Zombies

Did these characters for a couple with a lively sense of humor. They were quite fun but there were a few glitches. Originally each was going to be a portrait of the wedding party but the bride wasn't able to get photos of everyone. Oh, well. Lol. The zombies were going to be ascending the cake tiers but the dimensions didn't quite work out. Coordinating across the internet can be a bit of a challenge. I consider the project an object lesson in gathering as much detail as possible.

On the other hand since the bride and groom separate into two individual action figures, I laughed myself silly picturing them playing "Walking Dead" all over the honeymoon suite.

Film Noir

This is the film noir piece I mentioned in the first post. Couple of interesting things about it. One is color. We'd discussed doing it in grey tones to mimic the look of a B&W 30's film. It would have looked very sharp at the right reception. However, red is a great color. It's dramatic and attention grabbing even on something less than a foot high. With deeper colors good coverage is the key. In this case it meant several coats on her dress to achieve the richness. Getting the fedora right was a bit of a process. Sculpy is easiest to work when you're working against a support. Shaping the brim was an exercise in patience and light touch. Eventually, I managed to reach OK. Sometimes you've got to know when to stop fussing. On the other hand I'm very pleased with her pose. She also has a rather attractive derriere .

The other thing worth mention is the construction of the street sign post. Mostly the supports for my pieces are internal wire armatures but in this case the section of the post from base to just below the signs is painted brass tube. The alternative of building an acceptably smooth (and strong) vertical from an internal wire and clay coating was just too maddening to contemplate. The street names are the bride and groom's but perhaps that was obvious.

The Night and Gale

A friend of mine wrote a book and ask me to build a topper based on the two main characters, Gale and Lucas, for his launch party. Like the Legend of Zelda topper they are depicted in a romantic moment but I've gotten a bit smarter since  then. Three things made the project much easier. One, their faces are just a bit farther apart. Two, her hair has all blown to one side of her head. There were still moments of painting challenge but not so difficult as Zelda and it doesn't obscure the faces. Three, by placing the bodies at a slight angle it allowed me easier work access and displayed them for better viewing.








Gale is a supernatural character associated with ravens so the finished piece has a cloud of them swirling around the pair. I laid out a sheet of clay then cut out each individual bird before baking. The strength is distributed across all the small intersections. Since this a new technique I kept the size conservative. Visually, it probably should have been bigger. It is stronger than it looks but still would have been terrifying to ship. The best course would have been to leave them separate and have them assembled on arrival.


The book is "The Night and Gale" by Daniel Carrier. I'd describe it as an action romance set in the Lake Erie  island country featuring fantastic creatures that live unbeknownst among humans.

Step by step

After a design is agreed on, I sit down at my bench with a blank canvas. The glass cutting board makes a good base. It can go in and out of the oven and is absolutely flat. That's the project sketch hanging above my work light.

I reprinted the sketch "lifesized" as a guide. Normally I work by eye but the relationship between the figures was so tight I wanted a to scale  reference. 

The pins at the neck are removable. The option to remove and adjust various bits is very handy. Each step has been fired separately. This keeps you from sticking your fingers in something finished but still soft. A couple of surrogate heads here and the beginnings of arms. Overall composition is what's being worked on. Plus major details like the bottom of his tunic and the drape of her cloak/robe.

I bake a core for each head then add the faces to the firm foundation. After adjusting angle, distance and neck length clay is added around the necks and prayers sent up that nothing move during baking.










Lots and lots of details are added. The pin through her hood has a wire rod inside for strength. The faces are not connected just very close together.




I like to paint the big blocks of color first because it seems like you're getting a lot done. Painting from the inside out (skin to hair to clothes) is good too. Painting differently colored faces kissing distance apart is a road to madness.

And here's what you end up with. Warts and all.......

These are two different projects at various stages of completion though everyone is completely modeled. Even though they both loosely fall in the "fantasy" genre you can see how different the styles are. Also, I thought the photo gave a nice sense of the scale of the pieces. It's something that's missing from their official portraits.

The winged cats were a lot of fun . They turned out fairly convincing and made me laugh every time I thought about them soaring through the neighborhood. It may not be clear from this pic but the bride is suppose to be hovering. Hidden attachment points and cantilevered structures fascinate me. In this case the dress supports her but it could have been trimmed down quite a bit to give a lighter feel. Ah well, next time, yes?

Finishes

Most of my pieces are painted in natural colors usually incorporating the wedding scheme. Perfectly legitimate choice and it's very cool to have tiny you's on top a cake. I would however like to suggest that sometimes a more simpler finishes will have an interesting effect. This is "Monkey Man Odin".

He's done with with an undercoat of black paint and then rubbed with a silver finish using fingers and Q-tips. I think this finish would look very striking on top of a cake. Other metallic finishes are of course available. Gold is a classic but copper has an organic quality especially with some patina to it. Bet you've never seen a Norse chimp before.

Designing for wedding cakes

Someone who goes looking for a hand made topper is looking for the out of the ordinary. Sometimes they have very specific ideas and others just a generally sense of wanting an "it's gotta say us". I always feel like it's my job to take thier thoughts and apply my experience to executing them. To provide both an outside perspective and a set of skills is where I come in. This is the pretty specific request Natalie W. sent.

"I would like to see your sketch on what you could make for me.  I am a tall bride (6'1"!) and my groom is 5'7".  I've attached some pictures of what we look like- And that's my wedding gown :) I will be holding a bouquet of pink, orange, white,and yellow gerber daisies. I would like both pieces to resemble us as much as possible- I have fair skin, slightly longer than shoulder length light blonde hair (that I will be wearing in curls over one shoulder on my wedding day), and blue eyes.  He has light skin, short/curly brown hair, brown eyes, and a brown goatee (just the chin part, not a mustache). I would like for my groom to be wearing a navy blue NY Yankees hat (with the NY in white) and a standard black tux.  I would also like for him to have a blue superman shirt on under his tuxedo shirt, and for him to be posed in a way that he is ripping apart his tux to reveal the superman symbol underneath.  You can pose me however you think would be cute"

In a way this makes it very easy because there's less guessing about details but I knew she had a fairly strong expectations for the finished piece. Her pose is based on the idea of them being comfortable with the height difference. It's graceful. It plays with idea of him as The Man of Steel. And she is still slightly taller. It's a topper representing them. She sent a note and some pics after. I love any kind of feedback but this was especially appreciated.

Thanks to you, our cake topper was a huge hit :) Thank you for making such a
wonderful piece of art!! I've attached two pictures for you...

I love and am discouraged by looking at similiar work by other artists. There is a art contest called Spectrum which always includes sculptural and often polymer clay entries. They publish an annual book containing the best of them. This is my fantasy work. A World of Warcraft Dwarf proposing to a gnome. I really like these guys but...

This is the level of finish and design to which I aspire. It is a piece based of a painting by Frank Frazetta and is from the Spectrum site, spectrumfantasticart.com  . It is truly amazing to me.

It's good to have goals. Right?

First topper

When first imagining what sort of custom topper a couple might want I thought small bride and groom dressed like the real bride and groom and standing in the classic side by side pose. This has not proved to be the case. People who want a truly unique topper are a bold lot of wedding swashbucklers. My first topper for a client wasn't even figural. She was a librarian and her fiancee was an actual private investigator. They were looking for a pulp cover art sort of thing not even 3D but Siobhan was very excited when I described an idea for a fake book piece. The only clay is a core for the cover and the base. That said it was lots of fun doing the art and composing the critic's blurbs and writing the teaser extract. Except for one small art change and a grammatical correction she accepted the work which is always gratifying. And I did get to make a film noir figural topper much later for another client so there's that.

How I got started

This is my very first polymer clay piece. My daughter, Eleanor, had used Sculpey brand clay for several small projects and frankly it looked like fun so I decided to give it a try. The pie men are a bit over 4 inches. 4 to 6 inches is a good size for polymer projects. Everything was sculpted completely before the piece was baked. This is the hard way but I didn't know any better then and being a guy don't like to read directions. Sculpey can be baked multiple times making it easy to build up in layers and sections and much less likely you'll damge one part while working on another. This is the easy way. Inside there is a wire armature which holds things up while the clay is soft and extends into the base for stability. Slap on some craft paint and Ta-Da you've got something that looks almost like a .....wedding .....cake .....topper. Hey, there's an idea.