healthcare, education and food for its citizens (obviously at the cost of many civil liberties – quality of life is apparently very low) and is one of the only economies in the world not to be affected by the current recession. I did not know this till last Sunday. It also provides precious hanging out time with the delectable AJB and dictates the consumption of tasty tasty hot chocolates and coffee. Wins all over.
2 Sundays ago it appeared to be Chinese new year, my route to work from Covent Garden skirts chinatown and it was pretty cool to see it decorated with lanterns and just chock full of people. Shame I had to go turn some lights on instead of wondering in to see what was happening ( I am betting there was a dragon dance…I love those.)
This weekend I had Saturday off and have started to feel a bit different. Instead of wasting hours on the internet I spent all day punching the leather I never finished from the minotaur project and starting a new prosthetic sculpt, which is actually a copy of one I did in summer but didn’t like certain features of and have lost the mould now anyway. I didn’t go into uni today but am fairly certain I can finish my armature in one more day and then get the clay on and then I will feel like I’m getting somewhere, I think.
Things have been a little odd lately, the last couple of weeks seem to have washed over me and been generally unproductive for one reason or another. When I have been in the studio, I spend long hours working on the little robot though I think if I was really together it would be finished by now. Today I decided to make all new arms because I wasn’t happy with the tops of the old ones. Yesterday I waited in for a delivery of a mahoosive chunk of blue foam, when it hadn’t arrived by 5 I phoned and was told it was down for delivery on Friday, gah!
I welded the armature for the big robot sculpt on Tuesday, I did a terrible job but turns out that wasn’t strictly my fault, the voltage wasn’t set correctly…or something, I forgot most of what I learned about welding though I guess I know now for next time and what I did will serve it’s purpose.
So I’m a bit behind from where I wanted to be but don’t feel too bad about it since there is plenty of time and I’m all set to get into the major sculpt next week.
I can’t remember if I’ve outlined the project before but in brief I am making 3 or 4 small toy robots based on the above designs, and then a large scale version of one of the designs that would be like a display model in a toy shop or something. The small ones are to be sculpted in yellow foam and then cast in resin and the big one sculpted in chavant and cast in fibreglass. The ultimate aim is to make my part of the show look like a section of an actual toyshop by casting out and packaging loads of toy ones and printing up graphics and stuff.
I spent 2 days carving and sanding this guy in yellow foam. He’s obviously still not done, I need to finish the horn thing and make another one, even the feet out and generally tidy him up but so far I’m pleased with it. I’m figuring out all the armature dimensions from this today and hoping to weld the steel frame next week.
Managed to enjoy another birthday that just kept on giving these past few days, starting with dinner and drinks with Mr. Myers in Crouch End on Thursday night. On Friday morning (my actual B’day) AJB gave me a much sought after muffin tin and then took me out to mooch around Kensington, drinking overpriced coffee, shopping for pretty things and getting free movies and half price drinks (yay for Odeon employee passes!) We saw ‘Edge of Darkness’ which I thought was going to be standard Mel Gibson fodder but it was actually pretty good and included lots of awesome action shots and horrific gun shot wounds. We went to a Mexican restaurant in Covent Garden for dinner, witnessed a fight, ate our weight in burritos and drank a lot of Corona.
Saturday was day one of IMATS (the international make-up artist trade show) at Alexandra Palace (round the corner from my house!) I had wanted to go last year but really didn’t have any spare cash. I knew there would be a lot of awesome sfx artists there from reading the reviews of the last 2 years and talking about it while at solutions last year. There are also all sorts of interesting demonstrations, seminars and panels to attend.
First thing on Saturday morning was a prosthetic application demo by Neill Gorton (head of ‘Millenium FX’ and also general fx badass) We missed the first 5 mins thanks to the ridiculous queues to pick up tickets but it didn’t matter. It was a fascinating demo, something really new to me to see in such detail. He also painted the prosthetic once applied (it had a flesh base and he painted it BLUE!!! I clearly have to go back to the beginning on this whole painting thing) I saw him use skin illustrators which was ace since I have 2 palettes both sitting unused due to to ignorance. Neill took a 1 inch chip brush, added a little IPA and just smushed the brush in before flicking it at the appliance.
Since he started posting on theeffectslab.com I have been constantly amazed by Aris Kolontes’ sculpture (the current MoTD is a sketch of one of his busts) so I was super stoked to see this little collection of his work in the ‘museum’.
The museum also had these items from the Narnia films that I studied closely in my research for the minotaur project, very very cool to see them in person.
The real reason I wanted to go to IMATS though was to try and talk to people who I knew could give me advice, criticize my portfolio and tell me what to do to improve and ultimately get myself hired. I knew this was going to be difficult and nerve wracking but thanks to prods from AJB I managed to get my folio examined by almost everyone I had in mind at the start, plus a few extras I didn’t know would be there. Here is a summary of what I remember each one saying (memory not perfect due to the raging nerves – also please forgive the hero worship factoids, just trying to put across what each of these people represented to me).
NICK DUDMAN – (head of creatures at Harry Potter, started his career on Empire Strikes Back, BAFTA nominated for Batman, BAFTA won on Fifth Element) – I had met Nick before on Harry Potter but couldn’t find him in my last minutes there to show him my folio then. Lucky that everytime I turned around this weekend, there he was! I picked my moment on the second time I saw him when we sat down for a coffee and there he was 2 tables over with another guy I recognized from HP. I waited a looooong time, trying to decide if it was rude and inappropriate to approach him while sat at the table or better to catch him sat down than trying to get through a crowd later on) He wasn’t eating or drinking so I went over and apologized for interrupting, stated my case as above and he agreed to look! He said I had some lovely work, asked a couple of questions about materials and such, read through my CV and asked if I had left one at leavesden. He said he wouldn’t take the one out of my folio because he’d lose it but please post one out and it’ll be kept and looked at when he’s next hiring. I know this is probably standard schpeel, I know how hard it is just to get on his list of considerations, let alone actual hires but obviously I’ll do what he says!
TOM SAVINI – (make up on and small parts in Dawn of the Dead and From dusk til Dawn to name just two, ‘king of splatter’ pioneer of anatomically correct horror and gore effects, author of ‘Grande Illusions’, general fx badass) – Though Tom is not a potential employer (he works out of Pittsburgh) His opinion and advice obviously matters to me. He posed for a photo with AJB and then shook my hand and politely accepted my folio. He said my minotaur looked like Quentin Tarrantino and showed the foetus face thing to his friend (hope that’s a good thing and not a ‘look at this piece of crap thing’) He was also super nice and complimentary, he told me to always have my folio with me and told me about a girl who had been showing him her work earlier when Christine Blundell walked by, noticed and hired her on the spot.
NEILL GORTON – (Worked for BBC FX dept from the age of like, 17 or something, started up Millenium fx when BBC closed down that dept, Millenium FX is the holy grail of the UK fx industry providing make-up & creatures for Dr.Who amongst many many other things) – My opening line for Neill was ‘I just wanted to say hi because I bought your silicone prosthetics DVD and wandered if I could show you what I made?’ I got to ’say hi’ and he went HI!!! which kind of made me giggle like a moron and then say ‘hi’ again and shake his hand before getting back on track. Again, he was very nice and polite, I can’t remember if he actually said whether the work was any good or not but he said to get a job at Millenium I should keep doing what I’m doing, sculpt more, do anatomical studies and most prominently get better pictures. It meant a lot to me to hear ‘KEEP’ doing what you’re doing over ‘START’ doing this.
That was the end of day 1 for us, most of the rest of the day was fashion-y type make up so we went back this morning for the Bill Corso panel, a Neill Gorton ‘What makes a good character’ seminar and a reunion of the Nightbreed fx artists (including Bob Keen and Mark Coulier). Also there was a Tom Savini retrospective/interview thing at the end of the day. The Bill Corso & Tom Savini things were awesome because it was mostly about their journeys in the fx industry which I love to hear from anyone. After all the panels were over I went hunting again and found Bob Keen sat at the Make-up Artist Magazine stand.
BOB KEEN – (Worked on Nightbreed, Hellraiser, started on Star Wars & Superman, general fx badass) Liked my Minotaur sculpt, told me the variety in my folio was great was generally very enthusiastic and encouraging, took my crappy handmade business card out the back of my folio and PUT IT IN HIS WALLET!!!!! told me he’d email me, probably not as a work prospect but because I asked if I could stay in touch and send him new work.
BILL CORSO – (worked on Gremlins, freaked, galaxy quest, planet of the apes (new), indiana jones 4 and won an Oscar for Lemony Snicket, general fx badass) – Thought my minotaur was a ‘very cool’ sculpt and liked the artwork on the horns, did not, in fact realize that I made them. Again, very nice and enthusiastic about my portfolio, acknowledged that I’m working really hard to make a good folio. He’s currently working on John Carter of Mars, I asked about traineeships, he said there were some though it did not seem like it was something I should get excited about (he didn’t say that, I’m just assuming the case) but he told me where to find his email address and get in touch. – eep!
So yeah, that was it, worth the ticket money a hundred times over just to make those first contacts and learn about just how much work I have to do to get my folio up to scratch. I was hoping to find Mark Coulier, just cos I know he works out of the same building in Wembley as Solutions and Artisan but didn’t see him at the end.
So here it is then, my first, slightly lame attempt at painting silicone. I don’t like it much because it’s so pink, when I try and steer it towards brown in painting, it just looks grubby. It actually looks a little better in the photograph than I remember it looking in person, like and hour ago. I still plan to make a new cast with a much browner base in the next month or two, I think it will ultimately yield much better results.
It occurs to me that it’s IMATS this weekend so I will get some decent photos printed to put in my portfolio just in case I have enough confidence to go and talk to people there.
