I let a whole week slip by again?

This past weekend was a wonderful non-project day. Last week was a transition into a faster pace at work and as such I was a bit tuckered out by Saturday. I slept-in  until 730pm on Saturday “morning”. Yep, 19hrs of sleep straight through. Never done that before. Some practical home projects like painting and packing have been eating up my spare hours as of late, but I promise to delve into a whole slew of new graphics, sculpting, art, photography, and woodworking projects this coming month after the move. For those waiting for the movie posters they’re plodding along and I hope to have some pre-views up by next Saturday.

In the mean time I put up two more double-wide (2880×900) desktops in the desktops page.

Anyhow, that’s the update.

In the late hours of Thursday evening two evil engineers toiled over a plan for microcosm domination and thus was a brilliant object of long reaching, epic proportions devised.

Introducing the SMURF IN CARBONITE!!!

Not long after, a smurf version of Luke Skywalker sneaked into our lair and tried to free Han Smurflo. We were forced to tie up the would be assassin.

Thus concludes our story…for now!

Mwah, ha, ha, ha, haaaaa!

It’s been a couple days since my last update on this project and here’s why…

As always, I took the weekend to go hang out with my wonderful fiancé, Jean, in Brooklyn. While there, and in conjunction with eating pizza, I suddenly realized that I had been going about the project all wrong. I have an idea in my head (which is where I hold most of my ideas) about the shaping and details of the skull, but I am having issues creating the armature in a way that defines the sculpture outcome properly. Due to the sheer size of this project I’ve wasted many hours building up the clay around the current armature only to discover that I have done it wrong. As I said in earlier posts, “this was a shot in the dark”. Well, my “shot” missed the target, so I’m reloading.

Pizza. Everything can be solved with pizza from which I derive my powers. Just kidding… about the powers. Pizza boxes, when unfolded, just happen to be roughly 38″ long from inner crease to crease. Why does that matter? Well, that’s how long this particular skull is. I plan on taking a couple weeks to build up some cardboard supplies (which should be easy with Litte Ceasar’s at the corner) from which to create a fuller armature to build on. I’ll just cut the shapes and slot the thing together to get a better sense of the whole before I add clay to it. In the mean time I have to tear down the current structure and re-mold the clay into usable pieces. Using my handy-dandy study lamp, I’ve found a way to soften the NSP to a workable temperature, so the process should go more quickly than it did two weeks ago.

This weekend is Mother’s Day, thus creating another delay in the process…

Grrr Arrrgh.

ADDENDUM – 5/29/10:

The Alien skull is canceled for now. After much deliberation I’ve opted for finishing up some smaller projects first before my wedding. After which I have to move to a new place and I don’t know if I’ll have much space for large projects or not. I really want to make one still, but it will have to wait.

I was at it again last night. This is getting to be a very heavy project already and it’s not even halfway completed. First step last night was to add a tube down the center of the cavity.

Again, I’m flying blind on this and really don’t know if it’s going to work out exactly as I have planned. We’ll see. I then continued to add clay to the sparse armature. I’m certain there are way to do this that I’m missing, but I don’t have a really good idea as to how thin the skeleton aspects of the design will be so I can’t bulk them up with non-clay stuffs too much as that limits the tweaking I intend for later in the sculpting process.

Basically this is the fat older brother of the slimmed down, cut, final version. I put a guide wire arch in place temporarily for something to aim at. Also, I determined that I’m going to cast the center spine as separate pieces for later assembly.

I’ll just have to create some foolproof method of matching up the pieces later. I’m thinking pegs may do well here. I bulked up some of the “ribs” on one side to see what shape it could take over time.

I do intend on fusing the individual “ribs” in sections for a more plated bone look (see original sketch). This is using an astronomical amount of clay compared to anything I’ve ever made before. I’m not doing anything this large again for quite some time after this, I think.

Since I panicked yesterday, everything has gotten much better.

First off, I tore off the stuff I put together yesterday.

Following some rough sketches I drew up at work, I progressed into adding the foundational clay for the rear segment of the cranial cage.

I got a bit “creative, with the foreknowledge that most of this can be changed as I go.

I can’t depend on painting in “dark” areas like one can with a rubber mask to hide lack of detail since the sculpt will likely be painted in a bleached bone color scheme.

Anyhow, that’s what I did on the project last night. I’ll be working on the “spinal” center structures tonight and hopefully get some sleep. I was up ’till 4a last night and left for work this morning at 8a. I’m definitely feeling it now at 4p.

Last night I stayed up a bit too late trying desperately to figure out what I was thinking attempting this project. It wasn’t until I looked over the pictures this morning that I realized why it felt “off”.

In case you didn’t notice it, the framework for the armature is flat across the bottom; however, the alien head is arched. Sure it sits up there fine now, but as soon as I go to sculpt the underside, I’m going to find a board sticking out along the entire bottom edge of my design and that’s problem #1. I didn’t see this all last night as I was working. Even as I write this, I’m trying to figure out a way to correct the issues without totally starting over.

I cut the spinal board down a bit in length last night to account for where the front lobe cavity would be. I already expect to have a multi-part sculpt/casting process due to my desire to make this replicate-able, but I am still figuring out the “how” of the design. As I look at this now, I think I can just cut the board length down a bit more in front and drop the placement of the skull a bit on the armature so the board will be covered. Hopefully, the interior hollows will still exist. I am aware of the fact that I should remove the boards being used as vertical supports and replace them with a pipe. I just don’t have that pipe right now. Anyhow, I fell asleep at 2:30am after sticking some clay to the structure (clay I now know I will have to sculpt down a little differently, or possibly remove). Oh, well.

I won’t have a lot of time tonight, but I may try to at least modify the substructure if I get a chance.

Every so often in these types of projects it’s a good idea to rough sketch a multitude of variations. These are some of the continued design sketches I roughed out on a notepad during lunch today.

I was attempting to figure out the assembly steps necessary to make this duplicate-able. If I make it once, I fear I’ll have people asking for copies.

Though I have no pictures this time around, I starting cutting out some cardboard frames for the internal “brain ridge” and the cranium cap area last night.
For reference on why see: Armature Building.

I would have gotten more done but due to lack of sleep was seeing things (imaginary spiders, it was weird). Don’t worry, Jean, I’m not crazy, yet… Anyhow, I went to bed at 10p instead of the usual 1:30a (definitely not 3a like the day before). After all, I do have be up for work at 7a. Thursday through Sunday I’ll be taking a break from the project (time/location/fiance variables), but might get some smaller things done instead.

BBQ tonight, mmmm!

Oh, and Happy Earth Day, you hippies!