Seaguy Playset
My local comic shop (Heroes and Villains of Tucson, AZ. Go visit them now!), was holding a contest a while back for customizing these vinyl toys called Mighty Muggs. I played around with the idea of a number of different characters. But when I ran across one of these in a spare parts box...
That pretty much sealed it, because the scale of that bendy-eye-thing worked next to the Mighty Mugg. At least for what I had in mind. And what I had in mind was this:
Ideally, I'd have a bunch of photographs of the creation process. However, it wasn't until fairly late in the proceedings that I decided to start taking pictures, so I'll have to fill in the early bits with words.
I knew that if I was going to do Seaguy, and if I was already doing an accessory character, I'd have to do his imaginary fish friend, Chubby da Choona, as well. That was interesting. First, I started with a large block of dense foam packing material, which I sliced into a rough fish shape using a modified soldering gun. Next I flattened some large sheets of Sculpy with a pasta roller, and formed a thick skin around the foam core. Several hours worth of prodding, smoothing, adding and subtracting later, I had a body I was happy enough with. Then I sculpted the facial features, rolled out the fins, and made the hat and cigar.
Then it was time to bake the thing. I really had no idea how it was going to turn out, and it was a pretty nervewracking 15 minutes or so. But it came out good. A couple small cracks that were easily fixed by modelling putty.
From there, things went relatively well, except for right after I appplied the spray sealer. A piece of cardboard I had been using for a spray-guard toppled over onto the precariously balanced fish and knocked it onto the ground. Amazingly, he only lost a fin and a cigar. A half-hour or so of repairs and he was fine and finished.
Along the way, I amputated the eye's left arm and gave him a new paint job. The other accessory, the intelligent foodstuff Xoo and the can of Xoo Cola he springs from, was finished pretty early on. But I don't really have any pictures in progress of those, so we'll move along for now.
The Seaguy figure itself was probably the most difficult, but that was mostly due to trying to rush glue drying times past acceptable limits. Oh yeah, and this paint-on "removable" mask stuff that resulted in having to re-do the entire face. But, chalk that up to learning experiences and move on. The earliest picture I have is the following, from the middle of the mask-spraypaint-dry-mask-spraypaint-dry phase of the painting.
Or possibly Kenny from South Park in some kind of bondage scene.
And, here's a group shot from roughly this point in the proceedings.
From there, there was mostly detail painting left. And lots more spray sealer. And the base. And trying to figure out how to transport it without shattering everything.
Seaguy and Friends with some of the other contestants.
But, somehow it all worked out. Well, Seaguy looked a little bit more like George C. Scott than I intended, but it turned out much better than I expected, considering I'd never done anything like this before. Making it involved a number of near-sleepless nights, and far too many trips to the hobby store, but it was a fun and educational experience. And I have a nifty conversation piece for my bookshelf.
This is where the fish lives.