Greg the Defiler

This Game of Thrones looking motherfucker is Greg the Defiler. His sword took about 3 days to make as I had to make the first piece out of Milliput, wait hours for it to dry, file it into shape and then sculpt the next piece and so on. I think I might have gone slightly overboard with the filing, because the blade is actually really sharp, you could totally kill someone with it...

 This is the third version of his armour, the other versions were a bit dull or looked off, and I redid his pauldrons (shoulder bits) about 12 times until I got a version I liked. Then it's all painted but not glossed to make it look like metal, so it's more of a sculpture than a puppet because he really can't move.

 I debated giving him a cloak, but I wanted all of the armour visible seeing as I spent 2 bloody hours painting it.

 I wanted his armour to be darker, but that would of sacrificed the metal effect, so amateur photo manipulation is the closest I'll get.

He was very loosely based on this monstrosity from around a decade ago. Masterpiece.

The Joker

I decided to have a crack at making a sculpt I've been wanting to make for a while, The Joker (from the comics not the films).

 The teeth didn't come out quite as planned, they're supposed to be crooked but one of the front teeth got dislodged slightly when the others went in and now I can't move it without basically taking his head apart and rearranging all his teeth. I also wish I'd made his hair a brighter green, I thought a slightly muted green would look better. It doesn't.

The Unlucky Pirate

This sculpt is exactly what it looks like. A pirate being violated by an angry cephalopod. I'm gonna post a lot of pictures of this, as there's not really a single good angle to get a decent shot of all of it.

 This sculpture was quite hard to balance, so I had to use the octopuses tentacles as supports.

 Hopefully I put enough detail on him for people to guess that he's a pirate, I didn't want to go full eye patch, hook and peg leg mode.

 The octopus' head started as a polystyrene egg originally intended for Mr Chuckles' balloon, but it was way too big for that so it just sat on my desk unused for a while, until I noticed the way it was sat on top of some cables looked a bit like an octopus, so naturally that inspired me to make an octopus sexually assaulting a pirate...

 I put quite a lot of unnecessary detail on his body, not realising quite how much of it would be covered by the tentacles...

 The octopus has about 3 layers of gloss on it to make it look extra slimy, and no I didn't cheat, it does have eight tentacles, with suckers and everything, but no beak, you wouldn't be able to see it.

Thought I'd add a random making of shot as I don't usually remember to take these anymore but I did here for some reason.

Jack the Ripper

This one took a while to get right, it's a greyscale puppet of Jack the Ripper, even though no-one knows who the hell he was, or what he looked like, well this is what he looked like. I have spoken.

This puppet is quite large, about 35 cm tall, and I specifically avoided using any colour to make it look all Victoriany (Fuck off spellcheck, that's definitely a real word.)
His cape/coat has since broken off since I forgot to attach the bottom half to his body, but that'll take 5 mins to fix.

 I also created a Victorian style Vignette, which is probably what the Ripper's Tinder profile picture would've looked like.

This was the Ripper MK I, but he looked more like a random Victorian undertaker, I originally wanted to avoid making the classic Ripper coat as it would've been a nightmare to make out of plasticine, but after seeing this alternative I decided to have a crack at it and it was a piece of piss. Or I just got lucky...

Old Uncle Roscoe

This charming fellow is Old Uncle Roscoe, he was originally going to have an army of ferrets (hence the ferret on the armchair that I forgot to take out of the shot) but after making one, I really didn't want to make 15 more, so I copped out and gave him a Koala. Named Francis. And a drinking problem.

The bottle of Jack is an actual bottle of Jack, one of the little ones used for cocktails, mixers and to calm alcoholics on plane journeys.

The armchair is made out of Styrofoam covered in plasticine.

 I like to think that Roscoe is a struggling single parent, living day to day raising a Koala bear, all whilst finding time to get absolutely shit faced and scream at his own reflection in the mirror.

This is Roscoe MK I, Made months before. I wasn't particularly fond of him though, and had recently rediscovered a new technique for sculpting hair, so completely redid his head.

Roscoe is partly inspired by the cowboy from an old student film that is probably in one of the first posts I ever made on this blog. 

Penny and Mr Chuckles

Created for Halloween, Penny and Mr Chuckles roam the land looking for the souls of the damned, Mr Chuckles enjoys long walks in the park, painting watercolours and disembowelling wildlife, and his companion/concubine Penny has seen Hell. Twice. And now they live in my kitchen. 

 The balloon was an unexpected success, its a polystyrene ball covered in a thin layer of plasticine and stuck on a short length of armature wire, it stands on it's own, but only for about 5 minutes at a time.

 Penny is partly inspired by the Little Sisters from the videogame 'Bioshock', but I'm sure they weren't the first to invent creepy little girls with unnatural guardians...
Her hands have both since fallen off and disappeared, so I've renamed her 'Nubs'

Mr Chuckles' body is made out of a type of clay very similar to Van Aken, the American version of Plasticine, I only used it because it was all I could get at the time and I won't be using it again if I can help it, it's much softer and harder to work with and has a very greasy feel, it also melts easily so I don't imagine Mr Chuckles will survive the summer intact...

Heres a throwback clown from 8 or so years ago, and I'm still not sure which one is scarier...

I thought I'd stick this on the end since it's vaguely Halloween themed. Its a cartoony version of the Bunnyman Legend. Even though he's just supposed to be a madman in a bunny costume, I prefer it this way, with a dash of Slenderman thrown it because why the hell not.

Jesus Loves Gay Black Dwarves

This piece is entitled 'Jesus loves gay black dwarves', or if you're feeling a bit PC, 'Jesus loves homosexual African American little people. I'm sure theres something in the bible about this...

Jesus was going to have a halo, but it looked crap, plus I think it's pretty obvious who he's supposed to be, so I deemed it unnecessary.

St. Patricks

This massive Irish stereotype was made for St. Patricks day, he was originally going to be a leprechaun, but his body wasn't small enough, so I made this instead.

 I did consider giving him a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire and make him a sort of 'Irish gangster', but his facial expression wasn't ominous enough for that.

The pipe and the small pint (1/2 pint?) of Guinness were made back when he was supposed to be a leprechaun.

I'm now making a habit of remaking old sculpts I did around 8 years ago, then viewing them side by side to see how shit the old ones look, it amuses me. 

Random Faces

These two little bastards are a couple of random sculpts I made to experiment with more exaggerated facial features, they were never intended to have bodies.

 They would make a good pair on a mismatched detective show...

 I also made a pair of hands for another character, but they were far too big, so I gave them to this bloke as they are around the right size, I've considered giving this bloke a body, he looks a bit like Father Ted so I would probably make him into a priest, but then I would have to make some sort of paedophilia alluding prop, and I'm not going to do that.

 This Sikh fella was made so I could try sculpting a turban, it took several attempts, and the final result got squashed slightly before photographing, but it'll do.

I'm gonna tack this on to the end of this post, because it doesn't quite deserve it's own. This is a penguin I made for a housemate for her friends birthday, who is a geologist who fucking loves penguins. That's about it really.

Showreel 2014

Amish Porn Surfer

 This is Ezekiel, and he is about to discover the wonders of internet pornography. He will appear in my showreel browsing the internet, stumble upon something his innocent Amish eyes are not quite so accustomed to, and react accordingly.
In order to make his classic Amish outfit I did a bit of research and found out that their shirts never have buttons all the way down (if any, some communities prefer simpler fastenings), it's to remove temptation to open them in hot weather apparently. There was something about their hats never having a brim wider than 6 inches to keep themselves humble, and they never wear patterns on their clothing to avoid expressing their individuality, which is forbidden. So if you ever see an Amish man with a massive hat brim and a stripy open shirt just remember that even his fellow Amish think he looks like a twat.

Ezekiel will also appear in a short shot with the sloth, I like to imagine them as drinking buddies...

 This is the chair he will be sat on, it's made out of kebab skewers, Milliput and plasticine, one of the skewers will go up through the seat and into his arse, which will hold him onto the chair.

 The computer is made out of air dry clay then covered in plasticine, it has a hole in the front which a torch will slide into, creating the lighting effect for the monitor.

 Lighting test, the torch has a filter over it so it's not too bright.

It should also be noted that only married Amish men have beards, so he'd better watch out for Mrs Ezekiel, she won't like what he's looking at, the filthy bugger...

Scalextric

This scruffy gentleman is one half of the duo that will be racing scalextric cars, he was originally supposed to be a tramp but then I came up with the scalextric idea and decided to make the other puppet...

 This one, the Hippy. I wanted to have another crack at making dreadlocks. I also tried out a new way of making eyes.

 This was the 'first draft' of the character, the body is the same, but the eyes and nose are different, with a bit more detail.

Christ this hippy puppet is old, from about 2005 I think, I know, it's awful, but I was 15, leave me alone.

Here's the Scalextric track, the sloth won't be in the final animation because I don't think he's really necessary to the shot. I also removed the hippy's moustache because I felt it suits him better. The two will be racing the cars, then the hippy will be a right cheating bastard and turns on his car's rocket boosters, knocking the other car off the track and winning. Although I realise that because of the way the track is laid out it's impossible for the green car to lose because it's on the inside track, but having a crossover would complicate the animation unnecessarily and I doubt anyone will notice anyway.

Fabulous Cactus

 Yes, this is the most fabulous cactus you will ever see. He has a large styrofoam core and a small armature for his arms, they won't move, but it keeps them from falling off. His spines are from one of those fancy hairbrushes that I took apart, they work perfectly as they aren't sharp and they're slightly flexible. I covered him all round even though you won't ever see the back to make him seem more complete. I will be doing a small lip sync test with him so he has several different mouth pieces and a detachable moustache.

This is a fabulous cactus circa 2011, he's a bit more anthropomorphic with hands and accessories and was repurposed from a cactus prop from a student animation I did a few years ago that's probably on this blog somewhere if you can be arsed to go back that far. This puppet has cocktail sticks for spines which were extremely stabby so I was eager to avoid that this time round. He also had no styrofoam core so was unnecessarily heavy and had no armature so his arms broke off more than once.

French Duke (and wife)

 This is a French Duke. I turned into a bit of an obsessive perfectionist over this one, I kept going back and tinkering with it, lengthening his arms and legs to make him more proportionate, remaking his feet to give him more stability. I also dropped him on his face like the clumsy twat I am and completely wrote off his nose, but I remade it and made improvements so it worked out in the end.

 He looks purdy with no clothes on.

This is his resplendent aristocratic wife, we'll call her... Jennifer shall we? And yes it is a pig in a decadent french wig, what of it? 

 In retrospect, I probably should have made the pig a little bit bigger, but no matter, I can make this work...

Here's the lovely couple as they will appear in the showreel, again it will be fairly short.