BarnYard History Blog #1

Well, it’s the end of January! We are well on our way into the year 2010. When I first started working in Hollywood, 2010 was still considered a topic of Science fiction! As a matter of fact, one of the earliest films I worked on was a failed TV adaptation of the Arthur C. Clarke’s 2010: Odyssey Two. I was just a kid, but I remember talking about the actual year as if I would never actually see it! But here we are, on the last day of its first month. I wrote in my last entry that one of my new year’s resolutions was to make a point of blogging more than once a month. Well, I have a few hours left to keep that promise!

If you follow me on twitter, you may have seen mention of my first video blog. I started filming last weekend, and will be editing for a few weeks more. I plan on having that out for Valentine’s Day, with a very special guest. But in the mean time, I thought I would try to do an entry that actually gives some background of my work and how the BarnYard came to be. I have gotten a lot of tweets and emails asking what films I have worked on, and were my work can be found. So hopefully this entry will provide a little insight, and maybe open up some new tangents to blog about in the future!

I have literally thousands of images from the over 300 film and television projects I have worked on, and it started feeling overwhelming sorting through them. Not to mention the constant fear that I would bore you to death! So I decided to just pick a few projects that represent the times when I shifted gears and added a new outlet for my art. I figure that will answer the questions about the scope, and save material for any future project-by-project blogs. If anyone is interested!

Photo 01: So here we go! This film kind of jumps the time line, but Spielberg once told me that this image should always be the leading page of my portfolio. This model of the T-Rex being captured was a study of an idea I was kicking around the Lost World art department with some of the other artists. Production designer Rick Carter (Who currently designed AVATAR) presented it to Steven along with a sequence storyboarded by Matt Codd.

Photo 02: Steven didn’t think the idea fit into the original script at first, but when he put production on hold to re-write a bigger ending, he came back saying that this model was the single image that kept surfacing in his mind. The concept of the T-Rex capture sparked a whole new direction, ultimately leading to the beast being brought back to San Diego.

Photo 03: Which I also got to build! Steven liked the concept model I was making for the Jurassic Park: San Diego arena so much he used it in the film. He couldn’t wait for the Triceratops to crush it!

Photo 04: This is me showing Spielberg my design model for the Dino Lab and island town. The final set was made significantly smaller, but the design model was huge! I had to build trap doors in the middle of it so we could poke our heads through to look at different angles. The full sized set was built on the Universal back lot, right behind the Psycho house. Originally, the studio was open to tearing the house down, but I begged to have a shot at figuring out how to build around it. Luckily, both the house and the Lab are still there. You can see the lab through the War of the Worlds set if you go on the studio tour.

Standing behind me is one of the greatest storyboard artists ever, Dave Lowery, making the “He’s the man” gesture as Steven compliments my work. Beyond cool. And that’s me making the “I can’t believe I wore my Raiders shirt today” face. Beyond nerd.

Photo 05: But before I started in design and FX, I was an illustrator. In high school, I did commercial art and window installations. But I started doing art for hire as early as 8 years old, painting things like this denim jacket. I have probably done several hundred of these over the years, and every once in a while I’ll do one as a gift or to clear my head.

Photo 06: Yes, I actually do work to take a break from doing work! But I love making things, and since I hardly get the chance to do “personal” art, when I do I usually like to paint. (Acrylic on canvas, 36x48)

Photo 07: Sometimes I get to split the difference, and do a painting that has an end purpose, but no commercial restraints. This is a piece that appeared on a concert flyer for my friend Emma Ejwertz (the first winner of the Swedish version of “Idol”) (Acrylic on canvas, 9x12)

Photo 08: But those opportunities are pretty rare. Usually when I illustrate, it’s for purely commercial reasons. I like this painting (Acrylic on canvas, 9x12) but I can’t imagine it will ever hang above anybody’s couch!


Photo 09: I’ve done a lot of comic book work, too, but Ill save that for another blog. This piece was a crossover, though. It was a fictional comic for an episode of “Criminal Minds”

Photo 10: Speaking of cop shows, it seems like I had a few years of working on nothing but! It’s a safe bet that if you see a pair of hands doing a police drawing or an artist’s rending on a recent cop show episode, they're probably mine! This was done by a “character” in an episode of "Cold Case".

Photo 11: The first film I ever worked on was an ultra low budget sci-fi movie that is impossible to find. But I met some great people on it that recommended me for the second film I worked on, originally titled “Martians!!!”. I was hired as an art department assistant, and graduated to illustrator in the first week. This was also a low budget film (I was making $150 a week!) and the director had a very ambitious vision. Every few hours he would rush into the art department and ask if anyone could build a model, or do a matte painting, or sculpt a prop. I always said, “I’m not sure how to do it, but I’ll try!” I guess the lack of funds didn’t leave much else of a choice, so he let me have at these huge tasks way above my pay grade! Luckily, I had my trusty "ILM Art of Special Effects" book (If you don’t have it, seek one out! Everything I know is based on what’s on those pages!) and I fumbled through the creation of miniatures, costumes, make-up FX, and even some second unit directing! It was the experience of a lifetime, and I will always be grateful for the opportunity. It set the tone for how I would pursue the rest of my career.

Photo 12: That movie was seen by Spielberg, who called his buddy Katzenberg at Disney and suggested that he buy it. The film was released under the title “Spaced Invaders”, and did quite well in its limited theatrical run. The Martians themselves were amazing, the animatronics being the work of the super talented John Criswell. When the film was complete, John called me and invited me to work in his FX shop, Criswell Productions. The “shop” was actually his garage, but we did a lot of great things out of there. I worked there all that summer, and after a series of successful projects, John asked me to be his partner. We expanded the company and got a warehouse in Van Nuys. We did all sorts of effects, but we were best known for the creature work.

The above image is one of my favorite characters to come out of that Van Nuys shop: Spewy, from Chris Elliot’s Get A Life.

Photo 13: During the first year we were in business together, John and I were introduced to J. Michael Straczynski. He was working on a new sci-fi series called Babylon 5. He had a 10-page treatment and a few colored pencil sketches. He was prepping to pitch the show to the networks, and wanted to have a broader presentation for his vision. John and I signed on to do design maquettes and test makeups. JMS made it very clear that he didn’t want “Star Trek”. He saw the aliens as being as far from human as possible. He wanted puppets and animatronics, not nose and ear applications.

There was no money for the pitch process, so we did it as side work for several years. Every few weeks the phone would ring and we were put “on hold” for a green light. But then it would go away. Finally we got a call from Robert Brown, a producer at Warner Brothers. This time it was actually going to happen, but after years of prep work, we now only had 6 weeks to make 60 characters. Oh, and all of the design work we had done was scrapped and we were starting over!
There ended up being huge internal feuds over the actor vs. puppet concepts, and in the end majority of the characters ended up as make-ups, with the puppets being used in a few rushed scenes to show the scope of the universe in which the story took place.

We were able to convince production that we could still pull of “movie quality” make-ups on television production time. G’Kar is one of the best examples, being a full head application that we were able to have camera ready in under an hour.

Photo 14: B5 was one of the shows that helped me evolve the concept of the BarnYard. The project was very make-up and puppet oriented, yet there was still room in the designs for model making and wardrobe-based characters. Ordinarily, these things would be handled by other shops specializing in those categories. But I felt it was important to keep all of the characters under one roof, so I split the shop into make-up, puppet, model, and costume sections. Ambassador Kosh is a great example of how the model shop was used to create characters. I sculpted him in clay, molded it to pull a fiberglass shell, then worked with Ron Mendell to construct the mechanical parts. I have always referred to this character as my ode to a 57 Chevy painted by Louis Comfort Tiffany.

Photo 15: It doesn’t happen often, but every once in a while I actually end up IN FRONT of the camera! I was cast in the role of the Mimbari assassin who attempt to destroy the space station. Being ratcheted across the room and set on fire was not the most fun, but having the moment captured on a trading card is definitely a career highlight!

After we shot the pilot, there was over a year lag before WB decided to pick it up for series. The studio declared that they didn’t want a “bunch of kids” handling their make-up department, despite all the great press and awards. So negotiations for doing the series fell through. I was only 20 at the time, but it still felt like a burn after all the groundwork we had done. In hindsight, I’m glad I got to set the initial tone for the B5 aliens and then move on to new and interesting things.

Photo 16: Criswell and I did a series of animatronic projects, including a movie for the producers of Spaced Invaders, called Adventures in Dinosaur City, and the live stage show version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. These two projects caught the eye of Jim Henson productions, which had done the actual TMNT suits for the films, and were working on a project called DINOSUARS. They had started the production in London, but were in the process of moving it to Los Angeles, and wanted some locals to helm the LA Creature Shop.

I sculpted many of the dinosaurs, and became the paint shop supervisor for the first few seasons. This photo shows my typical morning: I had a pre-call, getting to the shop before the film crew got to set, usually around 5am. I would have to go through every head, body, hand, and foot, checking for damage that had been repaired the night before, and repaint it. Yes, that’s my real hair. The only thing more embarrassing are those pants. Seriously, if I could go back in time to 1991, the only thing I would change would be to get myself a pair of jeans and a pair of scissors!

Photo 17: Criswell opted to stay in the Henson camp after Dinosaurs wrapped, and I moved on to form my own shop. The interesting thing about Hollywood is that every time you switch ladders, you have to start from a few rungs lower then where you just were. So I went from being a staff member on one of the most expensive fx shows ever made to being the title card fx guy on one of the cheesiest movies ever made! But you have to start somewhere. This is my interpretation of the Wasp Woman for the Roger Corman horror flick of the same name.

Photo 18: The basic mantra for my new shop became “Small pieces of big movies, big pieces of small movies!” It definitely allowed me to do more things. I was also able to stay very diverse, which has always kept the job interesting. This photo shows two design models I built for Warner Brother’s first attempt to make Speed Racer as a live action movie. At the time, Johnny Depp was playing the title role. I think Nicholas Cage was slated to be Racer X, and these were two proposed designs for his car. The amazingly talented Tim Flattery was supervising the X racer designs, and we created many versions. The producers were always afraid that the different designs looked like the Bat Mobile, but we realized that any black car with fins on it looked like the Bat Mobile! These two were my favorites.

Photo 19: Speaking of the dark knight, "Batman Forever" was when I moved into set design. This is the design model I did for Val Kilmer’s version of the bat cave. Ron Mendell and I got to work together on this project again, and we built detailed models of all the sets for that film. Say what you will about this departure from Burton’s vision, but you have to admit that Production Designer Barbara Ling created a pretty epic version of Gotham.

Photo 20: Besides doing the set models, I got to freelance on a lot of the props. I made a ton of bat weapons, but this photo shows some of the rarely seen Riddler props. Or, more accurately, Guesser props. In the film, the faux merchandise versions of the fictional Guesser ultimately inspire the design theme for Jim Carey’s character. Every prop, such as the bank, the jack in the box, and the snow globe, were shot individually, but I think only the bobble head and the life sized fortuneteller version get any screen time.

Photo 21: Despite the fact that the Riddler snow globe ended up on the cutting room floor, prop master Brad Einhorn liked them enough to offer me what to this day I still consider to be one of the greatest challenges I have ever had: the Gotham City Atlas snow globes for Batman and Robin. The globes were custom blown glass, designed with a small cat’s eye shaped opening that could easily be concealed in the bronze statue’s shoulders. Each building was made individually, and the city had to be assembled like a ship in a bottle. The buildings all had dozens of little LED lights that wired down to a battery hidden in the statue’s back. Then the whole thing had to be leak proof. Water, electricity, super fragile glass. I feel like I still need therapy just thinking about them! Creating the prototype was a hair-raising experience. Then I had to make 11 more!

I carried these things to set like delicate eggs. Then production said, “You should probably make some more, cause Arnold is going to smash a bunch of them!”

Photo 22: I ended up doing a lot of the hand props for Governor Schwarzenegger’s Mr. Freeze. Lots of water clear casting. Never easy to do. But I got a few really cool pieces out of the gig, including this ice sculpture of the doctor’s wife. I have a great Joel Schumacher story that goes with this piece, but it’s only really funny in person. Ask me to tell it to you next time we run into each other!

Photo 23: Arnold held a lot of my pieces for that film, but I never imagined that I would have to hold some of his for the next one! This is me and my team doing the Govenator’s body cast for Jingle All the Way. HBO was there to film behind the scenes, and of course my close up was taken right as I am plastering Arnold’s, um, special area. I tried to be quick and subtle about it, but Arnold thought it would be funny to call me out. I swear I speak the truth when I tell you these where his words verbatim, “My bicep has had plaster rubbed on it sixteen times, but my willie thirty nine! What the hell is going on down there, little man!?!” Imagine that in an Austrian accent. I was completely embarrassed. But now I think of it as one of the best stories ever!

Oh, and the guy to the right is my buddy Ken Scott, who was Raphael in TMNT: Secret of the Ooze!

Photo 24: Okay, so this jump in the timeline is sort of a cross-pollination of the last two topics. While I was working on Batman, I had the realization that merchandising was really were the big money was at. Creating the designs, props, and sets was really fun, but it was always a one-time paycheck. I would build a bat weapon, and as happy as I was for the pay I received, I discovered that the toy and collectible companies would take what I did and turn it into potentially millions of dollars. So I decided to try and move in that direction, also.

I did a lot of freelancing for companies like Mattel and Ron Lee, but in 1994 I established my own company, Legends in 3 Dimensions. It was a sculpture house, specializing in ¼ scale busts. The concept I had was to create high-end art pieces of pop culture characters in such a way that they could fit into sophisticated environments. After all, lawyers and doctors can be film and comic book fans, too. But would you trust your doctor if he had a desk covered in action figures? I thought there might be a better chance of things like this endoskeleton replacing the bust of Beethoven on the bookshelf.

Photo 25: Being an avid collector myself, I didn’t want to rehash my favorite characters without being able to bring something fresh to the marketplace. So I had this idea that I wouldn’t do a sculpture unless it was somehow directly connected to the production of the source material. One of the best examples of what I intended is this bust of Locutus of Borg. I actually sculpted the original in Patrick Steward’s trailer during the filming of First Contact. He would come in between takes and sit for me, making comments and changes as I went. He also signed the certificates of authenticity with me, which, I think, makes it pretty authentic!

Photo 26: It’s the little things that make me the happiest, and I have piles of random clips from where my work has shown up that I seem to treasure the most. If you got this Borg coupon in your visa bill at some point, you most likely tossed it. I’m cool with that! I just find it amusing that I actually ended up on junk mail!

Photo 27: When I first started L3D, my partner and licensing guru Henry Unger asked me to make a wish list of all the properties I would love to create product for. I think I had about 30 in all, and of course, the list started with Star Wars. I figured we'd get five or six of the licenses, and I never imagined that Star Wars could ever be a real possibility. Well, be careful what you ask for! Henry got me all 30, plus 10 or so more, including my dream of dreams, SW. This was in the mid 90’s, when there wasn’t a lot going on with the property, and Lucasfilm was very open to the ideas I had for hard-core fan friendly collectibles. I really wanted to move away from the central characters, as much as I love them, and dive into the wealth of secondary characters that, as of that point, hadn’t really gotten any attention other than a 3 ¾ inch action figure from the original line up. I started with this Boba Fett, and if I could I would still be working on more!

Photo 28: I have been a huge SW fan since the first time I saw the film as a child, and I’m pretty sure that was the same day I decided that I wanted to be a filmmaker. But not just any kind of filmmaker, THAT kind of filmmaker. What I loved about Star Wars was that every element was from the imagination. The sets, costumes, vehicles, every fork they eat with, every weapon they wielded was custom made. And you believed it. I knew I would make my own movies, but I also really wanted to be a part of the Star Wars universe. So you can imagine how thrilled I was when Lucasfilm chose to do a cover story on me and the L3D busts! I think I even did a short “how to” in the article, which was like a mini version of the BarnYard blog!

Photo 28a: People always ask me why I don’t care about giving away trade secrets and revealing my techniques. I guess I don’t really consider what I do a secret, and I hope that within the community of artists, sharing techniques will lead to discovering new and improved ways for everyone to do things. I think Star Wars was also the inspiration for me feeling that way. It seems that Lucas was always creating behind the scenes specials and special effects documentaries, “art of “ books and “how to” magazine articles. I would not be the person I am today without that stuff. To me, “the making of “ is synonymous with Star Wars itself. I guess that’s why I chose to show steps in the bust creation process for the Star Wars certificates of authenticity.

Photo 29: I created over 50 pieces in 4 years under the L3D banner, (so I should probably dedicate a blog entry just to those in the future!) but I think the best piece to segue this blog would be the Battlestar Galactica. I’m sure it’s hard to imagine, but it was only a few years ago that BSG was considered by Universal to be a “dead property”. The franchise had laid dormant since the short-lived spin-off GALACTICA 1980, and there hadn’t been any merchandise for 15 years.

Monogram released an injection molded styrene model kit of the Battlestar in 1978, which went out of production as soon as the original series was cancelled. Again, hard to imagine, but there was actually a time with no eBay or Google, so fans that wanted a collectible from the past had to scour thrift stores, conventions, and collector trade papers. The Galactica was pretty hard to come by. I think I spend $450.00 for an open box version in the early nineties. I felt that the fan base was probably in some proportion to that of Star Wars, as the kids that became the SW generation all got their sci-fi fix from BSG on TV. There was just no supply for the demand. So I convinced Universal to let me do a more screen accurate series of collectibles at a more accessible price.

Once again, I called Mr. Mendell, the best model maker I know. Together we crafted the first two pieces of the series, the Battlestar and the Cylon Base Star, which was also an insanely difficult to find 1978 kit.

Photo 30: And here is where the story gets interesting! At the same time I was forming L3D, I was working with Image Comics. The infamous Rob Liefeld brought me in to create “Hollywood quality” props and costumes of his Extreme Studios characters for the convention circuit.

I made a lot of great friends at Extreme, and it was a really inspiring place to hang around and talk shop. Everyone was experimenting with this new revelation called “Photoshop”, and computer coloring. Rob and I would talk about movies and television for hours, as he would draw issues of Youngblood or Prophet. A common conversation in the bullpen was BSG, and Rob and I often talked about using our combined influences to bring the series back to television. In 1994, the focus turned to trying to do so through comics and merchandising. I got the collectible license for L3D, and Rob got the comic rights for his Maximum Press studio. I sat in on many of the initial story meetings with writer Bob Napton and editor Matt Hawkins. The first arch of the new BSG series, The War of Eden, was so successful, Universal put BSG back on the hot list and started reissuing old licenses to new vendors. Revell re-released the Monogram Galactica model kits for under $20.00 each, totally taking the wind out of my L3D “only merchandise available” sails. (My Galactica was a prepainted cold cast porcelain statue with pewter parts retailing for $129.00) I had to cancel the rest of the Galactica line, so my Viper, Raider, and Cylon bust never saw the light of day. So I learned that fandom and business sense are two traits that need to be separated at times to create a successful venture!

I was still enough of a fan, though, to pitch Rob a storyline for the second arc of the Maximum Press BSG comic. The mini-series was titled “The Enemy Within”, published in 1995, and it focused around a lost pilot who claims to be the last of the 13th tribe. He seduces Athena, and works his way into the favor of the council. His arrival creates a rift among the Galactica survivors, those with hope against those without trust. The latter turn out to be right as Apollo discovers that this imposter is actually a human cyborg created by the cylons to get inside their ship as well as their heads. Sound familiar? Well, we’ll talk about that later, too…

Photo 30a: Comic conventions are huge events these days, with hundreds of thousands of people attending cons in a single weekend. Whether you are pro or con (no pun intended) Image Comics, you really have to give those guys credit for making that circuit what it is today. Up until the legendary “X-Odus” by Liefeld and co. in the early nineties, the average convention was just a few hundred dudes looking through white cardboard boxes of Golden Age B&Cs. Trust me, I was one of those dudes! But when the Image thing burst on to the scene, it was suddenly like a rock concert! All the major players had to step up their game to stay in the spotlight. Bigger booths, more swag, actual live women dressed as characters! It was a whole new world. And, for better or for worse, even the Image partners were in competition with each other. Of course, Rob went all out, and I had the benefit of traveling the world with the characters I brought to life, like this 9’ tall Badrock from Youngblood, and the 40’ Youngblood Battlecruiser behind him!

Photo 31: Image was having its ups and downs, so in 1998, Matt Hawkins and I decided to branch out and form our own studio. We created a slate of titles, and a companion series of action figures. I’ll have to get into details later, because this, too, is a huge tangent, but I wanted to show my favorite title, BLUE. It’s the story of a girl who discovers that the fate of the universe is on her shoulders, but she is having a hard enough time just dealing with growing up. I did this with Edwin Rosell and Jason Johnson. Drew Struzan did the covers. Oh, Drew! My favorite artist in the history of art! He should be yours, too! I’ll put up a link to his site to prove it…


31a: Speaking of super heroes, I finally got to direct a television show, thanks to my great friend Dave Blass. He recommended me to helm the series finale for Sci-Fi channel’s Black Scorpion. Produced by Roger Corman, the series was about a cop who lost her father to a criminal, and becomes a vigilante dressed as a creature of the night. Stop. I know what you are thinking. But how about that Michelle Lintel…


Photo 32a/b: I love creating characters, but I also have this secret desire to create a version of every famous pop culture character ever. But not just as a tribute, I set the goal at making it only count if it’s for a consumer product. Impossible, I know. But you have to have goals! If there ever were a chance of me pulling it off, though, it would have to be via my friends that manufacture food and beverage merchandise for theme parks. Because of that contract, I have crafted product for almost every major theme park in the US, and many more thought the world. This has allowed me to do renditions of icons from Disney, Pixar, Sesame Street, Looney Tunes, Universal Monsters, Hanna-Barbera, and more. I also scored the 7-11 contract for summer movie straws, so that opened up the Marvel universe, and allowed me to participate in things like Transformers, Terminator, and G.I. Joe.

Photo 33: When I was working on Drew Struzan’s biography (Drew Struzan: Oeuvre, Dreamwave publishing, 2005) we joked about what my biography would be called if I was ever lucky enough to get one! The title “One Hundred Thousand Things” was the funniest to me, because the number seems so far fetched. But my producing partner, Sheri Bryant, did some quick math. She said that if we counted by original pieces, and not by overall product, I was well on my way! She used my prototyping work for Jakk’s Pacific WWE figures as an example. Although I consider that to be a single project, I actually produced close to 700 individual items for them.

Photo 34: Some projects are big with many small parts, taking years to do, like the WWE figures. Other projects are small, lasting only weeks, to create one giant product! If there are any hockey fans reading this, you may recognize this castle that the LA Kings skate out of at the beginning of every home game this season.

Photo 35: And just like there are films that are worked on for years, there are also commercial projects that turn around overnite! I impregnated this dude a few years ago for an Xbox campaign. Wait…that didn’t sound quite right…

Photo 36: You may think I built this giant “G” out of ego, but it was actually for the recent Spike Lee Gatorade commercials. I made 2 in two days, the other was with the famous orange lightening bolt. I sooo wanted to keep this, but it ended up in the lobby of the ad agency.

Photo 37: I thought I would throw this in there just to touch on one of the other things I like to do. The first guitar I ever made was for Eddie Van Halen, and it was the most amazing thing to watch him play it on stage. Whenever I get the chance, I try to add a new design to my line up. Most are one of a kind, but every so often I get to put one into limited production, like this Devil Girl I did with ESP Guitars. It’s ended up on a bunch of magazine covers, even a few album covers, but I think the coolest place it’s ever been is in the hands of composer Danny Elfman.

Photo 38: I have to say that the most frequent question I get asked is which outlet of creativity do I like the most? The truth is, it’s the combination of them all that makes it the most fun. The different venues come and go in waves, but I couldn’t imagine ever having to consciously decide to stop doing one of them. But in the end, it’s the film work I am most drawn to, probably because it is the one outlet that allows me to combine all of my favorite mediums. At every level of film production, the main objective is to tell a story. I love the challenge of doing this, even when I am not the writer or director. This set design model I built for Tomb Raider, based on a Matt Codd design, is a great example. I wanted to present the ideas in such a way that even a momentary view sets the imagination in motion. Everyone who looks at this may have a different version of the story that is about to take place within the image, but the potential for a story is there. Or, at least I hope so!

Photo 39: I always love working with Matt Codd, and I feel like the models based on his illustrations were always my best. This is probably one of the coolest of them, although there are many, and it was hard to choose! This was the design model for the submarine in Disney’s Atlantis. I’d love to post more images of this some time, because there are little environments inside all the tiny windows, and detailed, lit up hatches underneath. You can still see this model in a plexi case if you wander around the Disney animation building. It was my first experience working on a Disney animated film, which was actually my childhood dream prior to seeing Star Wars!

Photo 40: Despite the many films I have worked on, there are very few that I can say I am 100% satisfied with the complete end product. Even fewer that I am actually proud to have worked on. At the top of that short list would have to be CONTACT, based on the Carl Sagan novel and directed by Bob Zemeckis. I personally thought that the film handled all of the delicate concepts of science versus faith with amazing aptitude. And Jodie Foster was incredible, as always. I had the honor of making the space suit that she wore to protect her in the pod.

Photo 41: Which brings us back to Spielberg. When Steven decided to complete Kubrick’s vision of Artificial Intelligence, he only brought on 3 people to initiate the design development. Production Designer Rick Carter, illustrator Warren Manser (The Matrix, Spiderman) and I got to comb through 20 years of Mr. Kubrick’s personal notes and sketches, helping piece together the puzzle the legendary director had left behind. The project took almost 18 months, and I got to build dozens of fully detailed concept models. My favorite was this bridge to Rouge City.


Photo 42: My design model was shipped to the VFX guys at Lucas’s ILM, and they scanned it to create this final version for the film. Steven felt this image captured the tone of the whole movie, and it ended up on the poster. Being able to participate from the ground floor in a project of this magnitude was a dream come true, but it also got me thinking about what it was I was really after. I love working on all these films with these amazing people, but I really wanted to branch out on my own and create things that I could truly call my own. The blockbuster movies treated me well, but they are very consuming, and in the end, I was always just executing a piece of someone else’s vision. So after A.I., I decided I would get my ass in gear and start making my own films.

Photo 43: I’ve been fortunate enough to have made a few so far, with many more on the way. I try to make films that focus around themes that also allow me to still do all the things I love, like make-up, models, and puppets. This little guy is the title character from my film, LABOU. The making of this movie was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I got to work with my best friends and create the movie I wanted to make. Some people will like it, others will hate it. But what you watch is what I wanted you to see, and that makes me happy.
That’s the most I think any artist can ask for, and I hope that there are a few tips or techniques within my blog entries that help other artists get closer to reaching their goals.

Please always feel free to ask questions or offer suggestions in the comments section. And let me know if there are any past projects, either mentioned above or ones I haven’t talked about at all, that you may be interested in hearing more about. I have tons of images that I’d love to share!

Oh, and keep an eye out for that video blog, coming soon!

Guild Xmas blog 2: Clara Mommy and Me Cookie Jar

Happy New Year! 2010 is going to be awesome. It’s only a few days into it, and I’m already smiling ear to ear! That’s because @geekyfanboy decided to put a visitor counter on the Vork bank blog, and I was pleasantly shocked to find that thousands of people actually check out my BarnYard postings! I am so very thankful for your interest in what I do. I sincerely hope that all of you working on similar projects find some useful information in my usually late night rants! And if there is any particular process or technique someone is looking for, feel free to ask me in the comments.

Which brings up another thing that made my year already! I always write up these blogs, number the photos, and send them to @geekyfanboy to post. I usually go to the blog after he does so, to make sure I have the right link and double check that I didn’t make any mistakes (which I always do and for some reason never find them until AFTER it’s posted!) But I never go back to the blog after that. So it was a total surprise to find that people have been leaving comments! Thank you again for all the compliments, and apologies to all those who asked questions and have been waiting for answers! I never bothered to look cause I never imagined anyone would ask! But now I know, and will do my best to answer. Its part of my New Year’s resolution! That, and trying to actually blog more than once a month!

And on that note, lets get to the good stuff! The Clara Mommy and Me cookie jar and keg tap! Originally just called the Clara cookie jar, until Guild director Sean Becker dropped by the studio and pronounced it with its current moniker. I laughed out loud. Then I stole it! But now I give him credit, which makes it more like borrowing. Hopefully it made you laugh, too!

The concept of Clara being merchandised as a cookie jar/beer tap made Felicia Day laugh when I pitch the Guild Xmas to her, and I really believe it was this product idea that won her over and got me the green light to make the parody commercials. So Clara will always have a special place in my heart, because she opened the door to a very fun project. And then opened her head to some very tasty cookies!

Photo 1/a/b/c: I started the Clara project by doing some research into cookie jars. I actually own a few (probably more than any one person should!) but I specifically avoid human portrait ones. They always tend to be inaccurate, and often, well…creepy! I mean, Chewbacca or the Scarecrow usually end up fine. But you can see in these images I pulled, even the best companies with the best sculptors still produce odd renderings of people. This is because the ceramic process is very limiting, at least as far as mass production goes, and capturing likenesses is all in the subtleties. Taking out all the undercuts in someone’s nose means that it is no longer truly that person’s nose! You can get the general impression of a person, but never a dead-on likeness like you can in bronze or resin.






I’m not saying these items aren’t good art (I’m actually thinking about buying the Wicked Witch of the West! Whatever, dude. Don’t knock the Wizard of Oz!) I’m just stating that from what I’ve seen as a collector, most celebrity cookie jars have a strangeness to them. Which was the part I was really researching. I wanted to capture that feel in my Clara cookie jar. I couldn’t take the exact approach I did with the Vork bank. Especially since I found that in order to fit the mini-keg, Clara’s head had to be life sized! If I tried to make it too realistic, it would end up looking more like a severed head from a horror movie than a cookie jar!

Photo 02: The next step was to comb back through my Guild cast photo shoot pix, and find the perfect set of turn-around images of Robin Thorsen. As with Vork, I assembled the front, 2 sides, and back images as a line up in Photoshop, then printed out 2 sets: a small combined set, and individual full size images.

Photo 02a: The real joke of this cookie jar is that you can put a mini-keg into it, so in order to make the joke work, you actually HAVE TO BE ABLE TO PUT a mini-keg into it! I can’t think of any other project that made people’s faces light up the way they did when I asked someone to go buy a mini-keg in the middle of the workweek. It’s for measurements, people! And it really was. I decided that it was all sorts of wrong to sculpt around a full keg, and all sorts of other wrongs to ask my crew to empty it mid day! So I decided to find a piece of PVC pipe that was close to the outer diameter of the keg, and sculpt around that. This would insure that I could never carve deep enough into the clay that it would prevent the keg from fitting inside the final Clara head.

Photo 03: I went straight in with Roma plastilina #3 again. Nick Carmichael jumped in to help, as roughing out something of this size in Roma can take hours, if not days! We warmed the clay in an oven to soften it up faster than hand kneading, but it still took about 5 hours to pack this all on. Larger projects are often sculpted in clays that are cheaper and easier to build up, like WED clay, but the Roma gives me sharp, clean details, and despite the slow start, the finish work is actually faster than with water clays.

Photo 4: Here I made my center mark, and roughed in a chin. The reason why I started there was because this was the deepest point back that the sculpture could go due to the pipe, or keg, inside. So my next step was to set the eyes in place, which is where I usually start, but I based their placement on the neck position.

Photo 5: I really don’t want to bore anyone with another blog about face sculpting, because it kinda is the same thing every time (If you didn’t see the Unbreakable Vork Bank, check it out for face sculpting info!) so I’ll skip ahead to things I did specifically for this product.

Photo 6: In case you were wondering, the final product is NOT made of ceramic! I laid it up in fiberglass, with a BJB 1630 urethane skin. But I wanted it to look like ceramic, which means that it really needs to be perfectly smooth. I did a lot of raking to make sure all the surfaces were very geometric. I also made sure there weren’t any massive undercuts, like along the hairline or under the collar and lapels. I say “massive undercuts” because I cheated a little, and had some subtle undercuts to make the end product have slightly more definition than her real ceramic sisters.

Photo 7/7a: I think the biggest challenge of this sculpt was the hair. Not in final execution, because there is very little that had to be done, but in the design process itself. I had photos of Robin on the show, from the “Date my avatar” shoot, and my reference shot by the Bui Brothers, and her hair was different every time. And Clara’s cartoon rendering from the Guild opening is REALLY different! So I needed to create a hairstyle that looked like Robin’s, captured Clara, and at the same time never lifted off the face or neck of the sculpt so it could be molded as if it were ceramic. The challenge was to have it not end up looking like a helmet!

Photo 8: Here’s my final Clara sculpt. I made all the surfaces as smooth as I possibly could without spending days more on it, then added details like the necklace and the gems. The costume is part avatar drawing and part Sara’s interpretation from the video. I kept the hair simple, using the Marilyn and Dorothy jars for reference. I thought about getting a little more stylish with the bangs, but since they were running along the part line for where the top would come off, I didn’t want any separated hair exposing skin. That would just make it weirder than it already is! Too Frankenstein-ish. So she kinda has bowl-cut bangs!

Photo 9: Ah, yes, the lobotomy! This, too, proved to be a challenge! I needed to be able to cut the top of the head off perfectly level. I tried it freehand, then with calipers. No luck. I tried a lazy Susan, a cinderblock and a dowel. Nope. Ultimately, I asked Nick to cut a hole in a large board, and brace it up on 2x4s cut to the height I wanted the line at. We lowered this over the sculpt so the top of her head poked through the hole, then I ran my dental spatula all along the board, scratching this line into the clay. It was a long way to go for just this marking, but I wanted it to be level, dammit! I regret not taking a photo of the rig, because it really was pretty wacky looking…

Photo 10: It was Colonel Mustard in the living room with a…putty knife? No, this is not CLUE. Or THE GUILD meets FRIDAY THE 13TH, either! This is me trying to cut off the top of the head without displacing any of the clay. I pushed a putty knife in until I hit the PVC, carefully removed it, and repeated every few inches. I considered molding the entire sculpt as one piece, cutting the top off in the casting, then building the inner lip in Bondo. But I had this sneaking suspicion that I might need to make a few more of these, and I didn’t want to have to do that process every time. That aside, this way will make a better end product. I just need to get this off without destroying or distorting the clay!

Photo 11: Viola! Got it off safely. And suddenly this whole joke seems very, very morbid!

Photo 12: Careful not to disturb the true edge of the sculpture, I sculpted in a ledge and a lip for the top to sit along. The yellow stuff is rigid foam I filled the PVC with to help keep it firmly secured to the board. If you were wondering…

Photo 13: Clara is ready for molding! I Crystal Cleared her, as I did Vork. But this time I used the Triple Thick version. Since I wanted Clara to be porcelain smooth, and she has very little subtle detail, this spray built up a film skin that really helped create the polished, flawless surface I couldn’t do by hand.

Photo 14: I was surprised by how much feedback I got in regard to Vork’s molding process. I think it’s awesome that so many people out there are making molds. Especially since that means I can step it up a bit and get to the next level of mold making: fiberglass jacketed silicone matrix case molds! Molding wise, its pretty much the same principal as Vork’s 2-part box mold. But we use a fiberglass case shaped to the sculpture instead of a box, so the silicone ends up being an even 1/2” thickness all around. You can mold any size object this way, but it is most practical on larger items.

The first step is to “clay up” your sculpt. This photo shows the tools I use:

A board, slightly larger than a brick of water clay, with two stacks of paint sticks glued to it. Each stack is 3 sticks high, and they are spaced apart just wider than a full brick of water clay.

A cutting wire. Found at most art supply stores with a sculpting or pottery section. I get mine at KitKraft.biz. Or you can make one from an old guitar string, or fishing line, wrapped around two Popsicle sticks.

And I don’t know what the last tool in that photo is actually called! It’s a sculpting tool, with one side shaped like a chisel, and the other usually pointed or rounded. I don’t know, think of some descriptive key words and Google it! Then let me know so I can be more informative to everyone else next time…

Photo 15: Next I covered Clara in wet paper towels. I usually drape dry ones over the top and sprits them with a water bottle until they cling to the sculpt. They don’t need to be drenched, just clingy.

Photo 15a: Take your block of clay and lay it length wise between the stacks of sticks. Use the wire to cut a slice of clay by running along the sticks on both sides. Make sure you pull the wire tight so the slice is perfectly even. I always use WED clay to do this, although most of my friends at the big FX houses prefer white clay. The white clay is way cheaper and less sticky. But I find the stickiness useful, and the fact that the WED is glycerin based, not water based, allows more working time.

Photo 16: Take each slice of clay and lay it over the towel-covered sculpture. The object is to encase the entire sculpture in an even thickness of clay. Be careful not to push on your clay slice, as you can damage the sculpture underneath, and lessen the thickness of the slice. This clay represents the silicone that will ultimately mold your sculpture, and if you get thin spots, it can affect the final casting. As I mentioned in the Vork blog, when in doubt, always go thicker. It’s safer to spend a few more dollars in rubber than it is to have a mold that produces bad castings of you art.

Photo 17: Here is Clara completely encased. I made an extra slice that I cut into wedges and cubes to fit between the places that the full slices didn’t cover. Never “blend” your slices together if there is a gap, as this will thin them down. Always add more material. And don’t conform to every contour of your sculpt. You want to keep the rubber even, but in general terms. Think of it more as the vacuum formed clear plastic insert that holds a new action figure into it’s packaging. The general shape is there, but not every detail.

Photo 18: This is the grid, or “matrix”. Yes, it was called that way before Keanu moved in bullet time! This clay represents keys that will lock the rubber mold into the fiberglass casing. There are no set rules or formulas for this pattern, and every mold maker will have their own “signature style”. A few general pointers I follow:
Try to have a key along the wider, most positive points of the sculpture. Never make the grid too tight (ask me some time to tell you the Babylon 5 mishap…) it will make your mold difficult to take apart. Never let any one surface span too long without a key. It will allow the rubber to sag in the casting process. Even when you are in a rush to get the mold done, take the time to make the keys clean and sharp. It affects the productivity of the mold, and a little extra time here will save you endless headaches later. Trust me on that one…

Photo 19: You might be able to tell that the sun is starting to go down in this picture! To speed things up, I am “shimming” this mold. Instead of building a clay wall to divide the two halves of the mold, similar to Vork’s clay bed, I am inserting sheets of tin along the part line. This will allow me to fiberglass both halves at the same time. Note that the tin sheets on the top and both sides are bent. I did that to create registration keys for the fiberglass. After the tin is stuck into the clay covering (deep enough to stay put, but not so deep that it hits the sculpture!) I used paper tape to cover all the edges. Avoid duct tape or plastic tapes. They melt into the fiberglass and make a mess.

Photo 20: Ah, the fiberglassing process begins! First, I have to say WEAR A MASK! A respirator would be better. This stuff kills brain cells for sure. Just ask my spell check! Second, douse yourself in baby powder. The powder clogs your pores and prevents the fibers from getting in there. You can jump in the shower when you are done and not go to bed itchy!

Here I have just applied the gel coat. A super reliable home recipe for this is a mixture of Bondo auto body filler and fiberglass laminating resin. Use more Bondo than resin, so you get the consistency of thick maple syrup. You will still have to use both catalysts: the red cream and the MEKP. Coat the whole surface with this catalyzed mixture, tin wall and all. Make sure to build up some thickness. Use several coats if you need to.

Photo 21: The fiberglass casing needs to be rigid, so its better to use fiber matting as apposed to cloth. The trouble with mat is it doesn’t like to lay down around corners. To avoid this problem, I go in with straight Bondo and bevel all the corners out! Wait till the Bondo/resin coat is firm, but not fully set, and apply some Bondo into any area that has a severe change in surface. Feather out all the grid keys, and the bottom corner of the tin wall. I usually mix small amounts of Bondo and do a few keys at a time. The material sets very quickly, and its better to go at an even pace than race the catalyst. It doesn’t lay down smooth as its kicking, and you can make fiberglassing worse by adding more irregular surface to go over if you don’t keep the Bondo smooth.

Photo 22: Fiberglass mat can come in rolls or sheets, but if you do a lot of glassing, you can use a chop gun and roving. Roving is a spool of fiberglass rope that threads through the chop gun, and shoots out the other side as splintered fibers.

23: The fibers allow air to pass through easily, so they lay down faster and speed up the whole process. It also makes it easier to do unusual shapes, as the sheets of mat don’t really like to bend in too many directions at once. The gun is messy, and you have to shoot more layers to get a good thickness, but it yields a better result, and still usually makes the process faster.

Photo 24: After covering the Bondo/resin with a layer of fiber, apply catalyzed laminating resin over the entire surface. Use a chip brush to stipple the resin into the fibers. Don’t “brush” it, because you will just end up wiping all the fibers away. Mix the resin in small amounts, and follow the instructions on the container for exact catalyst amounts. Manufacture, temperature, humidity, and volume all greatly effect the ratio to get your resin to set right. It will thicken up as it starts to set, and if you feel fibers begin to lift with your brush, either stop working on it or make a fresh batch. Overworking the resin will make more of a mess.

Photo 25: As you can see, it got pretty dark out! It usually takes a few hours to fiberglass something of this size, and there isn’t really any resting point from start to finish. You don’t really want to walk away between layers, as fiberglass can delaminate from itself if it’s not all done at once. It takes a bit of practice to get the outer surface really smooth, but it’s a good goal to strive for. Fiberglass splinters hurt really bad, and it makes it difficult to handle a mold while you’re bleeding!

Another thing to keep in mind is the amount of resin you use. Your fibers should be fully saturated, but there should be more fiber than resin. Too much resin actually weakens the mold, and makes it susceptible to shattering and warping.

Photo 26: I let the fiberglass sit overnight, mostly because it was a little chilly out, to make sure it was fully set. In the summer, or indoors (but only glass indoors with a massive ventilation system!) it would only need a few hours to fully cure. Then I used a saws-all to trim the flange. Keep as much of the flange as possible, because the next step is to drill a series of ¼ inch holes around the entire casing. If you cut too much flange off, it makes placing the holes difficult. I try to line them up about an inch away from the edge of the sculpture, and about an 1 ½ apart. It may seem like overkill to have so many bolts holding the mold halves together, but remember that we are going to fill this thing with liquid rubber! It needs to be locked up pretty tight to prevent it from all leaking out!

Photo 27: Once the casing is all trimmed, it will be easier to pry a few flathead screwdrivers between the two halves and pop one side off. It is EXTREMELY important that ONLY one side comes off! Usually, if your part line is done well, there will be a side that just naturally falls away. But sometimes you may want to chose which side you deal with first. At this point in the mold, the sooner some part of the sculpture ends up under rubber, the safer it will be! So pick the side that is most precious to you...

I chose to get the face of the casing off first. It helped that the fiberglass was stuck to the board I sculpted Clara on, so by prying the front side free and not the back, I pretty much insured only the piece I wanted would come off. The reason why it’s so important for one side to stay in the mold is that the next step is creating the separation for the silicone. The clay that covered the back now becomes the “bed” that the sculpture lies in. The front of the casing has an exact spacing for rubber to flow around her face, and had Clara popped out of the back half, too, there would be no guarantee that I could have set her back into the clay exactly right. You run the risk of thin spots in the silicone, or worse, edges of the casing matrix grid nicking your sculpture when the front gets put back on.

Photo 27a: I pulled all the metal shim and tape off the back casing flange. Then, using my dental spatula, and some extra WED clay, I continued the level of the flange across the clay bed right up to the sculpture. I smoothed it out with a little water and a soft brush, then used a loop tool to cut a trench all along the sculpt, about centered in the clay wall. This will create a key within the silicone to help register the mold from the inside.

Photo 28: I cleaned out all the WED clay from the front half of the casing and scrubbed it out really well. It’s a good idea to keep all of that clay around for a bit, as you can use it to judge the volume of rubber you will need to make to fill the mold. Since the clay didn’t fill every crack and crevice in the sculpture, it won’t account for ALL the rubber, but it definitely will get you closer than guessing.

If any of the metal shim stuck to this half, I pulled it off, along with as much of the paper tape as possible.

After the case is clean and dry, I drilled a large hole at what would be the highest point of the mold in its pouring position (I’ll explain that in a minute…) Then, I use a really small bit to drill dozens of holes along the grid, also at what will be the highest points in the pouring position. And here’s why…

A case mold can be poured from almost any position, but in designing the mold, its important to plan how the air between the sculpture and the casing will escape as the rubber pours in. In the instance of Clara, the obvious choice was to lay her on her back. I could have left her standing, but then would run the risk of trapping air under her nose, upper lip, and hair. Laying down, her front half had no overhangs for air to catch under as it rose up towards the casing. So that is it’s “pouring position”.

The large hole, which I made just under the diameter of a toilet paper roll tube, will be the silicone’s point of entry. It needs to be the highest point in order to get the whole casing filled.

The smaller holes are made to allow air to escape as the rubber comes in. If you hold the casing in its pour position over your head, you will see all kinds of strange places where air can get trapped as the liquid rises. If you just drill holes in the center of your grid key, many of them will come out with air bubbles in the upper corner. A few bubbles aren’t a problem. But if the holes aren’t drilled properly, you could open the mold to find rubber missing over half the face!

The small vent holes also serve another purpose: they act as markers telling you how high the silicone is rising as you pour it in, because the rubber will begin to bleed out as it reaches them. Ultimately you will use a drywall screw to plug it up. So make sure you test your bit size by drilling into a scrap and hand tightening a screw into the hole. It should fit snug with just two turns. Any deeper and you might hit your sculpture!

Photo 29: After all the holes are drilled, hot glue the toilet paper tube over the larger hole. You can use any tube, really, but I use these because there are always some around, and they are the perfect length to provide backpressure without wasting too much rubber. Make sure it is glued very securely. If it breaks off with silicone inside, you will never get it glued back on again!

Photo 30: Carefully place the casing back over your sculpture. It’s best to do this with two people, so someone can be looking inside as the other is lowering. Remember how many paint sticks were used to slice that clay? That’s how close that fiberglass is to all your hard work. And fiberglass is to clay what rock is to scissors!

Photo 31: Now it’s time to bolt it up! I use ¼ inch carriage bolts with wing nuts. Note that the wing nuts are upside down. This helps distribute pressure on the flange, plus, they tighten with half the threading! Trust me, when you bolt and unbolt this mold a bunch of times, your wrists will thank you for every turn you don’t have to make!

Photo 32: Mix the silicone RTV rubber, just like in the Vork Bank blog, and aerate it. Then pour it into the cardboard tube. As the rubber begins to bleed out of the vent holes, plug them with screws. I usually let them bleed for a few seconds before I plug them, just to make sure there isn’t any air working its way out. Make enough rubber to fill the tube to the top. This will create the backpressure I mentioned earlier, and force out any air that may be clinging to the surface. Inevitably, the contents of the tube will drop before the rubber cures. Just don’t let it drop too far, and NEVER let it go below the casing.

Photo 33: Once the silicone cured, I removed all the screws, cut off the pour tube, and flipped the mold over. All the bolts came out, and I pried off the back half. At this point, the half with the WED clay should pop right off, as the silicone has a pretty good grip on the sculpture. Nonetheless, always be aware of what is happening in your mold, and if for any reason it seems like the rubber side is coming loose first, try getting at it from another angle. This is the worst part of mold making: if any step goes wrong, you can lose the mold AND your sculpture. So take it slow. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way. Many early works died to bring me these mold making skills. I only hope my advise can spare you the pain!  Makes for some funny stories, though! But that’s another blog…

This photo shows the back of Clara with the clay bed now replaced with cured silicone. This is a view of my sculpture I had never seen before, so I took the opportunity to fill in those rough spots under her collar and hairline.

Then I coated the exposed silicone with Vaseline, repeated the prep work on the back casing, bolted it together, poured the new rubber, and waited for it to cure.

Photo 34: When it did, I unbolted the mold again (see what I’m talking about with those upside down nuts!!!) and pulled out the sculpture. A quick wipe-down with alcohol, and Clara is ready for a fiberglass positive!

Photo 35: Now I had a negative Clara, so the next step was to make the positive Clara. I brushed up a generous coat of BJB 1630 urethane into each half of the mold. Nothing will stick to the silicone rubber mold, so you don’t need any release or separators.

Photo 36/36a/36b: After the 1630 gels and stops pooling at the bottom of the mold, but before it fully cures, I used the chop gun to shoot in a layer of fiberglass. Using a new brush, I tapped the chop against the sticky urethane. Then I mixed a cup of laminating resin and coated the fibers, shot more chop, resined again, and continued to do this process until I built up a decent thickness.

Make sure you keep the flange as clean as possible, because any build up will cause separation when the two halves of the mold are put together, and that gap will create a really bad seam in the final part.

Photo 37: When the fiberglass stiffens up a bit, put the mold together and bolt it tight. I am often lazy here and only put every other bolt in. As long as the halves are firmly held together for this stage, it will be fine. Just don’t tell people I said it was okay!

This next step is easier with actual fiberglass mat. Rip some small pieces and lay them across the seam. Tap resin on them, and repeat. I recommend at least 3 layers. Make sure you don’t miss any spots, or Clara will have holes in her head! Let this part fully cure. Overnight is best if you can spare the time. If not, be sure it’s done or your piece may still split apart!

Photo 38: Yes, its true. We have to unbolt the mold AGAIN!!!! But this is the last time! Pop out the casting, trim the flashing with a Dremmel, and start sanding!

Photo 39: I used a cutting wheel on the Dremmel to remove the solid surface on the top of the head, following the grove I had sculpted into the original clay.

Photo 40: Now I needed to create a bottom for the cookie jar. I found an old laminated shelf in the woodpile, and traced the bottom footprint of the fiberglass casting onto it with a sharpie. Then I released inside the marker lines with a thin coat of Part-all wax. I put the cookie jar back on the mark, and locked it onto the shelf with a generous bead of hot glue.

Photo 40a: It was important to seal it all the way, because the next step was to pour 3/8 inch of 1630 urethane through the top of the head! Once the urethane cured, I peeled off the hot glue, and popped the cookie jar off the board.

Photo 41: Some more sanding, spot putty, and body filler, and the casting was complete. I made a dump mold for the top of the head (I’ll save that explanation for the Codex Answer Orb blog) and sprayed the whole thing with an enamel high gloss white. I drilled a hole and cemented in the Frost Mage Wand tap. This was a working spigot. I used a cheap kitchen sink hose head replacement from Home Depot as the base, and Nick epoxied some carefully placed bolts onto it to support the jeweled wand. The wand was made the exact same way I made the one for the “Date My Avatar” video. A full disclosure on that process will be revealed to coincide with the release of The Guild Season 3 DVD. Have you preordered yours yet!!! Do it now! http://bit.ly/Guild3DVD

Photo 42: Painting was pretty simple, but the catch was that I wanted it to look “glazed”. I started painted this particular prop about, oh, 4am, which was 3 hours from the Guild Xmas call time! So I couldn’t get too crazy. My non-stressful solution to getting this done was to mix small amounts of Liquitex acrylic colors into clear gloss gel medium, creating a translucent, glaze like paint. I wanted the white enamel to be seen through the color layer to make it appear more like ceramic, and I left the brush strokes in to emulate what I was seeing in the mass manufactured products. It dried really quickly, and as soon as the sun came up, I took it outside and gave it one more coat of Crystal Clear, just to give the paint job a little protection. Then I was off to shoot the commercials, and the next time I saw Clara…

Photo 43: Monica May was eating cookies out of her head and pouring beer from her tap! Ah, the magic of Hollywood!

For anyone who is thinking that the explanations for each step of making a silicone matrix fiberglass case mold need to be more in depth, you are very right. There are a lot of processes mentioned that are much more clear when you are actually witnessing them being executed. Pax was actually around for a majority of the Clara M&MCJ molding, and caught most of the major steps on film. I’m thinking of filling in the gaps and posting a video version of this blog, also, so it makes more sense. Let me know if there is any interest in that!

Hope everyone is having an amazing start to the new year! And thanks again so much for checking out my blog! There will be more soon!

Guild Xmas Blog 1: Vork Unbreakable Bank

Let me first start by saying Season’s Greetings! I am having a wonderful holiday season, and what started off as dreary year has wrapped up with fun and excitement. Thanks for this goes out largely to the awesomely inspiring Felicia Day! I imagine that many of you reading this blog are most likely here because you have already seen “The Guild Sells Out” YouTube Xmas spoof commercials. (http://bit.ly/guildxmas) Felicia was kind enough to let me hold the keys to the Knights of Good kingdom for a little while to bring those 7 videos to your computer screen. It was quite an amazing adventure, and it combined all of my favorite things: Good friends, great fans, and making things!

I’m sure so many of you are hoping that this entry will be about the behind the scenes of filming with the Guild. And you probably want me to divulge information about working with Felicia, like what she likes to eat on set, and how often does she sing? I guess I could get to all of that eventually, but you should know me well enough by now to know that I am really hung up on that “making things” part! I thought I would share with you some of the processes I used to make the Guild product props. Each of the products utilized different techniques, so I’ll go through each one individually and give you an arsenal of methods to create Guild stuff of your own!

The final six products developed out of a series of conversations Felicia, producer Kim Evey, and I had while planning the shoot, but several of the ideas cemented themselves in place rather quickly. The Vork Unbreakable Bank was one of them. The idea of a piggy bank where the money goes in but can’t come out seemed to fit Vork’s profile perfectly. And it was a great opportunity to create a character likeness, which I felt was an important part of the formula. I didn’t want any of the props to appear to be pre-existing items that logos or photos were adhered to. I wanted every product to unmistakably be created for the guild. And what a better way to start than a ¼ scale bust of Jeff Lewis!

I was excited to start with the Vork bank, mostly because I really enjoy the expressions Jeff makes in the show. Watching The Guild always cracks me up, (go see for yourself if you haven’t already: www.watchtheguild.com) but Jeff can make my laugh by simply raising an eyebrow. I really wanted to capture the energy he puts into his character, and as soon as Felicia gave me the go-ahead to make the commercials, that’s where I started.

I’ve had to sculpt many celebrities before, and I usually begin by combing through magazines and photo archives trying to get as many photos of them from as many angles as possible. Front and profile are usually easy to find, but it’s the unusual angles that get you. And those are the ones you need the most to connect the dots and get a great likeness! I was completely spoiled for this project, because not only did I have the entire Guild cast at my disposal for a photo shoot, but I also had the unbelievably talented Bui Brothers light them and photograph every angle I needed! Thanks, guys!

Photo 001: We took dozens of pictures, but I picked through them and assembled a basic chart of my favorites in Photoshop. I chose a front, left, right, and back to begin. Using guidelines and the scaling tool, I made sure that all four views lined up perfectly and were the same size. I printed the whole chart as a full page, then printed each view individually, scaled to the exact size I wanted the sculpture to be.

Photo 01a: Using the front printout as a guide, I created a simple armature using aluminum wire and a ball of foil. The foil takes up a bit of mass in the head, but it is mostly just to provide stability for the clay. Using too much foil limits the amount you can cut back into your sculpture, using too little or none at all may cause the clay to slide down the wire and distort your finished product.

Photo 01: Next I roughed in a human bust shape using Roma Plastilina #3. Some people prefer a firmer clay, but I like the organic movement I get from this grade. Plus, it warms up faster and moves smoother, so as long as I don’t knock it off the sculpting stand, it will stay in the shape I want. I have 2 weeks to make six props, so I figure I can’t spend more than two days each on them. Soft, fast clay is in order!

Photo 02: Once there is enough clay to represent the basic mass of a head, I draw a line down the center of the plain that will become the face. Using the full size front printout, I judged the spacing of Jeff’s eyes and dug out 2 holes for sockets.

Photo 03: A good trick to help a portrait sculpture (or any sculpture with eyes, actually) go quickly is to use rigid spheres for eyeballs. You can always sculpt them in clay, but often they change shape, size, and placement as you move the clay around them. By using BBs or marbles or whatever is the perfect size ball for your sculpt, you can always rely on them to be constant no matter how much sculpting, sawing, or brushing you are doing to the sculpture. Just make sure they are the right size. And remember that the eyeball is bigger than what the eyelids expose.

Photo 04: Place the spheres into the head. Make sure you don’t sink them too far back. I really should have taken a profile picture here, as it is important to get the depth right as much as the distance apart.

Photo 05: Another reason why rigid spheres are handy is because you can use them to set the balance of your sculpture. I used my 4-inch angle to make sure they were set level into the head. All too often one eye will end up too far back or too forward, throwing off all the other plains of the face. Everything will line up and parts of the sculpture will seem so accurate, but the likeness will still feel off. By starting with balanced eyes, everything else gets built up around them and you can always go back to the eyes as a baseline for measurements.

Photo 06: Using my calipers, I took distances of all Jeff’s features, using the center of the eyes as the common fixed point.

Photo 7: Then I transferred the nose and mouth placement to the sculpt.

Photo 8: Next I started building up all the surfaces forward of the eyes.

Photo 9: Again, keep in mind to reference ALL your photo views! Judge the amount of clay to use for the nose and brow by the distance they protrude from the surface of the eye.

Photo 10: Then I added some cheek and eye area. I shaped the bridge of the nose a little, too, because it was helping me define the surfaces connecting the brow to the eye.

Photo 11: It’s still pretty early on, but I made the first decision to lock in a shape by defining Jeff’s eyelids. I’m sure I adjusted it a few times moving forward, but at this point it helped me judge distances to all the other features. You can see I scored a hint of the nasal labial.



















Photo 12/12a: Here I built up a little more cheek and started the upper lip. Note that I focused on roughing out one side first. This isn’t really necessary, I’m not even sure if other artists do this, I just find it speeds things up to work out a basic plan on one side, duplicate it on the other when its feeling right, then refine them together to get the thing working as a whole.



















Photo 13/13a: Then I jumped to the lower lip. As often as I sculpt the human face, I never really think about how far the lips protrude beyond the eyes until I look at photos. And it varies so dramatically from person to person so be sure to check your reference rather than use generic proportions.

Photo 14: Now I roughed in the other side.



















Photo 15/15a: At this point I added the beginning of a chin and started refining the features. I just studied the way the light and shadows moved across Jeff’s face in the photos and tried to create surfaces that would emulate the same result in the sculpt.




















Photo 16/16a: Probably the worst obstacle in portrait sculpting is staring at it too long! Somehow the mind just starts filling in the blanks, and your lump of clay appears to be a perfect likeness. This piece was starting to look enough like Jeff to me that I knew it was time to take a break and get some new perspective. So I started working on the neck and body.

Photo 17: I also took this opportunity to define the back of the head, and add a little muscle definition to the shoulders.

Photo 18: Having not looked at the face for half an hour, I could now see it with fresh eyes and make some of the necessary corrections to bring it closer to the likeness. It seemed like the appropriate time to start working in that expression that always makes me laugh!

Photo 19: It still wasn’t 100% Jeff, and I think part of it was the whole head was still too rough. I used my rake tool to refine the shape and get it closer to what I was seeing in the photos.

Photo 20: That’s getting better! Part of what sells that expression is the furrowed brow, and now that I have the forehead and temples defined, I can add that detail. I don’t want to carve them in too heavy, but they should still be more than subtle so they read.



















Photo 21/21a: Now I started adding ears. Always referring to the printouts, I used the calipers to mark the distances from the center surface of the eyes.









Photo 22: It’s always important to keep everything balanced and symmetrical (unless, of course, they aren’t in real life!) but if I had to pick only one view to focus on for the ears, I would concentrate on the front view. Every little subtle change in surface along the sculpted head will affect placement of the ears, and it is often maddening to get them perfect from all views. But a little side-to-side might go unnoticed, however one higher than the other will always through the sculpture off.

Photo 23: Almost done. I really liked the contrast between Vork’s smooth armor chest plate and the chainmail underneath. The photos I had of Jeff in costume from the “Do You Want To Date My Avatar” video shoot only had hints of the mail poking out around his neck, but I thought I could cheat it a little to add some texture. Not wanting to spend hours sculpting links, I went to KitKraft.biz and found some jewelry chain that felt like the right scale. I pressed it into the clay in an overlapping pattern, making sure that there were no free floating links so it would mold well. Then I started roughing out the chest plate.

Photo 24: Here you can see the trim and the shoulder pads. You may also note that Vork’s face is smoother. I brushed him down with isopropyl alcohol to take out all the tool marks.

Photo 25: I used my loop tool to carve out some “hammered metal” texture on the shoulder pads. I thought it would make the armor look more imposing.

Photo 26: So that’s where I stopped sculpting. I still had to add hair and the shoulder spikes, but years of product manufacturing got the better of me and I decided I would do a secondary mold so the end result would be mass production ready! But first we have to make the primary mold. I start by spraying the sculpture with Krylon Crystal Clear. I do this for several reasons. First, many molding RTVs have reactions to different clays. The acrylic spray creates a barrier that helps prevent this. Not all rubbers react to all clays, but it’s a good precaution to practice, because when you find a combination that doesn’t work well together, it can be a painful mess. Secondly, the process of making a mold can be very rough on a sculpture. And your piece is still soft clay. The Crystal Clear offers a bit of a firmer surface to help protect your art. It doesn’t make it bullet proof, but it does help toughen it up a little. Lastly, since this is intended to be a toy product, the clear acrylic coating smoothes out some of the rough spots on the sculpt and makes it slightly more “plastic” looking. This will translate into the mold and bring it one step closer to having a “manufactured” look. Damn, I’m using “quotes” a lot tonight…



















Photo 27/27a: If you look closely, you can see the part line I am dotting in with a sharpie. I am about to make a 2-part silicone box mold and this line represents where it will separate. The trick is to find the straightest path around the object to be molded while trying to always stay on the most outward surface towards the center of the object. Hmm, this may require drawing an additional diagram! If you imagine everything you mold as a ball, you always want the part line to be through the center of the ball. If it splits the ball above or below the middle, the larger half of the ball will get stuck in the mold because the mold opening will be smaller than the widest part of the ball.

Obviously not everything will be as simple as a ball. But keep in mind that you never want any part of your sculpture to be wider than the opening of your mold. A good example on Vork would be his ears. Notice how I changed the course of my line to follow his outer helix, then wrapped back around to the center of his skull? If I had just cut in front or behind the ear, I would have problems both with air and with removing the piece during casting.

Photo 28: Wow! I think this is my longest blog ever! But I’ll power through. Following are some basic molding tips that help me get through every project. Always keep in mind that these principles can be applied to any project you do, not just Vork banks! Molding starts with finding a wooden board larger than your sculpture lying with the part line being horizontal. Place it on a few pieces of soft clay to suspend it off the board a few inches. There are many clays you can use for mold making, but for projects like this I prefer clean clay, or leisure clay. Its soft, doesn’t react with RTV rubber, and doesn’t leave residue on my sculptures!

Photo 29: Break the clean clay into small pieces and use them as building blocks to create a “bed” under your sculpture. A couple of tricks here: Try to fill as much negative space under and around your sculpture as possible. Any large cavities have the potential to fill with molding rubber when you pour the first side. The rubber is very expensive, so this is a good way to minimize waste should an unforeseen leak occur. BUT, do not pack the clean clay into those spaces too tightly. Ultimately, this clay will be removed, and the less force you have to use to get it out, the less chance of damaging your sculpture before the mold is completed.

Photo 30: Here’s the process further along. The object is to build the bed of clay right up to the parting line. If you are wondering why the bed is so thick, as opposed to the sculpture lying directly on the board, its because the clay bed represents the second half of the mold. You want the clay to be as thick as the silicone will be, so you won’t have to rebuild your box.

Photo 31: Its important to really analyze your sculpture before you start the mold. This Vork mold is very straight forward, and I planned it that way in the sculpting stage to help keep things happening quickly. But, you can see by this photo of my studio, I’ve done this a few thousand times! Yet every mold has a challenge, and some dark secret waiting to catch me off guard. It’s especially difficult with the soft clay sculptures, because you basically have one shot. Rarely does a soft sculpt survive the molding process. It can happen, but you shouldn't count on it. That’s why planning is so important.

Photo 32: When creating the bed, also try to avoid pushing the clean clay into your sculpture. The Crystal Clear has created a protective skin, but don’t push your luck! Especially if your sculpture has finer texture or more detail than Vork. But, as you get to the parting line, you do want to nudge that clay right up to your sculpt. The clean clay won’t stick, so you need to create a pressure seal to prevent the liquid silicone rubber from leaking through. It’s a fine line between getting the mold right and damaging the sculpt. Be careful!

Photo 33: Once I have the parting line clayed up, I smooth out the surface of the bed. The clean clay gets pretty smooth by just rubbing it with your fingers. I avoid using any chemicals or alcohol to assist with this in case it affects the rubber soon to be poured.

Photo 34: Next I use my dental spatula to get the parting line perfectly crisp around the sculpture. It’s important to get it tight around all of the texture and surface changes, like around the ear lobes. These corners are the prime targets for springing leaks.

Photo 35: Using a large putty knife, I cut the outer edge of the clay bed to the final shape of the mold. Given that the silicone is over $100.00 a gallon, there is no sense in wasting it on corners! The key is to have the rubber thick enough around the sculpture that it supports the weight of the casting material being poured into its negative cavity. There is no set measurement, because every size and shape sculpture will have different needs. But as I look back on how I learned, I think I would advise that more rubber is safer than less, and you will figure out how to cut back as you get more of a feel for it.

Photo 36: This image shows the beginning of the mold key. This is what will hold the two halves of the mold together when it’s done. Again, there is no set measurement or ratio for the dimensions of the keys. The important thing is that there is enough surface area for one side to grab the other.

Photo 37: Once the main keys are in place, I make a random pattern of registration keys by pressing the handle of my xacto knife into the clay. A ¼ inch is a good depth. Too shallow and the mold halves could still slip, too deep and the soft rubber pegs can bend and hold the mold haves apart, even if it looks closed from the outside.

Photo 38: Now I build a box around the whole thing. I use 3/16” foam core, scoring the corners so the entire wall is one solid sheet. You could use individual pieces for every side, but you run a greater risk of leaks having all of those open joints. Make sure you secure all the corners really well, and hot glue the bottom to the board all the way around.

Photo 39: It’s time for the rubber! The general rule is 10% catalyst to 100% base, but I usually mix it by color. The darker the blue, the faster it sets. But beware, too blue and your mold will deteriorate very quickly!

Photo 40: I always evacuate the air out of my silicone using a vacuum pump. It makes the rubber denser, and you get minimal air bubbles trapped in the mold.

Photo 41: Pour a small amount of the aerated rubber into the box. I usually try to pour around the sculpture, instead of on it, and allow the rubber to rise up along the clay surface. This helps prevent air from getting trapped under the rubber as it pours down.

Photo 42: Wearing latex gloves, gently rub your fingers through the rubber and over the sculpture. Massage the rubber into the detail to help force out air, but always remember to not put too much pressure on the soft clay.

Photo 43: Once I feel that I have coated the surface of the sculpt enough by hand, I pour the rest of the rubber into the box. I still keep to the side of the mold and allow the liquid rubber to flow over the sculpture on its own.

Photo 44: I’ve mentioned a few times that silicone is very expensive, and doing box molds like this consumes a lot of it. The rubber itself is not reusable in the sense that it could be broken back down to liquid form and recast, but silicone does bind to itself, so any mold that I retire usually gets diced up into cubes and used as “filler” in larger molds.

Photo 45: When your box is about half full, place the cubes around the sides of the mold, putting more in the open pockets of liquid rubber. Avoid putting any right on or near the sculpture, as they could settle against the piece and create air pockets or distortion in your mold surface. Also, keep the ratio of cubes to fresh liquid silicone heavy on the latter. Too much cured silicone will weaken the integrity of the mold.

Photo 46: Cap the mold off with the rest of your liquid rubber. You want the top surface of your mold to be smooth, so make sure the cubes don’t float to the top and stick out like they are in this picture! This will interfere with the casting of the positive later.

Photo 47: Seemed to have skipped a few steps photographically here! No worries, they are pretty simple to explain. Once the rubber cured, about 10 hrs, I flipped the box over and carefully removed all the chunks of clean clay. The trick here is to not distort the foam core, and more importantly, not pull any of the sculpture off accidently! This is why it was so important to pack that clay bed loosely. Once all the clean clay is gone, I used a small brush to coat the entire surface of the silicone with Vaseline. Be very careful to not get any on the sculpture. It won’t affect the clay, but you will end up with blobs of petroleum jelly covering all that texture you worked so hard on and it won’t reproduce in the mold. Once you are sure that all the rubber is covered, make another batch of silicone and repeat the pouring process as mentioned above.

Photo 48: Another 10 hours or so later, and we have a finished mold! The foam core gets peeled off, and…

Photo 49: The mold gets pried open! As long as the Vaseline fully coated the first half, the finished mold should come apart pretty easy. Everyone misses a spot now and then, so if a section binds, just go in with an xacto knife and cut it apart.

Photo 50: And there you have a finished Vork silicone RTV box mold! This mold will allow you to cast positives in almost anything, from wax, to plaster, to prototyping urethanes, and low temp metals.



















Photo 51/51a: So this blog has gone on long enough! I’ll skip the details on casting. I can get to that in another entry, if I haven’t covered it already in the past. Jumping ahead, this is how I finished Vork: Taking a positive cast in BJB 1630 urethane, I sanded it smooth and used Magic Sculpt to add the spikes, hair, and eyebrows. I also used an OLFA saw to cut in the money slot at the top of Vork’s head. Now he is officially a bank!

Believe it or not, I actually did the whole molding process again! It went slightly faster since I was working with a hard casting and didn’t have to be as diligent as when I was molding the original clay. The process was exactly the same, and the molds even look the same! Except the final mold will yield shiny, smooth, mass-produced looking Vorks!


























Photo 52/52a: And I did cast up a bunch of them! I made one hollow so the coins could actually go in, one solid with a slightly flexible urethane so it could be hammered and slammed in a door, and another 1630 version, a super dense urethane that could withstand a car driving over it! My fear was that even if a casting survived each torture, the paint job wouldn’t, so I wanted multiples to insure Vork always looked fresh on camera. I used Tamiya spray paint for the flesh and green base colors, then Testor’s model paints for all of the details.

Photo 53: And that’s how the VORK UNBREAKABLE BANK came to be! It was so much fun to make. Thanks again to @feliciaday for letting me make this cool stuff. And very special thanks to my friends Jeff Lewis and James Kyson Lee for making the VUB commercial so freaking funny!

Alright, I gotta go open some presents now. All I really want for Christmas is a Cheesybeard’s T-shirt!

Eric’s Halloween Make-up

Hey, everyone! Once again, as usual, I am working on a secret project that keeps me from blogging about my current work. The good news is that it is the coolest secret project I have worked on in a while, so when I can blog about it in a few weeks, I think everyone will find it very exciting. But I did want to make an entry, so in honor of Eric McNeely’s birthday, I thought I would show you how I made the Fallbrooke front man’s Halloween costume!

Anyone who knows me knows that I usually hide on Halloween, mostly to avoid the tons of requests to do make-ups and costumes as favors! Its not that I don’t love doing it, or want to make my friends happy, its just one of those "all or nothing" type situations, and it’s hard to make costumes for everybody and still maintain the work flow. But Eric was so excited about the make-up process when we were doing the “Take Me Under” zombie girls, I figured one make-up for a huge horror buff wouldn’t kill me. Unfortunately, my schedule got crunched, and I had to wait till the week OF Halloween to do it. So, once again, here are some tips on doing a 24-hour make up…

Photo 01: Here’s Eric as he usually looks, loving every second of being attacked by a zombie during the video filming. Take a good look, ladies…this will be the last time you see him like this during this blog!


Photo 2: Told you! I would imagine that you will never see Eric on stage with a plastic bag on his head! But that’s what happens here at the BarnYard! Eric is prepped for a face cast. I will be using dental alginate and plaster bandage to make a negative of his face.

Photo 3: Here he is fully under the cast. The alginate is soft and flexible, so the plaster bandage helps it keep its shape so it will produce an accurate positive of Eric’s face. Note the nostrils remain open the entire time. What’s it like being under there? Well, I’ll let Eric blog about that himself…

Photo 4: Here’s the plaster positive I pulled from the alginate face cast. The dark areas are retaining moisture, and the whole thing needs to be baked in an oven for an hour or so to make the clay stick better.

Photo 4a: Before I add clay, I dremeled out negative “keys” in the eyes. These will help the mold register better, especially since I don’t have the time to build a flange like I did in the Zombie School steps. It’s a good idea to do this first, because you risk ruining your sculpture going in with heavy tools after it’s done!

Photo 5: I’m designing as I go, so I just started with a base of clay on the obvious areas.

Photo 6: I usually wonder around my shop and look at old sculpts, magazines, and life casts for inspiration when I am designing. In this case, Peter Cushing, of Hammer films and Star Wars fame, struck me as a cool starting point. His stark features are the perfect base for transforming a rock star into a horrific vision.

Photo 7: You can see in this photo how I started drafting features from the life cast into the sculpt.

Photo 8: An hour or so into the process, I felt like I had good structure to continue on. I started marking out where some of the details would go, but before getting to far into it…

Photo 9: I raked the whole surface to even out the overly hand-worked surfaces. Create rhythms and patterns with the rake to help match contours on both sides of the face.

Photo 10: After you feel like your surfaces all match, you can smooth down the rake marks with a soft sponge. Then begin the detail work. I carve in wrinkle patterns with a wax spatula, starting with following the flow of the features, then doing a second pass going against the flow for contrast.

Photo 11: To accent some of the heavier wrinkles, like around the eyes and on the brow, I roll small clay lumps and push them into the wrinkle pattern. Blend in the edges with the wax spatula, then brush them down with alcohol and a stiff brush.

Photo 12: I started as a painter, so I do a lot of brush work in my sculpting. I use the sculpting tools to create the forms and rough in the details, but most of the finished work is done with several brushes, ranging in shape and rigidness. Obviously, the final pass is with smaller, soft brushes to eliminate brush strokes. And avoid using TOO much alcohol, as it will make the clay mushy and hard to work with.

Photo 13: I captured Eric’s ears pretty well in the cast, so it seemed like a good idea at the time to sculpt up some quick, puffy, bruised ears. I decided along the way that this face would be stretched and stitched together with heavy twine, so meaty ears that I could sew through will help complete the look.

Photo 14: Can you still see Eric in there? The finished sculpt. Just in time for lunch!

Photo 15: The next step was to create a “cutting edge”, which entails putting clay over exposed plaster surfaces of the face cast, giving the extra foam and air someplace to escape when the foam latex is run later. I also threw up a clay wall to make the molding easier, kind of the equivalent of the kiddy rails in a bowling alley!

Photo 16: When mixing plaster, it’s recommended to allow the powdered gypsum to soak in the water, rather than mix it in straight away. This is called the “dried river bed” technique.

Photo 17: Mix the first batch of plaster to be the consistency of cake batter, then coat the whole sculpture. I usually splash it on, forcing out the air without physically rubbing the surface and risking damage. The sculpture is finished, but the clay is still pliable.

Photo 18: To strengthen the mold, use hemp soaked in plaster. I buy it in bails, which seems to add to the whole “BarnYard” thing!

Photo 19: Pull clumps of hemp and roll it into “bird’s nest”. Soak these in the plaster and apply them over the splash coat, overlapping them so there are no weak spots. This step is all in the timing. If you put the hemp on too soon, it will press through the soft splash coat and show up in the surface of your mold. But, if you wait too long, the splash coat will cure and chances are it won’t bond to the hemp coat, ultimately chipping out and ruining your negative! So make sure that your splash coat is firm, but still wet when you get to the hemp!

Photo 20: You can put several layers of hemp, but try to keep the overall thickness of the mold to about 1 inch. It helps keep temperature consistency in the foam baking process, which will result in better foam. I usually cheat a little on this rule and build up the top to create a flat surface, which makes running the foam easier since the mold won’t flail about when its turned over.

Photo 21: Here is the mold cracked open. Most of the clay peeled out in the process, but it’s important to scrub the remaining clay from the negative and positive before running the foam. Use alcohol and a toothbrush, or Popsicle sticks snapped in half long ways to dig deep clay out. Avoid using metal tools like the wax spatula, as they will cut into the plaster and add texture you don’t want!

Photo 22: Here is the cleaned mold. It looks freaky already, even in reverse!

Photo 23: So I ran the mold up to Valencia, and the magical Mark baked it out and nailed the first foam run, as always! He delivered it in the morning, giving me enough time to paint it and still have a lunch date! Thanks, Mark!

Photo 24: I wanted this creature to look more bruised than dead, so I started with a bright red rubber cement paint mix in the shadow areas.

Photo 25: I followed this with purple, darkening the deep shadows, but still letting a lot of the red poke through.

Photo 26: Ah, my old stand-by technique: Ringlets! I always tell myself I will try something new, but this approach is really fast, and has never failed me. I used the same purple shadow to airbrush rings, layering the paint to be a little more opaque.

Photo 27: You can cover as much or as little of the piece as you want with rings. I did the whole thing, making them smaller and tighter in the shadow areas, and widening in the fleshy areas. Right now you probably think this looks pretty ridiculous! Its important to remember that rubber cement is a translucent painting medium, so you have to be thinking about the next layers as you paint the current ones. I went pretty full on with the rings, because the next few layers will reduce their intensity, and I want them to continue to read. It’s a basic pattern, but it will end up reading like veins and capillaries.

Photo 28: The next step was to make a translucent flesh tone. When mixing rubber cement paint, start with a small amount of the cement, and add a few drops of painter’s tint. The more tint, the more intense the color. Mix it thoroughly, then cut it with Bestine rubber cement thinner. The more thinner you use, the more translucent the paint will be. By using different amounts of tint and thinner, you can create a wide range of intensities. I use rubber cement because it offers translucency like no other flexible paint, so keep that in mind for layering. If you want to go with straight opaques, it might be better to use PAX paint. (See Zombie School!)

I applied a few layers of the flesh, and you can see how drastically it changed the ringlets! But now he looks a little too lively!

Photo 29: To make him more sickly looking, I layered in a very thin green over the shadow areas. It allowed the reds and purples to stay visible, but cut down on the warmth is a few areas.

Photo 30: Finally, I accented the inner eyelids, and some of the scars and shadows. I am also planning on doing a bunch of modeling with rubber mask grease paint once the appliance is glued to Eric’s face, so this paint is really just serving as a base.

Photo 31: Don’t forget to powder! The paint is still rubber cement, so it will stay adhesive until a layer of baby powder is applied to it. Keep this in mind when painting, also. Touching or folding the foam while you are working on it will cause the cement to bind to itself, and that never ends well!

Photo 32: Now that it is not sticky, I poked some holes in the foam and threaded some hemp twine through the stitched areas. Anything that can be done once its glued down I will do later, but I didn’t want to be poking around Eric’s face with a needle if I don't have too!

Photo 33: Happy Halloween! Oh, wait. That was weeks ago…Well, it was Halloween when this photo was taken. We started about 6ish, so Eric could be ready for the party circuit. It took about an hour to apply the whole thing.

Photo 34: I made some quick teeth out of Magic Sculpt, and tied them onto the loose strings hanging from his chin, brow, nose, and ears. Despite the hellish make over, Eric found this to be the most disturbing part of the whole make-up!

Photo 35: Here he is in all his ghoulish glory! Hopefully he scared the crap out of you if you ran into him that night! It was a lot of fun to do, and I hope there were a few useful hints in the process for your make-up adventures. Send pictures!

Happy Birthday, Eric!

S.P.D. - Part 4

SPD Blog part 4

Okay, so I lied! I didn’t do it on purpose, and there are several reasons why it ended up this way. But first, you may be wondering what I am confessing to! Well, I ended SPD part 3 by mentioning that my next entry would focus on the cast. So this is the next entry, and it does NOT focus on the cast! And for this I apologize to all the fans that love those SPD rangers as much as I do.

I will get to them, but I honestly don’t know how to lay it all out! I made some notes on subjects that I want to talk about, and tried to break them into categories. I pulled my favorite pictures of every cast member and tried to organize them. But there are so many overlapping stories and events; I have yet to figure out a coherent rant I can go on without constantly backtracking and/or jumping around. But I’m working on it. One of the most frustrating parts is that I realized there are a large number of photos that didn’t make it into the 30,000 images on my laptop, so I have to seek the missing ones out to really tell the story I want. Which means scanning through several dozen Terabyte backup drives, and rechecking a pile of image cds that could be a landmark in Pisa. It also means that my fun little walk down SPD memory lane side project has become a quest of epic proportions. But I guess it had to be done sometime!

The other reason I skipped the cast topic, and this is the reason why I don’t absolutely hate myself, is that I received a lot of requests to dig deeper into the alien side of SPD. I know many of you are curious about my secret mission into the high security storage facilities to rescue a ton of the old monster costumes and Frankenstein them into new aliens. I didn’t personally take great records of that process, but I do have some charts and images from Mark, the monster department head, in my filing cabinets. As I am in New York, with a little down time to blog, I will work with materials I have on hand for the moment and continue this “Aliens of 2025 Earth” again when I am in LA.

Photo 01: I know I mentioned this before, but one of my main goals on SPD was to actually inhabit this future Earth with aliens. It is a pet peeve of mine when sci-fi shows hint at the promise of a future world, then shoot downtown Vancouver with extras holding tinfoil wrapped water guns and call them aliens. I figured if we were going to tell a story about Earth being an intergalactic spaceport to ALL KINDS of life forms, we better commit to showing ALL KINDS of life forms. Of course, the concern was always budget and schedule. I think the original numbers allowed for something like one actor to be in alien prosthetics for 6 out of the 38 episodes! It took some creative juggling to make it possible for Gruumm and Piggy to appear as much as they did, and a heap of patience and a few miracles on the part of producer Sally Campbell to allow for the alien “guest stars” on an almost weekly basis. But it was still important to have the headquarters and the streets littered with aliens and humans other than the main characters. So, as Piggy would do, I started by alien dumpster diving.

Photo 02: You would think after 20 years of making monsters and aliens, populating a small screen world would be easy. There are dozens of creatures, probably hundreds, just lying around my studio. It makes for a great tour. But copyrights and trademarks, and work for hire contracts restrict the use of most of the products I have designed or created. But I was able to pull out around half a dozen creature heads that were for personal projects, and that gave us a bit of a head start for mass alien population.

Pictured here are three citizens from the world of Alley Baggett. Not a bad place to call home! Alley is Playboy’s Lingerie Model of the Millennium (Its true!!!) and we did several projects together in the late 90’s- early 2000’s. I owned the rights to the designs, so I thought it would be fun to use them again.

The squid creature on the right was made for a photo shoot with Alley for her 2000 calendar. It was a sci-fi themed, 14-month calendar, each month featuring the beautiful Alley dealing with a not so beautiful alien! This squid man was wearing a tuxedo and dancing with Alley on a moonlit beach! Who new aliens could be so romantic. I feel bad for the guy, now that I think about it…from playboy nights to Piggy’s worm soup for the rest of his life. Bummer…

Photo 03: The guy in the middle is your basic Grey, or EBE alien. He, too, is from the Alley calendar. One of my favorite shots: Alley being carried out her bedroom window by a group of almond eyed Greys. Random trivia: Several of the aliens were played by my friends who coincidentally were the make-up FX guys from X-Files!



Photo 04: The creature above was a demon from the screen tests we shot for a feature film entitled “Alley Cat”, based on the comic book of the same name I created with Alley and Matt Hawkins of Top Cow fame. I removed the horns, added dreadlocks (Yes, again with the dreadlocks!) and did a technique affectionately called “Foam schmearing”. You quite literally smear a fresh batch of foam latex over the existing piece, shaping it within the few minutes you have before it gels, then press texture into it and bake it again.

Photo 05: This guy, who made his main appearance in SAM part 1, was an altered relic from an old B-movie I worked on. Well, literally an old Bee movie I worked on.

Photo 06: Turtle lady was the very first make-up I sculpted and painted for a secondary character. She was the beggar that shows us Jack and Z’s generous intentions in BEGINNINGS part 1. I wanted her to capture the essence of the woman who sings, “Feed the Birds” in Mary Poppins. I chose a painted box turtle as the design premise in order to set a tone for multi-layer, organic paint schemes.

Photo 07: The premier episode of SPD really defined the inhabitance of future Earth, and this character, designed by Dan Perry, really help show the diversity of aliens among us. There were four separate pieces, brow, muzzle, and ears, all pulled from Dan’s generic box of magic parts left over from past projects. They really came together to make a cool creature. The stunt guy was very into it, allowing Dan to shave his head and slime him up for a perfect, complete look.

Photo 08: Scot Erb, who you met earlier working on the Cruger head, joined in on the fun by creating and wearing this make-up for the first day of shooting. We were doing the scene where Jack and Z are handing out the goods from the back of the truck and the Troobians show up. Scot is the last one in line, and we dubbed in a strange voice saying, “Thank you!” which still cracks me up every time I hear it. It’s like the movie clip where PeeWee plays the bellhop at the end of “Big Adventure”: Paging Mr. Herman!

Photo 09: Here’s Scot and I on set. I don’t even think he got wardrobe! Those are HIS clothes! Note the rain. That’s a story for another category…

Photo 10: Would you eat a pizza delivered by this thing? If you are still ready this blog, probably!!!! I love this little guy. At this point in the season, the “mix-n-match” technique was in full swing. Many of the background aliens were created by taking pieces of one design and mixing them with parts of another. I sculpted this nose and forehead, while the ears are Dan’s sculpt for Kat. The paintjob unified everything, but the most impressive part of this whole costume is the silk-screened pizza logo! I so want that on a t-shirt! Gavin was always pulling surprises out of thin air, and this one still floors me. Such an amazing detail.

Photo 11: Here’s another version of the mix and match alien. This one has many of the same pieces as the Pizza Boy, but this time he was painted different. Dan had worked at WETA on LOTRs, and he brought a little of that painting style into some of these aliens. It follows many of the same principles as my painting style, but also contrasts it in many ways. Which was good, helping create a larger vision for our ever-expanding universe!

Photo 12: Our corral of aliens was definitely becoming a sausage fest! I really wanted to create some female aliens, but there weren’t too many opportunities for main characters. This design came along after several conversations with YELOW RANGER Monica May. She really wanted to experiment with acting under make-up. She loved the freedom Barnie had as Piggy, as they shared many scenes in SPD. I made several attempts to sneak in an alien cameo for her, but being a star of the show, constantly needed by both first and second unit, it never became a reality.

Photo 13: But the attempt was not in vain. It yielded one of my favorite background aliens. I called her “Whale Rider”, after the famous NZ movie. Originally I dreamed of a floating, glowing orb suspended just above her whale tail at the top of her head, but it became too much of an ordeal for an background “extra”. Oh, well, next time! This, by the way, is not Monica! But when she saw this, she was convinced that she had to play an alien someday, somehow. Hence, “The SUIT” was born, which became “BATTLE PLANET” on the Sci-Fi channel. Monica’s portrayal of the beautiful extraterrestrial Jun’Hee is TRULY my favorite alien!


Photo 14: Back to reality! Here I am sculpting Sergeant Silverback in LA. As Rene and John continued to argue which was tougher, full prosthetics vs. mechanical head, I decided it was time to let John see the grass from the other side. He had wanted to play a character that got him out from under the big blue dog head, and this maroon monkey seemed just the trick. I was home on Xmas vacation when we decided to go forward with this, so I sculpted the appliance on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, as it was the closest face cast I had to match John. I then molded it, did a polyfoam run, and shipped that to NZ to cut down on the cost of shipping a stone mold. Dan and Terry hogged out the polyfoam back as necessary to make it fit properly on John’s face cast, then molded it again. They did the foam latex runs there in NZ, and I did a color rendering which was emailed for paint reference. Originally, I had designed the white pattern on his forehead to be an organic marking, like on a horse. But someone in production panicked, and had Dan paint a black outline around it so it looked more like tribal paint. You just can’t leave the shop for a second! Not even for Christmas!

Photo 15: The spider walrus. He probably ended up with the least amount of screen time of any of the aliens I made for SPD, but he will always be remembered in history as the first alien Ranger! He went by so quickly, I don’t even have a photo of him finished!!! If anyone out there does, please send it to me!

Photo 16: Well, they can’t all be “my most favorite alien”. Commander Birdie was, well, dumb. At least I thought so. Hopefully some of you out there dig him. This was a case of people wanting to cling too tightly to the Senti version. They did a blue dog, so we did a blue dog. They did a dumb bird, so we did a dumb bird. Cruger I understood, because of future cross overs, merchandise, Shadow ranger. But Birdie could have been anything. I kept saying, “If the supreme commander of SPD is a bird, why is the SPD logo a DOG!!!!” Hello? Is this thing on? Well, apparently this was an argument I did not win. So I focused on making the bird as cool as I could.

Photo 17: As evident in this picture, I’m not sure that even the BIRD feels that I did…

Photo 18: At least the bird could kick this guy’s ass. Again, the wacky wizard could have been anything. But the consensus was to create a non-human human, so kids could relate more easily than they could with the “aliens”. I’m not proud.

Photo 19: But wait! It gets worse! As if Isinia wasn’t a brutal enough blow, her ultimate appearance and reuniting with Cruger made everyone in the writing office feel bad for Kat. It just seemed like the noble thing to do, giving her a love interest to ease the pain of losing Doggie. I wanted to push the make up, creating a much more cat like creature than Kat, because I felt like a Kat-man, just ears and lenses, wouldn’t sell the point. But in the end, everything pushed too far, with the tiger stripping and the David Lee Roth wig. The show was definitely an experience for me, highs and lows, great successes and terrible failures. Things I fought for that went no where, things I let slide that still wake me up in a cold sweat…

Photo 20: But I would hope the fans agree, the victories of SPD far outweigh the defeats. When ever I am feeling down about something I could have or should have done better, I think about certain highlights of the show, like these emerald eyes, and everything seems right in my world. Whether it be the future world of SPD, or the one we are sharing right now…

Fallbrooke "Take Me Under" Music Video

Here it is, if you followed Greg's Zombie school this is the end product.

Interview for Knights of the Guild Podcast

Greg sat down and chatted with Kenny and Jenni, co-hosts of The Official Fan Podcast for the very successful Webseries The Guild. Greg created and built all the weapons in Felicia's Day's #1 Music Video (via Itunes) 'Do you want to date my Avatar'.

You can listen to the podcast online or get a direct download HERE

If you have Itunes you can download it at THIS LINK .

The interview runs about 20 minutes. If you haven't seen the video yet, you can watch it for free on You Tube HERE

Keep up-to-date on Greg's other projects:

• Greg Aronowitz’s Blog - http://barnyardfx.blogspot.com/
• Greg Aronowitz’s Twitter - http://twitter.com/gregaronowitz
• Alien Ninja - http://alienninja.tv/
• Labou The Movie - http://www.laboudvd.com/
• Labou Merchandise - http://laboustuff.com/