Stolas "Weathered" Clutter Edition - SOLD OUT!

Thank you everyone for making my first gallery feature a success! And a huge thank you to Clutter Magazine for the opportunity.

Skullbrainer Show @ Clutter Gallery

I'm exhausted from all the excitement so I'm not going to type much (again), you can read about my experience on my Instagram post.

Some crappy phone photos from the show. Wish I got more photos (I know for sure I didn't photograph everything) but there was a professional photographer going around and I didn't want to get in his way. Then blah blah blah I forgot.

STOLAS! My first resin toy project is almost complete!

Thought I'd share my first major resin project with you guys.

First a little background info... (okay, maybe a lot.)

My obsession with vinyl toys didn't really blossom until early this year, when I started stalking the #designertoy tag on Instagram. I soon found myself discovering the whole underground DIY resin toy scene, which intrigued me because it could be done by just about anyone. Having some prior experience in sculpting through a Ceramics course in college and churning out polymer clay jewelry crap on Etsy, I was really excited to jump on in. Up until that point I had sculpted what people wanted rather than things that I actually wanted to make.

I started planning out my first resin toy back in late March. I wanted to make something obscure yet familiar, and remembered something I had found about a year ago. I was making an "evil" character in a video game and wanted to use the name of a historical demon for their last name. After searching through an online "demon encyclopedia," I found a name... but not without discovering this little fellow.

This... this silly-looking owl, is Stolas.
According to mythology:
"Stolas is a Great Prince of Hell, commands twenty-six legions of demons (twenty-five according to other authors), and teaches astronomy and the knowledge of poisonous plants, herbs and precious stones. He is also known as Stolos and Solas. He is depicted as either being a crowned owl with long legs, a raven, or a man."
Yes, this innocent little owl with a crown is supposed to be a commander in the legion of hell.

I thought that was absolutely hilarious, and was instantly drawn to him as a character. I set out to design a possible resin toy of him.

Here's an early concept drawing (made in glorious MS Paint, I might add) of Stolas and possible colorways. You can see that I was kind of influenced by more cartoony sculpts at the time. This was before my attention shifted more towards Japanese vinyl.

Fast-forward three months, and I still didn't do any actual sculpting. College and other personal projects got in the way, so when summer finally came around I was thrilled.

Three weeks ago I started sculpting Stolas. I'm no professional sculptor and it was soon evident that I couldn't possibly translate my previous concept art into clay at my current skill level. I had to make several adjustments and just make do with what I could accomplish at the moment.

An early head-shot. 

One of the most frustrating things I faced with this project was the constant breakage of parts. The ear-tufts and side-tufts broke more times than I could count. I'm not sure if it's because of the material (super sculpey normal and firm), because I didn't cook it long enough, or I just manhandle my sculpts, but I broke more pieces than I could count. Repairs were a constant thing to deal with throughout the project. I had to cook the piece after each little addition just so I wouldn't mess up the whole thing.

I had to do a lot of reinforcing of the tufts. Here you can see a little indentation where I planned to put a magnet for head articulation, because I honestly have no idea how to make a joint.

Sculpting and filling the wings so I wouldn't have to deal with too many bubbles with casting. I don't have a pressure pot, so it's going to be just pour-and-poke to get rid of the bubbles.

Trying to get an idea of what it will look like finished. I honestly was lazy and only made one leg. Planning on just casting the leg twice and gluing them into the holes I made in the upper leg.

The final photo before molding. I primed, wet-sanded for about an hour and a half, and left it to dry out for 24 hours.

...aaaand here we are at present day. Last night I molded all the pieces (head, body, leg and crown) and will be demolded at 1am tonight. I'll be making a test-cast and depending on how that goes, I'll be grabbing a respirator and dremel to start self-production casts in August. 

I'll keep you guys updated with how it goes.

Work & Play on Vacay: Day 4 + 5

I was busy/lazy/whatever these past two days, so I didn't have time to type up a blog post.

Time to catch up on what's been going on...

DAY 4!

I tried to move my sleep schedule back on track, so I asked Jon to wake me at 1:30pm.

That didn't exactly work out... I was too tired and ended up staying in bed for another half hour until 2pm.

Curse you and your persistence, winter!

Everything was blanketed in snow when I looked out the window, which was a real bummer. We still wanted to go and have a nice day, so I hopped into the shower to get ready.

Hilariously, while I was showering the power decided to go out. It was extremely windy out, so it wasn't that unexpected. Thankfully I was right at the end of my shower, so I just rinsed a little more and got changed.

At 3:00pm we left to go get lunch at Chick-fil-A and grab some Rita's. As usual, it was absolutely delicious.

Guava ice with vanilla custard. PURE BLISS.

I was extremely tired when we got back, and surprisingly Jon was too. We were pretty lazy for the rest of the day. I'm not 100% sure, but I think we just sat around and watched TV, and Jon played video games while I looked at sofubi toys on the internet. I honestly can't even remember.

That night I was exhausted and retired to bed early around 10:30pm. Unfortunately I didn't end up sleeping for very long, and awoke at 1:30am having to pee. That somehow woke me up, and I hopelessly got up to try and get myself tired again.

I ended up finally cracking open the journal I bought at Michael's Craft Store and writing a few pages about my life as it currently stands... A kind of "snapshot" into my life so one day I can look back and have an idea of who I was, and what my opinions on things were at the time.

After writing a bit, I mindlessly watched CNN (not sure if it was the global CNN or they just have the global CNN people at night) while browsing my phone for designer toy goodness. I finally went to sleep around 6:00am.

DAY 5!

I had asked Jon to wake me at 12:00am, but when I woke up I begged for another half hour... So it was 12:30am when I finally awoke.

I'm also starting to think that the cat allergies are finally catching up to me.

I was so exhausted and achey that it took me forever to convince myself to dunk my head in the sink and wash my hair. (I shower every other day, it's actually better for you.)

Once we were all ready, we left to go grab some food at the super market.

As expected, we left with very little food, and more cheese snacks than I know what to do with.

We also swung by Chick-fil-A for some nuggets, because they're too damn good.

I had a very blue lollipop afterwards, and I swear that I have eyebrows under that hat.

Jon and I watched some TV for a little while before he left to go see one of his friends in neighboring New Jersey. 

Being the weak person I am, I took the opportunity to take a much-needed nap. I lay down at around 6:30pm, only to wake up at 10:50pm hungry, thirsty, and confused.

I went upstairs and made myself some chicken tenders (I'm eating a ton of chicken down here in Delaware, haha) while being stared at for 50 min straight by Jon's cat, Bandit.

After preparing and eating my second chicken meal of the day, I decided to get some actual work done.

Working on the body and thighs!

Everything started out pretty well. I decided to scrap the wire armature of the thighs in favor for aluminum foil.

Once I was done building up the body and smoothing the clay, I popped Stolas into the oven and...

NOOOOO!

...his head didn't make it.

The styrofoam changed shape and the warping seemed to disrupt the clay enough for it to crack.

I tried to fix it but...

Nope, not happening.

...the pieces were much too warped and bent to fit back together. Oh well.

Guess my next course of action is to remake the head on an aluminum foil base.

On the bright side, I started playing around with a vinyl blank. Going to turn this hippo into a pit bull and hopefully auction it off for Bully Breed Rescue once it's finished!

Not much, but it's a start.

It wasn't until around 4:00am or so that I started getting tired and went to bed.

So much for fixing up my sleep schedule.

Work and Play on Vacay: Day 3

I'm a day late with this blog entry, but for good reason... I had a pretty craptacular morning and afternoon.

My hormones tend to get messed up since I'm still adjusting to my switch from Mirena to Nuvaring as control for my anemia, so I ended up being super tired and sleeping late. Jon kept trying to wake me up and I kept asking for more sleep time. It wasn't until 5pm, when he came back with a Rita's gelati and brought his mom back from dialysis that I finally had the strength and willpower to get out of bed. Of course, I felt really bad about sleeping the entire day away, but it was all pretty much explained when I realized I was bleeding again, even though I bled last week as well. (I always get insanely tired the day of or day before I get my period, because my body hates me.)

Anyway, annoying bodily dysfunctions aside, my Rita's gelati was absolutely delicious, though Jon's mom accidentally ate my Swedish Fish flavored one and left me with cherry. Honestly, that was fine, and pretty hilarious. When I looked outside, however...

WHAT IS THIS SHIT.

Seriously? Snow?

Yep, snow.

Even though it's officially spring AND we're a bit more south than Connecticut, Delaware got some snow while Connecticut escaped unscathed.

In an attempt to salvage the rest of the day, Jon and I decided to go out for dinner at Ruby Tuesdays.

I've never been there before, plus we had coupons, and coupons are always a good thing.

We left at about 6:30pm, and arrived at 7:00pm. (Delaware is big and flat, so travel usually takes a while.)

Tempura green beans. I ATE GREEN BEANS.

I have to say, for a fairly large restaurant chain, the food was really good. I don't ever eat vegetables other than corn, cucumber, spinach on pizza, and occasionally broccoli, so I was pretty amazed at how delicious the tempura green bean appetizer was. 

Southern-fried chicken tenders? YES PLEASE.

The chicken tenders I had as an entree were really good as well. They lived up to their name, that's for sure... They were lightly breaded, tender, and moist rather than overly-crunched and dry, like most restaurants offer.

We skipped dessert since we already had Rita's earlier, and were absolutely stuffed anyway.

At 8:20pm we went to Walgreen's to pick up my meds, and got home at 9:00pm.

After our little outing, it was time to bunker down and get some work done!

Testing tools on Super Sculpey!

After getting a feel for the material, I decided to try and start sculpting Stolas!

I'm not 100% sure if this will work, but I'm trying to sculpt him on a base of styrofoam balls. I did a little bit of research, and apparently it's safe to slow-bake it under 200ºF. The styrofoam WILL shrink, and I'm not sure if the clay will buckle along with it. Hopefully the clay will keep its shape and I can just remove the shrunken styrofoam from the piece once its baked.

Whooo?

I didn't get too much done, just got around to cutting the styrofoam balls and putting on a base layer of clay around the head. I punched out the eyes with a paint dabber (the thing my index finger is accidentally pointing to) and I still need to put a base layer on the body, and build up the upper thighs. 

I'm aiming to mold him eventually in three parts... head, body, and feet. I'm not sure how I'm going to do it, but I'd like the head to be able to swivel on the body, and the legs to be able to fit holes at the bottom of the thighs. Those might have to be glued into place.

Oh well, I shouldn't get too ahead of myself. I'm not even sure if this piece will hold up in the first place. I might have to completely redo him if my styrofoam base doesn't work.

Only time will tell, and thankfully I've got lots of it!

I need your help designing a resin toy!

Please help me put together a finalized design for the body of my first resin figurine!
Yes, I'm trying to get into the designer toy scene... No, it's not going to be easy.
That's why I need your help.

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