Sawdust Bear Makes Things

I’m working on my first custom toy ever! Well, the first one I’ll actually finish. I have several Dunnys and Munnys lying around that I find completely uninspiring.

It’s Brian Mahony’s Guumon, which is a very kaiju-esque monster…thing. I love it. It’s messy and blobby and exactly the sort of thing I like.

I sculpted a face(the original figure doesn’t really have one) and the nest-pouch thing. It’s going to be a pretty maternal monster.

Here are some progress photos:

So much fun. It’ll be part of a custom toy show in Boston in August – that show poster is under the cut.

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A commission for my friend Karine! These are characters from a webcomic that she is currently involved with(I’ll avoid posting names since I believe it’s a surprise for the creator).

The baby gnoll and gelatinous cube were eventually mounted on a wood base. The beholder mini is just a little extra I threw in.

The slug is nameless. The flowerpot is Marcy.

I just put him up on my Maker’s Market store!

I was going to send this first one to my dad for Father’s Day, but my mom said it was ugly, so I think I’ll make something cuter instead. She’s very supportive of everything I do – just honest with opinions. Ha.

Here’s another one on an embroidery hoop, except I guess it’s just a detached eye.

I’ll be bringing them both to the Long Beach Experiment next Wednesday night in Long Beach!

I’m not sure how I feel about using embroidery hoops right now. There’s a weird *softness* to them and having monster bits on them just feels a bit weird. I have a whole ton of them, though, so I’ve got some time to get used to it.

I’ve been on this specimens-that-look-like-bugs kick lately, which really just results in more specimens that look like bugs. I’ve also been obsessively looking at pictures of pitcher plants, although I have yet to sculpt anything that looks like them.

Here’s one of my new specimens. He’s a paranoid little fella. I just uploaded him(and a couple other new ones) to my Etsy store.

So, Make Online wrote an article on me last week. I don’t think any picture of me has ever reached that wide an audience before, especially me dusty and barely wearing anything on the upper half of my body.

I love Make: Online, though. It was a honor.

Still, it did remind me that I never showed you this larger specimen that I made that’s really quite cool!

His name is Oopy. He’s one of my bigger ones, being about 4″ tall!

Look at my desk! It’s full of monsters!

They’re all in different stages of completion – the two larger green ones are pretty much done, the big pink one is baked and unpainted and the one on the turntable is still squishy and unbaked. There are two small unpainted specimens in the back too. You can also see pretty much the only three tools I use, a mechanical pencil, an x-acto knife and this thing with a small spatula thing on one end and a ball-tip on the other. There’s another one sitting there too, but I haven’t touched it. The white box is what I take all of my pictures in. Eventually, I’ll get or make a lightbox.

I’m using taxidermy eyes for the first time and I think they look REALLY cool. They’re sorta muddied in the picture because I have clayey hands, but I think they’ll look awesome when I’m done.

I feel pretty productive. I’ve already tinkered with the monster sculpt that’s sitting on the turntable, done most of my taxes and I think I’m going to go and make Jason breakfast in bed now. Not bad for 10:39am on Sunday, considering that I usually don’t even get out of bed before noon on a weekend.

I’ve been playing with organic shapes lately. I’ll be moving on to weird things in petri dishes once I figure out the best thing for fake agar. Meanwhile, there’s gonna be weird things in test tubes…once I get stoppers. No, I’m not sure why I can’t just order all my supplies at the same time. Also, I bought a whole bunch of 3x3x2 boxes instead of 3x3x3 boxes in my last supply order, which is annoying. Fortunately, it seems like the majority of my specimens actually fit just fine in the smaller boxes. But you don’t want to hear about my shipping woes.

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There’s a PostWarTrade webcast art challenge going on right now to create punk rock cabaret wedding toppers. Now, punk rock cabaret is totally my thing, but not really what I tend to sculpt. But I made some folky, creepy wedding toppers of Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman(they’re getting married! yay!) for it yesterday night!

They’re Other-Amanda and Other-Neil, complete with black button eyes. I actually burnt some of the clay and had to paint them white again, but it gives it a folk-arty look which is totally okay.

Also, if there is any sculptor out there who has successfully sculpted Neil Gaiman’s hair, please contact me. I’d really like to talk.

More pictures under the cut!

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Who figured out little jointed heads? I did! Yeah, it’s not that hard, but I got it right on the first try, and I’ve made three more that just don’t fit together right. I usually get things right on the first try. I just wish I could replicate that success more regularly.

He’s a Dorbal. It’s a really cute species of fictional animal.

I sculpted a simpler featureless head for this guy too – if it works well after I bake it, I may cast this in resin as a tiny DIY resin toy. My last intended resin cast was just not as awesome as I had hoped after I looked at it for two weeks, so I junked it. BAH.