I know, I’ve been neglecting the site. I’ve just been working on personal projects as well as school projects, as well as OTHER PEOPLES school projects. *cough*. Maybe one day I’ll update the portfolio with my new stuff… one day..

Also! Sorry to my friends, I know I’ve been neglecting you all as of late, declining party requests and hang outs, especially joni (sorry) I’m just busy…


(Very_slop py_image of what I envision for thesis. See Oct 13th for text)

//V didn’t come this weekend as planned. I was sad. She thought she’d get more work done without me distracting her. Hah. She was wrong.

Servo programming. I like doing things with ghetto electronics. But servos have their purpose and have more torque than what I’m used to using. Enough to move latex skins. Let’s all breath in a sigh of relief.

Research. Been in research mode and I’ve been researching latex, latex moulding and a lot of other things to do with sculpture and the SFX industry. It’s amazing how much you can find online if you look. Lucky me.

Thus, solved some problems with latex shrinkage and slush casting. Yay for that one! About freakin time.

I’ve been reading a lot of stuff on the FX industry. It just comes as a side effect of looking through THEIR specific moulding practices. I cam across this, which confirmed to me something I’ve been suspecting.

LMC: How is CGI affecting the creature shops?

VH: In the last couple of years CG has really taken a bite out of what FX shops used to do. I think CG will take care of more of the creature stuff now. FX shops won’t be doing as many creatures as they used to (i.e. suits and puppets). I don’t think makeups on actors will be affected for a while, but who knows…? This past year and a half has been the worst ever for makeup effects. There’s very little work out there. Lots of people have been out of work for a long, long time.…

This is mostly why I want to do creepy sculpture for more commercial purposes, such as creepy toys and Halloween gear. Halloween stuff will never go out, and it’s still undominated. What’s out there right now isn’t too impressive as the best of the best are too busy working for Hollywood and wouldn’t drop to that level.

You’ll be hearing more opinions about this later, but talk is cheap, so I can bore you to death, and you can roll your eyes and think to yourself I have crazy ideas, or I can just build my own massive company and smile to myself.

Thesis ideas have come together! I was on a quest, not only to figure out a concrete idea, but also how I could adapt animatronics and use it for more of an artistic purpose and pull it out from it’s theme park dinosaur context.

I’ve been surprised actually, I haven’t been able to find all that many artists using animatronics as a medium,.. Which holds potential, there’s so many people saying you can’t do anything new in art.
It doesn’t surprise me all that much, how many people can sculpt, program and build robotics. Not a widely occurring theme in for one singualr person. Lucky me. Still, means I have to build ground to stand on, and everything I’ve ever built has at some point set on fire… no that wasn’t a metaphor.

So how do I tie all these thoughts and skills into an art piece? I’ve had lots of ideas, but the final one became concrete while I was starring out the window on the train back to London (God I hate London). Leather notebook in hand I began to sketch.

Here’s an excerpt from my write-up (I actually wrote two), for everyone that’s been asking, without all the anti-consumerism and technical mombo jumbo.

“--a sculpture, probably in a gallery. The sculpture is a mock store display with action figure like packaging (20 or so units). There are small LCD display screens showing information and cheesy video clips about the products nearby, but you don’t look at the video, something else catches your eye… movement. The packages are moving…

Inside the packaging are squirrel sized animatrons. Strange animals, not totally recognizable, not totally flesh, they seem odd and adapted. More so, they are twitching, shaking, clawing, head butting their packaging, and generally, look to be in absolute pain. These are not plastic toys made in china. These are mass produced, copyrighted life; modified for consumption, as toys, cell phones, and light sources. Life wired up to serve. Racks of it.
Some of the animals though seem not willing to serve, one animal is crawling across the floor having escaped it’s packaging; unfortunately it’s legs broke in the fall, so it hasn’t gone to far. Another animal didn’t even make it to the floor, it has become impaled on the hook 2 rows down.”

It should be a fairly large undertaking and worthy of thesis. It’ll also be twisted as hell…