There Were Three Things John Watson Loved In This World: A Good Pipe, Sherlock Holmes, And Their Bull-pup

There were three things John Watson loved in this world: a good pipe, Sherlock Holmes, and their bull-pup Gladstone.

Super Sculpey, ~30 min.

Can I just tell you how good it feels to finally have something in color? I swear, the last few weeks have just been shades of gray: gray clay, white latex, beige Sculpey, and so on and so forth. SO WHAT if she only has one eye and it's lazy. WHO CARES if I haven't finished painting anything but her skin and some eyelashes. There's some green in her eye! Highlights in her hair! It makes a big difference.

Because Mina (the main character)'s eyes will be painted on to her glasses, this lucky prototype is going to play one of Mina's classmates. I named her Marion, after my grandmother.*

Tomorrow: With any luck, finally pouring the latex into the finished Monster #1 and Boy Body molds. I'll also start the molds for Monster #2 and the Girl Body, which would finally wrap up all the mold-making. Oh man I hope so. A girl can dream.

*I thought about naming her after my great-grandmother, who actually did only have one eye, but seeing as her little depth-perception problem is a temporary state I thought I'd go with something a little less flippant.

Another big day. This time, I recruited my good friend Sean to perform slave labor help me out around the studio and keep me from going stir-crazy. Thanks, Sean!

Today, we made latex casts of two boys and one girl, leaving just one boy, three girls, and a monster to do tomorrow. It sounds like a lot, but I'm getting exponentially faster every day. It took me two weeks to make my first mold, and now I can do one or two a day. So I still have high hopes that I can finish all the baking tomorrow.

I also finished sculpting Monster #2 and made the first side of the mold, so I'll finish that up tomorrow, too. Sean measured out fourteen little balls of Sculpey for the heads I sculpt during the week, and I trimmed and patched the first little boy and Monster #1. I'm still terrified that something is going to crack, explode, deflate, dissolve, or otherwise break, but I think I'll be able to put those fears to rest tomorrow when I completely finish the first puppet. If I can do it once, I'll trust myself to do it eight more times, so fingers crossed.

Thanks for all the encouragement as I stumble through this. I know the final film is going to be just gorgeous.

And that's a wrap! I can't even believe it. I mean...we're done? Seriously?

It's amazing how much better we got as we went along. By the time we were done, I was almost tempted to go back and reshoot the first scenes.

Almost.

The film has a completion deadline of December 1, which means the final product will be done in the next couple of weeks. I can't wait to see it! I also can't wait to finally get some sleep, which would be a nice change of pace at this point.

Here's Mina, waiting in the clovers for her big scene.

Thanks for all the moral support, everyone. And thanks especially to Dayna and Sean, who actually got their hands dirty with me on a couple of occasions. It made a huge difference!

Super Sculpey, Laguna clay, GM foam latex, armature wire, PAX paint, and Hydrocal, ~100 hours

Woo! Lots done yesterday. I made the very last of the puppets (Monster #2, above) and started the epic trim/patch/paint process for the remaining eight puppets. I took the night off tonight to see my friend Colin who was visiting from out of town, but rest assured that I have no plans to see the sunlight tomorrow at all.

And now the back! I tell you what, this first mold is kicking my butt. Which is coincidentally what we can see in this picture: the generic boy body from the rear. This is the second half of the mold (in progress in this photo, but finished as of tonight), and tomorrow I'm going back to see if the last week's worth of effort actually left me with a usable mold. If so, I finally get to pour the latex! If I'm really lucky, I'll even have a fully finished, painted, jointed, and dressed little boy to show for myself by the end of the day.

If not, there will probably a lot of tears. Maybe I'll even make it an audio post.