Joe Exotic- the Tiger King

July 31, 2020August 7, 2020Leave a comment

Work in progress on Joe Exotic, best known as the Tiger King from the Netflix series, this guy has a LOT of accessories!

Still here, still working

April 4, 2020April 4, 2020Leave a comment

It’s been quite a while since I used my blog, over 2 years in fact, not because I haven’t been doing anything, quite the opposite actually, for the past couple of years I’ve been working on and off with a local childrens charity “Twin Vision” helping out with a big project they had. Over the 2 years I made many assets for them for 3 animations based on key medical figures from Liverpools history. Early on we got a 3d printer to try and improve the quality of the work we were doing. It has been invaluable. I’ve now had chance to go through some photos from the project and thought I would share some details on the making of the most complicated piece that was required- a World War 1 ambulance…..

World War 1 Ambulance rough — It was quite obvious early on that this would need to be largely 3d printed as much of it would be too time consuming to build by hand, so I began by roughing out the shapes in Zbrush, and using the head from one of the featured puppets for scale.

World War 1 ambulance 2 — Like traditional modle making and sculpture you soon realise that what looks ok initially is actually way off! So I changed the proportions and started to add more parts.

World War 1 ambulance layout — I had to think a lot about how this thing would be printed, how it could be split up into printable parts, it had to be large enough to fit a stop motion puppet, and a 3d printer has size restrictions, plus it takes forever to print anything.

World War 1 ambulance 4 — It was starting to take shape fairly quickly thanks to the magic of Zbrush

Final polygroups World War 1 ambulance — Each different colour or “Polygroup” is a part that needs to be produced, most were printed but some made by hand as they were just too large to justify printing when they could be handmade.

Xpose World War 1 ambulance — Not very interesting but here are all the different parts exposed, you get the idea of how many parts were needed though, and the daunting task of printing it all and putting it together.

World War 1 ambulance model parts — These were the first parts that I printed, still pretty useless on their own….

Wheel — One of the wheel alone took about 18 hours to print

World War 1 ambulance model parts 2 — Starting to take shape, this was a relief with the deadline approaching!

World War 1 ambulance model parts 3 — It all had to be held together on an MDF platform adding to the weight of the final piece, so it needed some legs for support, these were positioned behind the wheels so they were less conspicuous and would either not be shot or edited out later.

World War 1 ambulance wheel 2 — The wheels were held in place with some little caps that were printed to the exact size to fit over the ends of the metal rods in the axles.

outside — And here it is fully assembled, this was new years day round at my parents house, it had to be transported there in the back of a car which was a good test run for it’s future journeys. Had to get it sprayed green before it went dark.

inside — and here it is after a quick spray.

World War 1 ambulance green 1 — and here is the finished piece. I would have loved to add some more details and really work on the paint job, add mud to the wheels etc, but the deadline was pretty tight, I had about 2 days to paint it in the end. This was a lot of work, lots of crawling into bed wondering how to get around a problem, but it was thouroughly enjoyable….

and it ended up in Tate Liverpool pretty close to a Lowry, which was nice.

Digital vs Traditional

January 16, 2018Leave a comment

Some years ago I made a statue based on the Lollipop Chainsaw video game, at the time I had never tried digital sculpture (or rather I had but turned it straight off because it was far too confusing), so today I thought I’d see if I could improve on the original base that I made and how quick the process was, I have to say I much prefer the digital approach for hard surface modelling and can’t wait to try some 3d printing.

Uncle Grandpa Update

August 10, 2017January 16, 2018Leave a comment

Here’s an update on the digital sculpture of Cartoon Network’s Uncle Grandpa that I’ve been working on, learning as I go, decided to take it a step further and add a couple more characters and the text.

and here it is with the colours added

Uncle Grandpa update

Pokemon Go Update

May 26, 2017August 10, 2017Leave a comment

Just a little progress on a personal piece I started some time ago, this goes on hold every time commission work comes up but it’s taking shape, soon enough I’ll get to paint and fabricate these guys.

Uncle Grandpa

April 20, 2017March 30, 2018Leave a comment

I’m still taking small steps into the exciting world of digital sculpture (I’m not quitting traditional), I’m making some progress, this will be the first piece that I actually see through to the end and hopefully get 3d printed, can’t wait to see the results, still a little way to go yet, but here it is, Uncle Grandpa from Cartoon Network.

Digital Sculpting

January 31, 2017January 31, 2017Leave a comment

In an attempt to get with the times I’m having a go at zbrush, it’s pretty complicated stuff! But the aim is to start incorporating some 3d printing into my sculpted work.

Pokemon Go

August 19, 2016October 2, 2016Leave a comment

Another piece I’m working on at the moment, this was inspired by stories of people unknowingly wandering into dangerous places while tracking down Pokemon. To compose the sketch quickly I used several found reference photos of alleyways and put them together like a collage, I then used zbrush to quickly build some figures which I pasted over the alleyway collage. I already had a clear idea of how I wanted this to look and the camera angle/composition so this was a quick way to get the idea down as a starting point. I then looked at a ton of Pokemon characters and did plenty of sketching to see which had silhouettes that would lend themselves to being menacing men in badly made costumes.

Coulrophobia Illustration

August 4, 2016October 2, 2016Leave a comment

Coulrophobia is the fear of clowns, this piece illustrates that fear, here are some progress shots from my time making this piece, you can find the finished piece on my 3D illustration page.