Custom Sculpey: Fantasy Lizard Home

Maybe five to six years ago, I got one of my very infrequent flashes of inspiration, and I quickly created a small blue lizard-like Sculpey character.  Looking over this little creature, I immediately felt that it needed a place to call home.  Drawing up a few designs, I finally settled on one idea and got to work.  This project called for an awful lot of patience, and it was a lucky time for me in that my kids were small enough that they could not actually disturb my workspace in the living room.  I could still be nearby while I did my work.

Unfortunately, I have no "in process" photos of the project, but here is the final result.  From side to side, this measures around ten inches, maybe five inches tall, and about six inches from front to back.  That's including the green space around the house itself.

Oh!  Looks like my little lizard guy came outside to say hi!

Basically, this is just the front half of the house.  I suppose one could imagine it being built onto the side of a cliff, or perhaps the other half is identical and the house would then be free-standing.

You can see that not every stone in the walls is of the same color.  I was imagining that these had been pulled out of a stream bed or something similar, thus the tumbled look.

I must admit I'm absolutely terrible at naming my creations.  Thus this character just winds up being a "lizard."  Maybe someone can give me a better name some time.  His cloak is actually a thin sheet of Sculpey wrapped around the head and body.  He's got a crest at the back of his head, but it's not visible under the cloak.  He's got a green gem in a pendant around his neck as well.

In my mind's eye, this creature is some form of magic user, so the pendant may itself be magical.  Of course, no tiny magical creature could possibly exist without some suitably large mushrooms around.  The gods of whimsy demand it.  And, no, I have never heard of these Smurfs you are thinking of.

Here's a bit of detail of the stones in the walls.  Each stone is actually a separately sculpted piece, then stacked into the shape of walls.  It did indeed take quite some time to make.  This was quite possibly unnecessary and maybe even obsessive.

Speaking of obsessive, the grass was created by picking at the Sculpey with a hobby knife over and over.  And over, and over, and over, and over, and over.  Now repeat a number of times.  Remember I mentioned patience earlier?  The patience was getting on my nerves.

I really like how this chimney turned out.

The thatch was created in a fashion very similar to the grass.  Luckily there was less of it and so less of that annoying patience was required.

The doors and shutters got a nice coat of red paint, while I attempted to replicate the look of whitewash on the door and window frames.

Moving to the inside of the house, you can see that there are some rafters involved for roof support.  Unfortunately, the little lizard guy has to deal with a drafty house.  There are quite a few gaps in the walls that a more experienced builder would probably have filled.

Lo and behold!  Our lizard has a pet lizard!

He's also got a nice bed over near the window.

The bed can be removed, as can many of the other items inside the house.

A simple wooden table (though made of Sculpey) supports a book and some dishes.

The roof can be removed to let in more light.

A fireplace might help with all those drafts.  A symbol over the mantel matches that on the cover of the book.  Various pots and jars adorn the place.

Vampire lizards may sometimes come around, as there's some garlic-like dried vegetable hanging there.

A candle near the bed allows for some late-night reading.

He seems like a happy fellow.

His pet seems rather contented to sleep the day away.  Usually this is done in front of the fire.

The little pet can be taken off his perch to be moved somewhere else in the house.  It is only around 3/4 inch long.

Overall, I'm very pleased with how this place came together.  I was happy enough to have then gone on to create other environments and a few other lizard people as well.  I'll be doing write-ups on those projects as well in the future.  Thanks for taking a peek in on my little foray into domestic creativity.

Custom Kaiju: Sculpey Hedorah

Rather than another review, today's post is about another of my forays into Sculpey, uh, "art."  A few years back I got some inspiration by looking at old vintage vinyl kaiju toys (like Muruchi), and thinking that perhaps I could replicate the look using my sculpting and painting skills.  Thinking hard about monsters that would be tough to screw up, I settled on Hedorah, a perennial favorite of the Godzilla fandom.  Hedorah is the "smog monster" from the 1971 film Godzilla vs.Hedorah.  An extraterrestrial alien, Hedorah is capable of forming directly from pollution and toxins, and so he has a sludgy, gloopy, dark body.

While making this Hedorah, I was thinking of all the crazy proportions and colorful paint sprays one sees on old vinyl toys, and also of ways of replicating the simple articulation that usually went along with them.  After some cogitation and a few hours forming a globby body, I had something ready to paint.  I went for a dark base, and then started dry-brushing various metallic colors over the surface.

Very little articulation actually made it into the final piece, but the arms can actually rotate at the shoulder.  

Hedorah's got a long "tail," but it really could just be the goo from his body dragging behind him.

You might notice something odd about the eyes here.  There is a gloss coat and a bit of paint on the pupil and white ring around the cornea, but they are otherwise just the original Sculpey color.

I made the eyes out of glow-in-the-dark Sculpey colors!  The photo isn't really all that great as my camera does not do well in low light, but you get the idea.  I probably should have left him under a bright light for a bit longer.

In painting this guy, I was aiming for the sort of rainbow effect that an oil slick will produce.

Here's a glimpse into how the arms can stay in place and still move while made from hard baked Sculpey.  Magnets are the key!  Unfortunately, there is a bit of paint that rubs off at the joint, but this guys is pretty much for display only.  Sculpey is not exactly the material of choice for toys.

Someday perhaps I'll get around to making up some other Sculpey kaiju.  Hedorah at least has Godzilla and Minilla for company.  Luckily they're not busy having an all-out monster brawl in my display case.

Custom Robots: Grunt!

I am what I would call a "periodic artist."  That is, I only periodically get the urge to build, paint, draw, or mess about with Sculpey.  When I do have some inspiration that hits me just the right way, then I do have to go make it almost immediately.  A few years back, I had a visual cue (from a paper towel dispenser of all things) that lead me to make a series of small Sculpey robot characters.  This is just a small recap of one of these creations.

Grunt, as I call him, started out as a pencil doodle.  My first design in this series of figures wound up being only about an inch and a half in height, and I knew that Grunt was going to be bigger.  An intermediary robot was larger than the first, but being made almost entirely of Sculpey, was very heavy.  I wanted to make this one out of something that would be easily manipulated, lighter weight, and paintable.  So, I settled on scraps of two-by-four pine and wood filler as my major components.  Basically, I took two sections of square-cut wood and glued and screwed them together, filling in the gaps with wood filler, and laying a generous coating of the filler over the surface.  

Some sanding and scoring later, I had a pretty good start.  My drawing included some buck-teeth, but they didn't seem to work once translated into a three-dimensional object, so I didn't press my luck adding them in.

You can see the variegated  coloring of the wood filler here.  Dried and sanded with fine-grit steel wool, it is quite smooth.

I added another smaller block of wood, some cut dowel lengths, and a variety of Sculpey additions to the blocky body to make the final, unpainted character.

The panel scoring goes all the way around the body.  I added some rear vents in the body and the undercarriage.

A small "console" of sorts sits on Grunt's side. 

Here you see my relatively clumsy way of attaching the undercarriage.  It has the advantage, however, of being removable if needed, and more easily allowed for the wrap-around Sculpey treads to be attached to the dowel bits.

When painting my creations, I use a variety of techniques including some washes and dry-brushing.  I settled on an orange and white color scheme that seemed fairly in keeping with the utilitarian nature that I had imagined for Grunt.  

He has a look that says he's both well-meaning, but also self-satisfied.

I tried to make it appear that Grunt has been hard at work, and has had little time for a bath.

I added a few small colored pits in the surface above the console, and gave it a nice shiny coating of silver.

Here you can see the rear vents painted up to represent staining from exhaust fumes.

Grunt is not entirely symmetrical, as he has no console on this side. 

The top also sports some panel lines and the two-tone coloration.

This view shows off the top surface a bit better.

Hopefully, I'll do some pictorial reviews of my other figures in the series, but Grunt is really the only one that I photographed during the process of creation.  I'm pretty proud of Grunt.  He manages to represent my original drawing faithfully, and I am pleased with how the paint job came out.  Each of these characters has its own unique personality (at least in my mind), and Grunt is sort of an ignorance-is-bliss kind of guy - always cheerful and ready to do a hard job for someone in need.  I like cute little characters, and who doesn't love someone who seems so happy all the time?  Go, go, Grunt!