Today Was Excellent Day, Thanks Mostly To My Personal Assistant (and Best Friend), Dayna. She Was A Huge

Today was excellent day, thanks mostly to my personal assistant (and best friend), Dayna. She was a huge help, not just for making my armatures and cutting up burlap, but for keeping me company and generally being awesome. Thanks!

And then Merci stopped by! It was a regular film-making party up in there today. Here's Dayna (right) and Merci measuring a tiny doorway for the set:

While they slaved away on that, I tried to figure out how to make the characters' heads. Cast them in latex? Stick with the Super Sculpey? I finally decided to go with the latter, so I hollowed out this head to prepare it for baking:

Once that was done, I hollowed out the eye sockets so we could pop in the eyeballs (harvested, like the clothes and wigs, from a bunch of dolls I bought at Target):

And then we popped in the eyeballs for the creepiest moment of the day (see above).

Not bad for a day's work.

For some reason, New Friend Rob was under the impression that I know what I'm doing and wanted to watch me sculpt today, so I subjected him to the ritual: Jurassic Park III in the background, running commentary under my breath, and eventually some kind of recognizable shape out of polymer clay. He made a couple of cute little figures (pictures forthcoming) and kindly refrained from commenting on my lobster.

Oh, and credit where credit's due: it was totally his idea to use dish soap to make it look like the water is boiling. My friends are so clever.

Super Sculpey, ~90 min.

Zzzzzzzzz...

It's 2am and I'm still not done for the night. But that's ok, just a few more days and all this will be over. Shooting starts on Saturday morning, bright and early, which means it would be nice if...oh, I don't know...my puppets actually had heads by then.

Because they don't.

So I spent 6:30-1:30 at the studio, patching and painting the puppets. I finished three of the nine completely, two more just need heads (a minor detail), and the other four need one more coat of paint before they catch up to their headless brethren. Which means that now, I'm going to sit here and catch up on House while I sculpt a half-dozen heads as fast as my little hands can go.

Oh, and here's Marion and Monster #1 for my mom, because I promised a picture days ago but didn't finish until now:

This little droid is a Christmas present for my friend Rhonda, AKA Rhonda2D2. Ever since Star Wars: Uncut, Artoo has made me think of her, so I hope she gets a kick out of it.

It's funny how the different colors mold differently. The white clay was much softer and more pliable--to the point where it was impossible to get my fingerprints out of it--than, say, the black, which crumbled in my hands no matter how much I kneaded it first.

This is the first sculpture I've baked since the puppet heads from the film shoot, so I was a little worried it would crack, but it came out beautifully. Working in color is much more time consuming, but the finished product looks so much nicer, wouldn't you say?

Sculpey III (white, black, and denim), ~3 hours

In which I describe why there will suddenly be a lot more posts and why all of them will seem so similar.

World, meet Mina.

Or some semblance of Mina, anyway. Those aren't her glasses (hers will have eyes on them). And she needs a haircut. But still--!

As of 3:03am, I am officially considering myself done with these puppets. Am I actually done? Technically, no. But the remaining work is all non-essential touch-ups and about ten minutes of construction that I couldn't do tonight. So, for all intents and purposes, done.

Phew.