EWJ Mighty Mugg IV

Fail.



I'm going to sculpt a new head and make a new mold. The proportions are wacked so I plan to make a shorter fatter sculpt with less detail. The paint should take care of what I subtract from the detail on the sculpt. I think that by going light on detail it will be more true to the the style of a Mighty Mugg.



I removed the black piece that attaches the head to the body of the Mighty Mugg. The piece is well housed in the shoulders of the body. So there is no way to pry the neck piece off with pliers without destroying the Mugg body in the process. I recommend carefully removing it with a small rotary tool such as the Dremel.



Once I removed the neck piece I decided to sand the shoulders down so that the octagonal lip was no longer visible. I then used the Dremel tool to shape the plastic into the neck hole of the Earthworm Jim suit. In addition to the dremel tool for finer work I used an X-acto knife and sand paper in order to get the shape I wanted.





I left the Mighty Mugg logo on the foot for authenticity's sake. The next step is to sculpt a head, backpack, and crow zapper. Then I'll cast them, attach, and paint the parts and I should be done! I'll have to show what the casts look like but I'll try to have it done in two more posts.

EWJ Mighty Mugg III

I decided to split the mold down the side as opposed to cutting it into pieces as indicated with the yellow on the left.





Here is a photo of the sculpt after I extracted it from the mold. The latex seemed to soak up some of the oils in the clay slightly drying it out. It would still mold like clay, but I thought this a peculiar effect.



I then taped up the side and painted a layer of latex over the tape and the seam so resin wouldn't leak out.



Tada! Here is the cast I'll be using for my Mighty Mugg Custom.



Here is the first attempt at making a cast of the mold.



Detail.



Detailed detail.




Details.



Deets.

As you can see the result was less than spectacular. After discussing with my assistant what could have caused such catastrophe, we decided that not allowing time for the mold release agent to dry made the bubbles form. Had I properly used the agent, I probably wouldn't have had such a difficult time getting the cast out of the mold on the second try, but after some struggle I was able to get it out without destroying the mold.



Detail.

This was a great learning experience. This job is best done with help from another person if the mold isn't easy to work with. Since I had such an odd shape, and I did not take the time to make a brace that would allow me to properly pour the resin myself, my assistant held it while I poured and then we placed the mold in a cup stuffed with gift tissue to let it cure.

I was a bit sloppy with pouring the resin and I accidentally got resin all over my assistant's hands while she held the mold upright. She then waited for me to finish pouring (it starts to set in about 3 minutes) and the resin started to set on her hands. She spent the next hour washing her hands with dish detergent, lava soap, and nail polish remover to get the stuff off her hands and then another half an hour filing her nails.

Use rubber gloves! On the next try I used quite a bit less of the resin and my assistant wore gloves which she highly recommends as well. Because the resin cures so quickly it generates a lot of heat, which is another reason to wear gloves. After careful consideration my assistant and I decided it would be best to snip off the other end of EWJs head so that we could pour the resin in both sides, ensuring no bubbles would form in the narrow tip.

Now on to work on the Mighty Mugg's body, sanding the head, spraying with primer, and painting.

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.