T-Rawll heads off to the 3D Printers

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Woodland Yowie

Having received my Yowie blank the other day I set about working him over. I decided on a Wodland theme and decided to add roots and leaves and paint him with a bark texture. The black in awesome! He is a resin cast by Jon-Does-Doodles and if you get chance grab one from his Bigcartel shop.

One of the main reasons I bought the Yowie was that I want to do some resin casting myself and I thought it would help me to understand the process a little better if I could see a cast first hand. However, as soon as I opened the packaging I decided I needed to get right on and customise the little fella there and then.

I used a dark brown Premo Sculpey to make the roots and a bottle green to make the leaves. That way I didn't need to use the skull white undercoat as the Premo color was very close to the final color. I baked these parts off and gave them a coat of paint then followed that up with some detailed line work.


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A very eventful day or how I lost my eyebrows!

It isn't often that I sit and write about my day. Today has been a very eventful day. As you will find out as you continue into the narrative, I can't do much else tonight other than sit and type this blog with one finger on my right hand.

The plan for the day should have looked like this: school for Josh, post office for missed deliveries, gym, car wash, meet Anthony Filice for a discussion about CGTweet up, back to school, do some sculpting, a little drawing and finish building a robot with Josh. I didn't turn out that way.

I dropped the little fella off at school and got the parcels from the post office. My new arrivals were a custom Dunny destined for stripping and a cool custom resin blank called `Yowie` from Jon does doodles.

All good so far. I decided to shoot back home and pick up my wallet before heading to the car wash and onto the gym. For some reason that I'll never know I decided to skip the gym and spend an hour or so working on a custom break-dancing mummy figure I have on the go. I settled down in the studio and began mixing some epoxy resin to start piecing together the mummies legs. I finished that and set up my spray booth box outside ready to spray the Yowie blank and the base for the mummy. The wind was a little too high and paint started to go everywhere so I decided to use a galvanised bin to spay into. I put the mummy base into the bin and began spraying down into the bin. I fully coated the base and was going over for a second coat when the paint ignited and blew upwards out of the can. Luckily I wasn't fully over the can and jumped backwards. The flame hit my hand, the crease of my left arm, my neck and the side of my head. The worst area being the crease of the arm. I have no idea what caused the paint to ignite but checking the base later it seems there was some epoxy resin which may have caused some sort of reaction. I can't see any other explanation for the combustion but I know have a new outlook on the dangers of spraying models!

I called Pams Mum and got her to take me to the minor injuries clinic at the local hospital. They hurried me in and very quickly had my arm submerged in water cooling the blisters down. Within an hour I was spattered with cream and bandaged like the mummy I was creating before all this happened.

Speaking of which, here is the little bugger that has lost me half a day of work and is the reason I am now sitting here pecking away with this finger on my righthand.






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Ivor gets his first appearance in 3D

I took the Ivor concept one stage further today and modeled him in Silo. I asked a buddy (Thanks Wayne!) to run me off a couple of renders this evening and they aren't looking too bad so far. I'm not sure where to go with this idea now. I've started creating Ivor in Sculpey but as I was un-wrappping the first block I began thinking about getting Ivor 3D Printed. Need some sleep to think about this one.



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Ivor the Diver concept and color tests

A little more on Ivor today.







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Sculpey order and some more concepts

I ordered my Sculpey PREMO from the amazing Dougarts on Ebay (Ordered Friday, it arrived Saturday am. Cool!). If you are in the UK and need modeling supplies fast and fairly cheap he seems to be the man! So I am now just waiting for some 1lb blocks of super sculpey and I'm ready to start some serious toy modeling. I'll be sketching all weekend and see if I can lock down an idea or two so I can have a go with the new modeling supplies.

I carried on playing with the underwater theme and I've started to refine one or two characters. I really like my little `Ivor-the-Diver` and `Ocho` so far. I think I will ink one or two images of these characters and then convert them to vector line art to see how they turn out. That way I can have a go at several color variations in photoshop. Ivor seems to be shaping up as my lead creation so I think I'll start with him. I'm trying not to look at too many other peoples toys as I don't want to be influenced too much, however, I need to research some eyes. I can't decided how I want Ivors eye to look like through his mask.

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Diving into toys for a while

Although I've been sculpting for years I've never designed and made any toys myself. I've done plenty of toy concepts and I've modelled a fair few in 3D for a variety of clients. I've been talking to a few amazing toy-dude (you know who you are!!) and I have ordered a shed load of sculpey, premo sculpey and miliput and I'm going to get sketching for a few days. I want to design a range of little diving characters that I've had in the back of my mind for ages.

I was thinking of a couple of divers (boy and girl perhaps), a couple of hero sea creatures, maybe a Sperm Whale and a Shark and then a plethora of smaller characters like clown fish, a turtle, a baracuda etc.

I made a start tonight to get my juices flowing and I'm more than open to suggestions and critisism. It's nothing more than a fun project and one where I can learn a little about getting into toy design. It seems i've picked up lots of new followers this week and I'm hoping theres some toy-designer-gurus in there to help me out.



Comments, hints, tips, crits and color help more than welcome.

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