Met Nigel tonight and he explained a lot about latex, and stores etc. he volunteers in SFX houses at CBC or something. After talking to him and hearing about what working in shops is like, I’d rather do Art, creepy toys, and Halloween/horror house supplies. Oh, I’ll take what I can get, but I know what I’m aiming for now.

It doesn’t sound like I’d get all that much experience by working in a shop either, seems to be so frelling competitive people don’t share knowledge. I’ve encountered that a lot already, but all I can do is not let it effect me. I believe in sharing knowledge and open source art.

My problems with liquid latex seem to be mostly from the fact it’s a crappy volatile material. Cheap, but low shelf life. And ocad’s latex is 3 years old.

I’ll be switching to foam latex and possibly dragon skin by smooth-on. There’s some experimentation ahead but this solves the problems I was having with casting in latex. This info was incredibly useful to me. Beyond setting me up for thesis, I’ll be able to go into my latex toy series full tilt this summer with nothing holding me back but cost. Moulds + expandable foam rubber + airbrushing = fast, mass produced toys. All I need now are tags for them.

I’ll also be able to create V2.0 of my Nike skin shoe. I’ll be redoing the circuitry/robotics/ colouring / latex. I’ll most likely create some generic silicon skin moulds and then create a series of 10 very different shoes.