Best Of

Re: What's On Your Workbench? (Winter 2024-2025)

I just wrapped up molding and casting my Biomechanical. I ran with a glove mold for the main body, a two part mold for the main head, and two box mold's for the tail and smaller heads. It was a lot of work. Made some mistakes along the way, but learned a ton. And best of all, the molds worked and I am able to reproduce my Biomechanical!

The main body is a huge amount of resin, so this weekend I am testing out a hollow cast with a foam fill. All of this is brand new to me, so it's been an adventure. Used Smooth-Cast 305, Mold-Star 30, and Free-Form Air for the shell. Cracked my shell at one point, but was able to glue back so no problem. A speed vid (if it actually embeds) and some pics:

https://youtu.be/awsf7g-eOC8?si=rS1TnEQttVb_rGkv

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Jason Jacobs

6

Rick Baker sculpting the "It's Alive" puppet

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Matt Winston

5

Mummified Frozen Skull/Frost Bitten Hand - Props

I recently made this mummified frozen skull prop and repurposed a prop hand I made a while back. The skull was a basic latex/cotton ball method mixed with a little bit of foam clay in the eye sockets, nose cartilage, ears and partial lip. I had made a severed hand prop a while back that I repainted to look frost bitten and added it in with the skull. I airbrushed everything with Tim Gore's Bloodline paints, except for the black decaying frost bite, that was just black acrylic paint mixed with liquid latex. I also made the eyeball, but now sort of regretting putting it in, it's much more vibrant than I wanted but its glued in so it's staying

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Mike McCoy

5

Re: What's On Your Workbench? (Winter 2024-2025)

Hello! I’ve been wanting a Stan Winston School membership since you first started, and was finally able to get one during your Black Friday sale. I’m following the lessons on creating a silicone mask, to create a partial mask of a Ferengi from Star Trek. I had already sculpted most of the piece, but I’m finding the lessons on texture extremely helpful as I apply finishing details. He needs more texturing still, but I’m in the home stretch. I’m hoping to wear the finished piece to Star Trek San Francisco next month.

Tracey Simmons

8

Re: What's On Your Workbench? (Fall 2024)

I just finished assembling and painting these two projects. Now I'm working to finish a latex predator head.

T-800...

Alien Facehugger...

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Next up is to finish this head I'm working on...

Jacob Parr

5

Full Sized Horse Puppet

Our high school produced “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”and mimicked the design Kraig Sturtz's post from May 2015 https://forums.stanwinstonschool.com/discussion/2607/full-size-horse-puppet-bunraku-style ) - Thank you Kraig!

In the photo above, it is resting on a black wooden stand. When used, the puppeteers enter from below and strap into hiker backpack frames that are attached to the overall horse frame. These are adjustable within 4-5 inches to allow for varying heights of puppeteers.

I’m not a welder, so we used a wood frame with PVC electrical conduit for the exterior. (I’m betting if an aluminum frame was used, it would save some weight.) I used a large torch (typically used for weed removal or tar repair) to soften the conduit. This allowed the tubes to be shaped as needed. The ears and tail move using levers the rider pulls (bicycle break levers).

The legs articulate similar to the design Kraig displayed. We added red LED’s in the eye sockets to create a sinister style.

I have added several pictures of my attempt during construction to a google drive (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WHCmViCfZDCt-Jh3VAKzumEvjn7aE_9P?usp=drive_link hoping this might also help others.

The site includes several pictures of build, a video of it in use druing construction https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pXlHBUaV6Gu76YbLR1RDYGMvbNy2T638/view?usp=drive_link (although the mane and front puppet leg articulation were not completed - leg handles were changed), and a pdf user manual created for the kids https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QLNWi4-bMs--kP3pp21XaiSATXAVNqtT/view?usp=drive_link

The puppet is right around 100 pounds itself. We had a rider on top, so this was very heavy for the puppeters. (They did an excellent job.) I would estimate this took about 150 hours of work.

I don’t have a picture of the performance, but we heavily low fogged the stage during this scene and had the horse emerge from the back stage right.

This was my first time doing something like this and Kraig’s pictures were incredibly helpful. (Kraig's is better!) Thank you Kraig.

Our final performance was last night… now what do we do with this thing!

John Hayes

6

Re: BioShock 2- Big Daddy- Subject Delta

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Some detail shots of the helmet. For anyone wondering about the paint…
- mr metal color copper
-red, blue, purple, and yellow inks
-dirty down black soot and verdigris.
-chalk antiquing gel
-U-rust blue copper and activator
- raw umber oil paint
-brass spray paint (rustoleum… yep, sounds crazy but it was the most realistic brass paint I found).

StaggzCosplay

5

An American Werewolf in London - Bust

My most recent project finished up. I sculpted this originally planning to make a Halloween mask/costume for this Halloween but ended up casting it in smooth-on liquid plastic to hang as a display. Started the paint job with a spray on grey primer, then airbrushed some shadows in the folds and around the eyes. Eyes were hand painted and coated with UV resin, same with the teeth. Then finished off with dark grey and a little bit of black crepe hair.

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Mike McCoy

6

Re: Do you incorporate 3D modeling and 3D printing in your work?

Absolutely, I think with certain projects it becomes “almost” a necessity.

The majority of the work I do is on full scale Big Daddies from BioShock. When we create them, my friend and work partner creates the model for us based on the original in-game design. This ensures that every original detail from the game is captured. It also ensures that we are able to scale all pieces proportionately.

Because of the size of these monsters, I have 3 large format FDM printers in my shop, along with 4 medium sized resin based printers for the detail pieces (visors, tube connectors, rivets, port holes, etc.). I try to get these things printed quickly, otherwise I don’t think we’d be able to do them very fast at all, so I do use CraftCloud for when I want a really REALLY big piece done and quicker than I would do it.

Without printing, I don’t think there’s any way we could do these guys. And that’s definitely no knock on traditional sculpting, i do traditional sculpting myself, it’s just fact that we couldn’t measure and proportion these pieces over the original in-game models otherwise to ensure 100% accuracy.

StaggzCosplay

5

Re: What's On Your Workbench? (Fall 2024)

I've been working on a bio-mechanical homage to H.R. Giger. I hope to have done soon as I'm going to attempt to cast this thing. The head comes off, as well as the tail and the two heads below. Still needs a lot of detailing and smoothing, as well as a few other odds and ends, but it's getting there. This has been a serious exercise in symmetry for me. Symmetry is hard, lol!

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Jason Jacobs

8