Little Baby Cringor
This piece was ultimately based on the design of the Devil Dog from Osaka Popstars. Both my wife & I were invited to make a piece for a group show featuring customized Devil Dogs. The show was held at The Showroom located on the southwestern corner of 2nd Ave & 7th St, here in Manhattan.
I wanted to resculpt the figure in wool using this amazing technique, that my wife showed me. It’s called Dry Felting, & basically your sculpting, using wool fibers instead of a hard clay material.
Using a multi barbed needle, you push the needle into a balled up piece of wool and slowly begin yo shape it. It’s like pointalism in 3D.
It’s truely an amazing technique & my wife’s designs look so fantastic in this style. I thought this character too would look perfect in wool. Classy & antique…..
Storm Shadow
How can you go wrong with the classic ninja look….. in white? Then you slap a name like Storm Shadow on the packaging. It’s like instant franchise gold right there.
I’m not sure if Larry Hama came up with the names for the GI Joe series (I know he came up with stories for the original file cards), but whoever did must’ve had a knack for poetry.
With such a simple name like Storm Shadow, I imagine the shadow of a furious rolling cloud stalking the hill side. Covering every inch of the ground in its dark ominous blanket. Contorting, shifting, changing in movement & direction with the effortlessness of a summers breeze across your brow.
He’s coming for you and he won’t stop until his mission is complete & you won’t see him until that last second before he gets you. Silently, stealthly, a ghostly white blur…..
Major Sebastian Bludd
Mercenary, twisted underling….. Major?Something about this guy. What’s his deal? Is there a stump under that cybernetic casing?
I know one thing for certain: he’s Kind of scumbag with this incipid nasally Skeletor voice. Only his is accented with touch of Brit or Aussie.
I can’t help it I love his design. I was really proud with the way this guy came out. Alas the only original piece that I sculpted was the eye patch. And that broke so I’ve recently redone that.
To me he looks so damn close to the original 3 3/4 scale figure sans dogtags. I did not forget however, by the time this guy’s ready for the show he will be sporting the dogtags of fallen Joes…..
Work
Work. Not the jobbie job but the work you do on you own. The work that matters. The work that you think about all day as the hours slowly drain away from you.
For over a year now I’ve been completely possessed by this gallery show that my wife and have been talking about. It all started with the Cobra Commander & Destro 12″ customs.
That began a tangent of ideas that lead to the “Excess of Evil” show. The title is a reference to the WWII Axis Powers of Germany/Italy/Japan. However, these are toys after, and “Axis of Evil” just doesn’t sound playful enough.
Originally, the plan was a gallery show featuring custom 12″ figures that are mash ups of ’80′s villains with a WWII Axis twist. The concept has grown to incorporate characters that have a Korean War & Vietnam Conflict era feel.
Here’s Major Bludd: his look is a tad more modern but still 80′s.
New All Over Again
It’s been exactly a year since I wrote last. Is there a hungry audience still?…..
Hopefully. Well, this past year has been filled with activety. The main reason why I haven’t scribled anything down here is that last Febuary I began working as a sculptor at Jeff Koons Studio. As I write this I realize that legally I can’t go into any crazy detail about what I do there, so I’ll provide a link here: http://www.jeffkoons.com
Check out the “Popeye” gallery over to the right (toward the end in the long list of artist themes). That’s pretty much what I’m working on.
I know one thing I can say is that there’s a whole lot of sanding involed. All of those inflated balloon animals you see are infact made of aluminum. Great effort and long hours are spent creating wrinkles and smoothing out surfaces so that the metal looks like inflated vinyl. It really is quite an amazing feat.
