Roboterkampf

Ready for painting!

I'm pretty much done with the second pendant I was working on a few weeks ago, and will paint it up tonight!

The flickering lights give a very convincing organic glow to the center:

Proto-blog

So back in the pre-computer era of my pop-culture steeped life, I drew a comic for my college(s) with goold old Rapidograph pens, crisp clay coated papers, and wonderfully strong Ad Markers. Maybe "vomited out" a comic is a more appropriate term, as sometimes I would do them literally hours before they were going to press. Mostly autobiographcial, they were a way to pass the time with friends, give shout outs to people and things I liked, and then became a weird "duty" that I felt I HAD to do. Things petered out in 1999 when I just got too busy to draw it, as my last years of college and full time work became too hectic.

So of course, I'm adding them all to the website, as I have an incredibly strong desire to archive, organize, and preserve my personal history - no matter how mundane or uninteresting to everyone else it may be. So read along as I fumble through girlfriends, marry an unfaithful woman that I have excised most mention of (that buisness ended in 2001, thank jeebus), and be sure to play the board game, play dress up with my paper doll, and don't miss the Q&A feedback in issue #8. I'll be adding the rest soon!

Click here!

One Shot!

So Jane has been raving about One Shot today, which is an enamel sign painter's paint. I have used this stuff on and off over the years, when I needed to make something really really durable to the elements, or when I needed a larger quantity of vibrant light-fast color. Our paint talk reminded me of how I have a tendancy to modify my belongings, some of which I was "smart" enough to document in my early 20s, when I had waaaay too much free time. Some of the coolest things I did remain only in my memories, including the pair of WWII surplus boots that I copper leafed - they patina'ed into a rich deep green and brown and quickly became "Jason's Zombie Boots". I also used to buy all-black Chuck Taylor shoes - the kind where even the rubber is black - and would aluminum leaf the rubber parts (side soles, star on the logo, and half-round toe). As they wore in and flexed, the leaf would crack and rub away, as it's very hard to gild rubber. I'd probably reapply the leaf about once every other month. Hopefully those shoes were captured in a photo somewhere, but I don't have any, to my knowledge.

I do have pics of some other things I painted with One Shot! It started with a couple of drawer cabinets that were painted with Krylon rattlecans (enamel spraypaint). They were where I kept all of my art supplies, and I still have them to this day! I was obsessed with no two colors touching! They looked like this, 12 years ago:

So I decided to modify my nightstand table, using One Shot over a base of white spraypaint. You can see it to the right:

And again here:

But perhaps the most ridiculous thing I did was to repaint my old VW. Five cans of green spraypaint and one heck of a good masking job later, my car was done. But I wasn't content to have it be a solid color, so I painted a racing stripe and rally number on the hood. The stripe was lined with red, and the center was grey. You can barely see this in the pic below, along with the severed doll head and "space ship stuff" I added. I wanted a Time Machine like "Back to the Future", but it was 1995 and I was very very poor.

I also made all my own stickers, using Chartpak Drafting Applique Film and a xerox machine. The DAF was laid over top of sign vinyl, and that stacked assembly became the sticker. When you see other colors, it's more sign vinyl - everything was hand cut of course - I didn't have a computer until 1999! Hello Kitty was an anomaly - I believe I painted the colors with model paint, which faded. I should have used One Shot like the red racing stripe!

So I quickly got tired of the grey stripe area, and decided to gild the inner stripe with variegated copper leaf. It was pretty neat and lasted a whole winter intact! You can also see how quickly I rotated out the stickers I made. I changed things on that car almost constantly.

Here you can see the PVC pipe I epoxied to the hood to look like a blower, and a hint of the plumbing supply hosing I dreesed the rear fender rims with. I wanted that Delorean Time Machine so badly!

For as unreliable as that car was, it was a blast to mess with. Hooray for enamel sign paints!

New toy - set for stun!

I got something very fun and cool in the mail today - a helmet replica from the first Star Wars, cast from a copy of an original suit - the lineage of this sculpt can be traced back to 1976 (nutball fans have mapped out all of the casting imperfections and asymmetrical areas and they match up to screen shots)... me however? It's a freakin' STORMTROOPER! I'm a five year old again - that's how cool this is.

Who has this helmet again? ME! That's who! W00t!

Filter!

So there is this thing I do as an almost-last-step in my weathering techniques that I learned from a very talented model painter, modified to my particular way of working of course. Any of you who took painting classes (or the more book smart among you) probaly know about things like Chiaroscuro and how to color the backgrounds to represent extreme distance, atmospheric interference, etc. Well, the use of filters in a three dimensional way is pretty much the same thing - you're trying to sell a sense of scale, and with this technique, you can harmonize all of the colors and tones used.

A filter is basically just a severely diluted pigment suspended in a solvent. Translucent paint - very very weak. You want to pick a color that doesn't fight with everything else, and that will either cool or warm the overall tone of the surface. In the case of this model you see below that I made last year, I picked an orange-brown color, mixing a few drops in the appropriate solvent base. It was sprayed in a few very light layers through an airbrush, and to the naked eye, doesn't even look like it's doing anything at first. I like to mix things up a little too, by masking off a couple of random areas that will not be affected bythe filter spray. What this does is suggest a newer body panel - the color is brighter and less dirty. You can see this in action on the panel on the top of the boom arm in the foreground - see how it stands out?

So that's the same process I used on the Escape Pod model I am finishing up for a model show this weekend. Here I have masked off the panels that I don't want to "filter". You can see the filter solution I have left over that was mixed for the model I mentioned above. For this model, I chose a greyish yellow.

Here it is post filter, showing how that previously-masked panel now looks "newer" and out of place. The whites I laid down are now ever-so-slightly toned down, making them appear more "real" and that will make the surface less toy-like.

And here is the same panel after the final layer of powdered pigment weathering has been applied, and the Dullcote sprayed (and drying still, hence the sheen). Note how I concentrated the powdered pigments along the lower edges of panels that would receive lots of wear, and in the crevices (where the tank treads meet the half-circles along the midsection).

I hope this little trick can be put to good use in your projects - it's a sneaky and subtle little thing to do, but incredibly effective.

Lisa is deep in her graduate courses again, so I'm going to make tonight all about cleaning up/vacuuming. It will make us feel better about our home (heh), and will probably confuse the cats. I changed over everything in their litter boxes last night, which is always oddly satisfying for me as it's above and beyond the usual maintenance, and the cats always clamor around, studying me with laser intensity while I sweep, dump, pour, etc. Sure enough, before I'm even out the door with heavy bags in hand, I hear them "skritching" away. Is it appreciative or is it a critique? Hehe.

Dry transfers

Hi gang. I have to finish a model deco for a show on Saturday, so I might not be abe to finish my pendant until later this week. But I am using a lot of the same techniques that I used on "0001", so I thought it was worth a mention. Back in the late 80s and early 90s, I worked at an art supply store. I hoarded eveyrthing I could get my hands on, and so here we are in 2007, with a basement full of paste-up wax, Tjanting tools, and dry transfer lettering sheets. Dry transfers were those expensive sheets of numbers and letters from Zipatone, Chartpak, and Letraset that were used by Architechts, Gallery owners, 'Zine makers, and poor college students in the days before affordable desktop publsihing (and still to this day, when you need to apply them to things that cannot be run through a lazer printer).

I use them on my models and art. Here's where they come into play with my recreation of the Studio Scale Escape Pod from the first Star Wars film:

IDing all those model parts is an arduous task - but IDing the source decals used are even harder, so I opt to recreate them with paint. Sometimes I can cheat a little with dry transfer letters. Here's the letter "o" put to good use:

Mine is on the left, and the real one is on the right:

Here's some "hash marks" that are made from lowercase "i" dry transfers. The red triangle and remnants of rectangles are done with paint:

More hash marks. The yellow-ish band was done with an airbrush. I masked off the rectangle after I had applied a layer of weathering with powdered pigments, and then brushed in the "chipping" effects with liquid masking film inside of the masked area. I sprayed the color, removed the masking tape, and rubbed off the liquid mask. It gave a nice color "over" the first layer of weathering, and when dirtied will suggest a long history to the surface - as if it has been used in harsh environments for years.

Boilerplate

So what is a "kitbash" you may be wondering? The traditional way that filming studios built these models was a varied process, as you woudl imagine. The model shop received detailed conceptual artwork and an armature was constructed from blueprints. They would usually make the inner armature from wood that mounted to a metal pipe system with multiple mounting points, so that the model could be filmed from different directions. This was then "skinned" with acrylic or styrene. Sometimes the armature was made solely from the acrylic as it does not sag or warp the way styrene can. Once they had the armature made, the detailing was added with bits of sheet and rod styrene stock and many many pieces from model kits (tanks, planes, trucks, etc). This was the process known as "kitbashing" - taking many kits and breaking them up for their parts.

Kitbashing wasn't haphazard though. A process emerged that has been called "Boilerplate technology" - it's basically a method to the madness, where the parts are arranged in a way to suggest functionality. If you have an engine-looking area, add venting and cooling hoses. If there is a section of detail isolated along a plane, run some piping to the cluster - and suggest that the piping runs power to a diifferent location. Add armor plating to break up the flat surfaces. suggest panel lines (like you see on aircraft). These are the things I try to keep in mind when I make something of my own. Like this:

It's a work-in-progress that will look like a furnace (boiler! haha). It's a small base housing batteries and a circuit board that fires two yellow LEDs in a random "flicker", with a housing I made from various bits, topped by a B-29 nose. Directly behind the nose is a tank drivewheel that I have hollowed out and modified with miniature domed rivet heads. I took an X-Acto and hollowed out the recessed areas, and backed them from behind with small plastic lenses I purchased in Tokyo last year. These are glued into place with a clear acrylic material.

So, the end effect is a flickering warm light that gets bounced by the lenses from above, and spills out between the sprocket teeth from below/sides. The lenses prevent you from being able to identify the location of either LED specifically, which is pretty cool. I also shot the B-29 nose with gloss laquer varnish, which gives it a "shower door" effect, mottling the light even more. I plan to add more detailing to the sides, and will paint the entire thing to look rusty with a slight patina - the "glass" will remain glossy, but the black spars will be matte/colored.

Like Tears in Rain...

Thank you all for the wonderful comments - it's encouraging me to keep exploring this new direction! And many thanks to Jane, who gave me the all-important shout out! I've already started a new design, which in my usual unintentional way is more ambitious than the first one. Speaking of "upping the ante", here is a look into an ongoing design exercise I have been plugging away at, time permitting/when the mood strikes. It's an expansion on the paper documents as created and (barely) seen in the 1982 film Blade Runner - a film that has had a tremendous influence on me, and the whole future/dystopia/sci-fi genre.

It all started when I was lucky enough to receive scans in 1:1 of a replica based on what was purported to be the original wallet that Harrison Ford's Deckard character had in the film. Let me first explain that for whatever reason, reference on anything Blade Runner related has been scarce, or veiled in secrecy - which only adds to the romantic mystique of everything seen on screen. The back story on this wallet is that it has been in private hands since the film wrapped, and was sold for $40,000 to another secretive (and apparently affluent) collector. This person decided to let a very select few in on a replica run, at $1,000 a pop. Too rich for my blood, of course, but once I had the reference material, realized I could do it - better. Not long after this, the owner of many never-before-seen prop badges and ID Cards had a public display, where a Blade Runner enthusiast happened to be, camera in hand. Here's a low-res sample of some of the things I was given:

With the internet at my disposal, I found the source art for the majority of the money. The prop money was monochromatic with the same design on both sides, and red or blue stamping on each side. The stamps varied a little, but a pattern was seen. I bought the source bills on eBay, scanned them, and used Photoshop to do a more precise cut and paste job than the original prop makers did (it was most likely done with traditional paste up methods - this was 1982, remember!). I then recreated the stamp designs freehand (for the swirly red band) and in Illustrator (everything else). Tom Wynn used his fantastic laser cutter to make these as rubber stamps for me, and I also burned some Gocco screens to mix it up a little. I also happened along on what must have been the original donor stamps for three of the designs, made by All Night Media. It's a good thing they keep these designs "in print" for as long as they apparently do! I was at Michaels, looking at stamps on a lark - it was an exciting afternoon!

So then it hit me.

Why not make something else while I'm at it? So that's how I decided to make all of the money in color with custom art on the reverse. I started with the one and five denominations, which were the only ones made for the film. One, Two, and Five bills were made this way, with the reverse riffing off the real bills reverse art (also tweaked to what the graphic designer in 1982 envisioned for Los Angeles circa 2019). For the One I added an Owl as a nod to the synthetic Owl seen in Tyrell's office, and the Two got a Spinner. The Five has some random machinery clip art from a Dover book on turn-of-the-century materials, and all three have Chinese characters that say snarky things. The One says "Owl Party" and the Five says "Celebrate Machinery".

For the Ten, Twenty, and Fifty, I had to design completely new art in the style of the smaller denominations. For this I used more source money from China, and it involved a lot more cut, paste, and cloning in Photoshop. I also tried my hand at making a Guilloche, but it's pretty tortuous, so for now I'm leaving that idea be. The Ten has the Offworld Blimp, the Twenty has a satellite, and I haven't done the back of the Fifty yet. I am printing these on linen stock, and then I am applying hot foil accents in places that make sense - the Chinese lettering, barcodes, etc.

As if that wasn't enough, as a one-off I designed a "Stock Certificate" for the Tyrell Corporation. This was printed on a breath-taking Asian paper that reveals watermark cranes when held to a light source, foil accents, and snarky language. On a design high, I also started making a Passport for Deckard. I used all of the same techniques for this - lasercut stamps, a sense of humor for the dark vision of the year 2019, and heavily modified elements of my Passport. The seal was changed to incorporate the Japanese and Chinese national symbols (as they are all apparently buddy-buddy Superpowers in the future), and I am having a lot of fun adding in references to other Sci-Fi properties in the visa stamps. Armistice Station from Battlestar Galactica, Thetis Refinery from Alien, Gateway Station from Aliens, and even a nod to Raider of the Lost Ark with my Tanis stamp. Here's a sample of all the bills I have been refining, the stock certificate, and some of the Passport stamp art. I also made a "how too" of the Twenty bill to show how I'm making the new bills:

And here is the Passport mock up. It's still being tweaked, and added to. The Deckard ID photo features a multi-view picture that I have made to look like a hologram - laminating an irridescent film over the surface to bend the light, and printing the image in a halftone in places. The back of the Passport has a fake electronic chip under a clear lens material - green cardstock with gold foiled "circuit patterns" applied. It's backed on the reverse by a "do not tamper" sticker that helps keep it secure through the punched hole in the blue outer material. The rest is just stamping, signatures, and printed stickers/seals. Much fun!!

It will change and grow... but for now, that's it!

Cross-pollination

So I've started my next idea, but I'll refrain from posting anything about it until I have something good to show. At the moment, I'm busy fitting this latest brick into my wall:

Here's where I tell everyone about this place.

Do people want to wear something that can light up? Say, a warm amber glow?

Finished 0001

Here it is, all done - my first pendant ever (shown on Lisa, so you can see where it hangs).