Grange Wallis' Custom Workshop

[Grange Wallis]

Re: Grange Wallis: Jack of all trades, I masters most of them!!!

G'day Guys, I know it's been awhile but here is a small update on my progress on my Christopher Reeve Sculpt... I've made a mold and I'll be buying some resin this week to cast 2 heads to refine the Superman & Clark Kent Sculpts. But as I've been waiting for pay-day, I figured I'd start searching the net for CK Glasses, without any lucky, I figure I'd have a go at sculpting them myself. Once I'm happy with the frames I'll fill the lens and recast it in clear plastic. Anyway here's my Progress...

 

[Grange Wallis]

Re: Grange Wallis: Jack of all trades, I masters most of them!!!

And in addition to my Superman sculpt I start a new sculpt of the Joker, done in my drawing style. I'm really happy with it, but it's so out of scale it's ridiculous! I wanted it to be slightly big, so he look out of out of proportion, but I lost the balance and he's to big now. Howevr, I was wanting to put him on a big 13" figure as the Joker is 6'4 according to DC...

The face sculpt is FiMO and the base was SuperSculpty, which is what the teeth & Gums are sculpted with, a little burnt!

And for Scale here he is next to my other sculpts & a LongBow Capt. Miller head (ignore the green wax casts):

 

[Grange Wallis]

Re: Grange Wallis: Jack of all trades, I masters most of them!!!

Here is a sample of my drawing style & design for this figure!

 

[xenoviper]

Re: Grange Wallis: Jack of all trades, I masters most of them!!!

Hey man you are doing very well with the sculpting!
That joker drawing is damn fine!

 

[Grange Wallis]

Re: Grange Wallis: Jack of all trades, I masters most of them!!!

I'm chasing you man to become the 2nd best Customiser in Australia, behind you!

 

[xenoviper]

Re: Grange Wallis: Jack of all trades, I masters most of them!!!

I'm chasing you man to become the 2nd best Customiser in Australia, behind you!

You certainly doing very very well! Maybe soon you'll be no.1
I just hope more Australians get into 1/6th stuff.

 

[figuremasterles]

Re: Grange Wallis: Jack of all trades, I masters most of them!!!

Hey Grange, you are rocking man! Love that Joker!

 

[Grange Wallis]

Re: Grange Wallis: Jack of all trades, I masters most of them!!!

Thanks for checking out my work guys... Well, I've just order 2 x Dalton legacy Bonds, one for my Bond setup and one for the tux his got (& the body) for the Joker... I'm thinking of dying it black then bleaching it and then dying it Purple... I might just dye it black... But purple is iconic... I'll see how I go! Can't wait!

 

[Grange Wallis]

Re: Grange Wallis: Jack of all trades, I masters most of them!!!

G'day one and all. I'm back with a couple of updates on my custom works... Been working quite slowly on these I know. So here's what I'm up to.
Christopher Reeve Superman.
Finished off the Superman Sculpt...
I'm really happy with the kiss curl and hair, nose, mouth & modified jaw. Ears are my favourite thing to sculpt at the moment bt I think the ones here aren't that good. I also thing the face is a touch long... The sculpt itself is oversized, but I'll be casting it in vinyl and shrinking it in acetone. Hopefully I'll be able to shink it correctly! I'll be removing the neck and putting the head on a modified New Gen Hot Toys body, which will have the neck resculpted and the head will be attached in the same way as the HT Superman Returns figure is, under the jaw. I want to be able to move the head, but I will be sacirficing the lower neck articulation so the suit looks better and there isn't any exposed chest/neck joint which never looks any good.

Here's the recast of a sculpt in wax and I have drawn the eyes and eyebrows in to help visualise the finish work...

 

[Grange Wallis]

Re: Grange Wallis: Jack of all trades, I masters most of them!!!

Now on to my Joker custom.
I've finished of the sculpt and drawn the eyes in. Now the head is huge, like 1:5... I'll be doing the same as with Superman and shrinking the head. I've purchase a Dalton Legacy Bond figure x 2 for the body and the kickar$e suit! I'll be making 2 versions one in a black suit with purple vest and one in a purple suit and green vest. I keep the one I prefer and maybe auction off the other as a OOAK.

Also I have this 2 of this head spare... One will receive a new haircut and the other has some Fuzz I want to clean up on it

And Finally this is a shot to illustrate the scale, or lack of it, of my work...

Thanks for looking and I would love some feedback on my work! I'm straved for it actually!

 

[Anzik]

I think you really nailed certain aspects of Reeve, specifically the nose and cheekbones. I think you need to work the chin area a bit, the lower lip and the lower eyelids, but really they are just tweaks. Looks great.
Your Joker seems to have the same issue my own work suffers from, in the 'hard edges'. I've been using a technique I read about using a paintbrush and lighter fluid to soften the features a little. The vein is also a little too thick, which is another thing I do often making details larger than they should be. I was also making heads in too large a scale so what I started doing was using a ball of aluminum foil measured about a centimeter smaller than what I wanted and that helped me keep it the size i wanted.
So from one sculptor in training to another, I hope it helps.

 

[Grange Wallis]

Yeah, I know what you mean... I work in FiMo and use sculptey clay softener to remove fingerprints & refine the details as much as I can... I'm happy the the Reeve sculpt for the moment and will definitely return to it later... I'm wanting to sharpen my skills more so next time I can hopefully knock it out of the park. Thanks a lot for your advice Anzik Hayes... You're right, but sometimes after you've spent so much time with something you can only see what you want to see nad lose sight of the mistakes & I definitely need the criticism, if I want to nail it. Cheers mate!

 

[creecher]

I can't really add much to what Anzik has said. I agree with him, that the vein on the Jokers forehead is too pronounced. I was thinking the Larry Talbot suit might work. The pants in the Sideshow pic look long, so they may work with a 13 inch body. The Joker looks to be more comic book styled, so you can get away with alot more than if it were to resemble an actual known person.

I have seen a sculpt of Superman on the local board, figurama, that you may be interested in, to compare your work. Crikey, you may even be that sculptor.

 

[Cocoboloboy]

They all look great but I'm a sucker for a good Joker sculpt and you got it goin on there.
I agree about the vein being a bit pronounced but that's really just personal preference.
Overall !!!

 

[Grange Wallis]

Thanks for the comments fellas, I'll be taking back the vein a bit as I agree with you all on it... As with the Superman, I'm thinking of recasting the green wax sculpt and refining that one as I worked on it a bit and feel it looks better than the orginal, however I was unable to smooth the sculpt out. So I might cast it in resin and fix it my usual way with FiMO.

Thanks for looking and for the feedback...

 

[Grange Wallis]

:chew*Reserved for my #1000 post!*:chew​

 

[Grange Wallis]

G'day all, seems like forever since I'm worked on my customising skills... It has almost. Anyway, last night I finally decided to have a go at painting up one of the many custom head sculpts I've brought through this Board. I decided to take a stab at a copy I made of the Veng/Xenoviper Christian Bale head I've got. I on really focused on the face as I was trying to figure out how to paint in general basically as I've never painted a sculpt before. It started off badly but I was pretty happy with the result... I still need to finish the hair, ears & neck. I also haven't glossed the face or eyes yet... Of course

Guys, I'd really love some feedback on this if you'd be so kind...
My First ever sculpt paint...

 

[barryo]

that looks excellent so far to me. look forward to the finished version.

 

[hemble]

Excellent sculpts I really like the Joker sculpt and the vein just adds to his Crazy look well done.

Ron

 

[Grange Wallis]

Now, I haven't done any customer work for awhile. Here's my latest it is my first NECA 12" or any custom figure where I've destroyed a basic 12" figure to make it a true 1:6 figure with clothes etc! It's also the first time I'v used my dremel since buying it 12+ months ago.

I loved Gears of War and was always hoping Hot Toys or even Sideshow would make 1:6 figures of the awesome looking character in it. Unfortuntely it doesn't appear to be happening. (fingers still crossed ) Fortuntely NECA picked up the licence and after making 7" figures (not my thing anymore) they made this rather detailed 12" Figure. Basically it's a statue with a couple of moving parts, hardly an ACTION-figure though.
(Not my photo, thanks figures.com)

Now as I said; I always wanted a niiccce, bad-arse 1:6 version of this figure. So I decided to drill out the figure and put it onto a 12" body. I happened to have a trio of ACE bodies about and decided to use one of them for the custom. Now after dismantling & dremeling out the torso (I destroyed the sound feature doing this, I wanted to keeping it originally.) I found out, although I was expecting this, the ACE figure's torso was too short for the Chest Armour as it's so massive. So I dismantled the body of the ACE figure to figure out what I could do to increase the length of it. I had an idea (which I'm pretty proud of myself for) if I flipped the mid-section upside down and use a long screw to reattach it to the chest, it increase the torso's size by 17mm, which was the around the exact amount of length I required.
Here is the picture of the unmodified ACE Body with the modified Body on the left:

Here is the unmodified with the armour on, you can see how it's too big for it:

Here's a shot showing the new gap I created to lengthen the body:

And it's still kept it's great range of movement: