Comparative Picture Fun!

This is simply a light hearted look at the likenesses of people next to their cartoon counterparts. I mean no harm to anyone by posting these comparisons.

A Gelfling from The Dark Crystal.


Nitz from Undergrads.


A Doozer from Fraggle Rock.


Meg from Family Guy.


These just happen, I don't put any effort into searching for these, they just fall into my lap. In fact, I started them around 2001, so it will be a while before I have more. There was this one man in my home town that looked just like the G-Man from the Half-Life series but I was never able to get a photo of him, but maybe one day by happenstance I will get lucky enough to meet him again.

Timelapse and Geocaching Videos.

Bear with the ads on the videos, Revver.com pays me according to the number of views and how much the video spreads to host my video on their site and the money comes from the ads. Anyway, I hope you enjoy.

Timelapse video of the county fair.



A video about geocaching.



Timelapse video of a lobster grow toy.



Ratings are a pretty important factor in getting the most views, the more good ratings the better so go to the links below and rate em would ya? There is a whole slew of ways to share the videos above by clicking on 'menu' in the video window. If you dig it, Digg it. I put the geocaching video on Digg myself.

You have to visit my Revver page to digg the videos.

In addition to the embedded videos above Vimeo is my favorite video site that I have uploaded these videos to. I just think it plays more smoothly and looks better. I also put them on youtube and metacafe.

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?

The Aliens Have Landed.

Meteor Landing Leaves Many Stunned.

I have been reading War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. This video seems appropriate. Just to be clear, I don't believe this is an alien spacecraft but this video does spark the imagination. This video makes me want to fly up to find the meteor myself! How often does a man find a real meteor?

I never have.

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.

Sucky Polls.

I have never had a comfortable experience when I have voted. The first votes I cast were in a windowless one room building behind a windowless door. I generally like to know what's inside a building before I go into it. Sure, there were smiling ladies sitting behind a table, but the building could have been filled with bees for all I knew.

Luckily the building was bee free. When I walk up to such a foreboding building, I feel like I should be ready to defend myself against whatever is behind the door. The least they could have done was leave the door open so that people walking up to the place knew what to expect when they walked in.

Perhaps the buildings chosen to hold the polls are the only ones available but they sure pick the worst possible ones to make voters feel welcome to vote. Since I moved I had to change my address so that I could vote more locally. So I had a new location where I had to go to cast my vote. This time it was a school that was fenced in with rusty fence and once again the place designated to be the polls was windowless.

This time however on the windowless door a poster had been posted with duct tape scrawled around the entire border that said at the very top "PROHIBITED AREA AND ACTIVITIES" which can be read from the parking lot. Then in smaller font it stated the laws of the polling area which can be read when about 5 feet from the door.

Upon asking someone where I was supposed to go they said "behind that door up there", the same door that seemed to prohibit anyone to enter. Once I entered the forbidden door, I was received once again by smiling ladies, in a very poorly lit gym. If we are to encourage people to vote, there should be a much better atmosphere at the places where we are to cast our votes. What I experienced was ridiculous.

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.