Making Moulds.

 Bit of a gap since my last post, but I've got a few things that I'm working on. I'm aiming to have some new things available to buy on my Ebay shop, and hopefully also on an Etsy shop too. I tried Etsy a few years ago but had zero sales. What I had listed wasn't even getting any views so I gave up. But I'm now thinking of giving it another shot. I guess it can't hurt. 

The weather here is turning cold now so admittedly it's not the best time to be making moulds and producing resin casts. It's slows the setting times terribly for both the resin and the silicone. 

 

DEATH NOTE. RYUK.

This was one of the last sculptures that I did during the time of  2014 - 2018. So I'm guessing that this one must have been done in 2018. I vaguely remember that I'd been watching the Death Note anime series and had enjoyed it, so I decided to do a sculpture of the character Ryuk. At that time, there had been a couple of Japanese live action films made from this too, so my sculpture was a sort of amalgam of the comic, anime, and live action versions of Ryuk. I liked different elements of each. 

I remember having trouble deciding on how to sculpt the hair and I re-started the hair several times before I was happy with it. The teeth were something else that I chose to do a little differently. Many years previously, my friend Juliette had given me some resin castings of fox teeth that she'd made. I'd kept them in my sculpting kit, but never used them on anything. So I thought it would be cool to use them on Ryuk.

I was really liking how this sculpture looked, but sadly I did not have the money to make a mould of it. It was sculpted in ceramic clay, and after leaving it wrapped up for too long, the clay went all mouldy and horrible, so I was forced to dispose of it in the bin. This is the only photo that I have of it. 

Maybe some day I'll do another one.

HELLRAISER. CHATTERER.

Another one from the years 2014 - 2018. Having done two previous Hellraiser characters, I was thinking of gradually doing the rest of the Cenobites. So here we have the Chatterer. The photos below are of the clay sculpture. Once I'd made the mould of this piece, I never got around to doing a resin casting of it. 

I never did sculpt any of the other Cenobites.

HELLRAISER. PINHEAD.

This is another one from 2014 - 2018. After making The Engineer, I decided to sculpt Pinhead. I never did get around to painting one and sticking the nails into it. I really should do soon as I still have a couple of blank castings of this. 

These photos are of a blank resin casting from the mould. The edges haven't been trimmed, so they look a little rough. Again, this is the same size as the Engineer, 15.5 inches by 13.5 inches.

HELLRAISER. ENGINEER.

I'm not sure when I sculpted this piece. During the years 2014 - 2018, I sculpted a few pieces, this being one of them, but not much. It's safe to say that I was in quite a creative slump. I had a busy family life with two children, and was now also a full time carer for my elderly father. But there were times when I'd just need to do something creative so I'd grab some clay and sculpt.

I've always been a fan of the Hellraiser films, mainly the first two, (not so much the rest). One of the strangest creations in that first film, for me, was The Engineer. So I sculpted him/it, and decided to have it on a background of a puzzle box panel.

The photos below are of the resin piece once reproduced from the mould. This is a pretty large piece measuring 15.5 inches by 13.5 inches. 

This painted version was done using a combination of acrylic and oil paints. I like to hand paint things with paint brushes. 

ZOMBIE FILM. 1999.

I'm jumping forward quite a bit here. In 1997 my mother became ill with cancer. I took a step back from sculpting and making things as I wanted to spend more time at home. I couldn't focus on anything really. After she passed away, I wasn't sure on what to do. I was still in my early 20's but felt that there were no artistic or creative opportunities for me here in the North East. I didn't have the means or money to relocate elsewhere. John was still sculpting and making things, but the other artists from our group no longer had as much time to be creative as they needed regular paid work and had family responsibilities. It felt that all we'd tried to do over the years, everything that we'd made collectively and individually, had been for nothing. 

So in 1999, I opted to enrol on a City & Guilds course for TV and Video Production. I wanted to learn more about film making, and have access to equipment that I couldn't afford. I was once again dreaming of making some horror films.

I started filming a short zombie film, inspired by the Resident Evil video game. I loved that game and thought it would be cool to make some sort of a fan film. I sculpted and made a bunch of things for it, as did John. Even Paul and Juliette came to lend a had on a few filming days. I'd also met a guy called Dan who was a stage technician at a local theatre. He was really into lights and pyrotechnics so he came on board to do special lighting effects, bullet hits, and other explosive effects.

This little horror project got some good coverage in the local newspaper and as a result of that I was interviewed for a piece on 'Look North News' for Tyne Tees Television. 

Sadly, this short film was not completed. I'd gotten around half way through and then had to break for the summer holidays. The college wouldn't let me keep the equipment over this time. (I later found out that this was because the teachers there had a side hustle shooting wedding videos for people!). After the holidays, I assumed people would be wanting to film some more and get it finished, but most of the actors had lost interest and just wouldn't return. I didn't know what to do, so I had to abandon it. I still have all of the footage from this project. Maybe some day I'll edit some of it together.

Below is a selection of photos from the making of this. Most of these photos were taken by a guy called Jamie who came along and offered to be a 'behind the scenes' photographer. He took some really great shots. There are some things that I made for this film that didn't get photographed, including a very impressive 12ft long arm that bursts from a TV to attack someone who is sat playing a video game on a Playstation. I may try to get a screen-grab of it from the footage some day. It was a really cool effect with Dan rigging the TV to explode.

Here are some of the storyboards that were created. These were drawn by Andrew, who was part of the team back then.

John and myself, checking out his sculpture for a Licker. Unfortunately, I'd stopped filming before we got a chance to finish and film this creature.

Film Work

It was roughly in the mid 1990's, that I, and my friends, were asked to do some concept work for a low budget sci-fi horror film. My friend John had been approached by a first time Producer/Director asking for some advide on fight choreography. John was a well know figure within the martial arts community as a fighter, journalist, and magazine editor. One thing lead to another and when John showed him some of our sculpture work, we got involved doing characters designs and other conceptual work. By this time, John and I had been joined by two other artists, Paul and Juliette. Once we began working on this film project, I brought in a guy called Andrew, whom I'd been friends with for a while, to work on some of the concept art and storyboards. Between us all, we were a pretty good team.

There was no money to cover our own expenses on sculpting and making things. The producer could not give us anything, but he did want us to come up with some designs etc, that would help sell the film and also show what we could do, to a degree. So we did what we could, but because we were all struggling financially at that time, we were limited on what we could make.

Unfortunately, the film never happened, which was a shame. It was a fun time though, and very inspiring for us all. We got some coverage in the local newspaper so more people became aware of us. We even had some students from the local Art College coming over to visit us and wanting to work with us.

Below are pictures of some of the things that I sculpted.

 

 

There were a lot of drawings, storyboards, and artwork created for this project. The ones below were done by me for a creature transformation scene.

After things didn't happen on the sci-fi horror film, John and I spent some time writing various scripts. We'd gotten a taste of film making and producing, and wanted to write our own ideas for horror films etc. No one here in the North East was making anything horror related. We'd been approached a few times by different people wanting us to do a few make-ups for them, but when we started talking about budgets, and the cost of materials, they would balk at the thought and we didn't hear from them again. People seemed to think that all of these things could be made for nothing. 

So John and I wrote. We packaged our ideas together along with some concept art and storyboards created by our friend Andrew. We sent them to the regional Arts Council as we new they had a film division, but they were not interested in helping us. There was no internet back then, so trying to find out any information on whom to send things to, was very difficult for us. We did send our pitch-packages to BBC, ITV and Channel 4. The head of development at Channel 4 did reply and was interested. However, after corresponding with him for a short time, we suddenly had all of our material returned to us. It turned out that he's left to work somewhere else and his replacement was not interested. We tried to find out where he's gone to, but had no success.