EWJ Mighty Mugg II

As promised here are some photos of the Earth Worm Jim sculpt I did for the Mighty Mugg Custom.







The clay I used is a wax-based clay which means that it won't dry out. This particular batch was made by a fellow artist, but is very similar to Castilene in that you have to use a heating lamp in order to soften up the material enough to work with it. Once you get to the later stages of the sculpting process the cooled clay makes for a firmer surface that makes it easier to do fine detail work.

Some people use polymer clays, which are desirable because the clay doesn't dry out and can be baked on low heat to harden it solid when the sculpture is finished. However, baking the clay can make for a difficult time, depending on the intricacy of the sculpt, if planning to do molds and casts of the sculpture. When doing casting and molding, the clay is then no longer the finished product and is often destroyed when releasing it from the mold.

I decided to try the Castin' Craft Mold Builder and Mold Release, and Amazing Casting Resin on my first try with molding and casting a sculpture. The process is fairly straight forward. Mold Builder is basically a viscous liquid latex rubber that once painted on a sculpture dries to a yellow rubber coating.



The directions suggest doing ten coats of the Mold Builder and also suggests using Castin' Craft Resin spray on the clay to coat the sculpture before using the Mold Builder. I did not before I started using the Mold Builder but I think it will be alright anyway since I partially peeled the mold off with no trouble.

Here is what the EWJ sculpt looks like with the Mold Builder applied.





So the next question is which method would be best to extract the clay from the mold? Cut down the side? Or cut the mold in half and do two casts that I would have to glue together? Yet another question that I'll have to figure out later is, how do I attach the head to the mighty mugg body and to where it is sturdy and still does not touch the rim of the neck?

EWJ Mighty Mugg

Since I am such a fan of Earthworm Jim I wanted to pay homage to him somehow. So I decided I would immortalize him in Mighty Mugg form, another thing I'm a huge fan of. Hasbro does sell blank Mighty Muggs but it's more expensive to get than buying a painted Mugg at a mega-mart because of shipping.

For the Earthworm Jim Mugg one thing was certain, I was going to have to take the head off of a Mighty Mugg in order to do a proper EWJ version. So I bought Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson).





Since I wanted to do a Gordon Freeman Mighty Mugg I bought a General Grievus figure since he comes with two light sabers, which could prove useful later on. After examining each of the muggs I found something unfavorable with the Gen. Grievus Mugg.





The head for this mugg seems to be made out of something similar to ping pong ball plastic. This would prove very difficult to take off since there's no give to such a hard plastic. Vinyl has plenty of give to it however and luckily Samuel L. Jackson's head is made out of Vinyl plastic. There is a way to tell the difference between the plastics each Mugg head is made out of although it may not be easy to do in the store. Please don't open the boxes in the store, there are collectors out there that like their boxes in pristine condition. If you look at the head closely you will probably be able to see a hint of a seam as highlighted above.

This should be a pretty good indicator that the mugg in question has a ping pong head. The other clue is that if you look closely enough, and I mean close, there is a little bit more texture to a vinyl head than a ping pong head. If you are lucky enough to happen across some loose Muggs at a flea market or someone's house, the easiest way to tell the difference is to peck on the head with a finger nail. The vinyl head has a duller sound to the harder plastic which has a sharper 'tick' sound to it.



Although there may be a few people out there who just long for a hernia, I would suggest not trying to pull it off straight out of the box. I was able to get the head off by pre-heating my kitchen oven to 150 degrees fahrenheit and then putting the figure in the oven on a pan for about 5-10 minutes. One has to be very careful in dealing with a kitchen oven, but by heating the Mighty Mugg up, the vinyl of the head is more malleable and so the head is easier to pry off. I feel that no more warning is due since people should know the Mighty Mugg will be hot when it comes out of the oven.

The head is hollow and fits very snugly on the torso.



The piece that fits in the head of the mighty mugg is hard plastic, and for this project will need to come off.



I'll post photos of my sculpture of EWJ's head next post so keep an eye out for that. My next task is to saw off the plastic piece seen above without damaging the torso, wish me luck.

Custom Mighty Muggs

Before Hasbro introduced the public to the Mighty Mugg there was Kidrobot. Believe me, Hasbro is not the first to produce "blank-canvas" figures. One thing Hasbro did right was selling an affordable version of a blank-canvas figure. I am new to doing custom toys but I really like the idea of it so my first two ideas were to do Earthworm Jim and Gordon Freeman.



I've always been a huge fan of Earthworm Jim. He is in fact my favorite video game character of all time. I find it difficult to believe that none of the major video game console producers have ever picked up this character as their mascot like Sega did with Sonic the Hedgehog, Sony with Crash Bandicoot, and Nintendo did with Mario Mario. That's right "Mario Mario". My girlfriend pointed out the fact that since they are "The Mario Brothers", Mario's last name is Mario and Luigi is "Luigi Mario". Heh.

Gordon Freeman is from the Half-life series of games by Valve Software which won critical acclaim and a multitude of awards for the original and sequel games. Hey, if I have to explain who Gordon Freeman is, then you've sorely missed out on one of the greatest series of games to date.



I will be documenting the process I go through to get the finished product, so expect to see more.