Wardster's "Peppy's Blimp Repair"

[wardster]

Okay, here comes a goofy, hopefully-fun little kit-bash, as a second project entry for the Roth / Weird-Ohs Reunion contest.

(EDIT -- I decided, about a month into the "Weird-Ohs and Roth Reunion Contest" to NOT have this one be an entry ... since I started up the "Kooky Klancy" figure scratch-build, soon after discovering the Weird-Ohs Collectors Card series ... but I'll keep playing with this one, too ... but I don't see this and two other simultaneous contest builds being conducive to low stress ... besides, I'm doing more "fun things" on this build, now that I'm not as worried about making this a Deadline Project...!)

The layout will probably change, maybe quite a bit, as I go. This likely won't be the final layout; it's just my starting point.



With this one, I intend to mostly start with Weird-Ohs kit parts, but I'm gonna throw in some Roth Techniques (making shapes using what he used in the early stages: plaster mixed with vermiculite -- which is what the start on a monster's head is made out of) with the idea being to make it be more of a literal interpretation of a "union" between Roth stuff, and Weird-Ohs stuff.

Parts-wise, I bought a bunch of Weird-Ohs kits I've never had, after checking out pics of the kit's parts, in things like the "Weird-Ohs World" book. I'm starting with two kits that I only rarely see getting built-up: the "Drag Hag" (most of the bits seen here are from that kit) and "Francis the Foul," which I'm stealing the small referee figure from, to act as my driver's body.

Keeping in mind that a lot of the details and layout, etc., might change as things progress, the idea so far is for me to make a bit of a tribute to Roth's MegaCycle showrod (except cartoon'ized, of course) ... probably with Davey's motorcycle in back ... a ridiculously over-the-top Hemi V-12 (who wants a wimpy 426 when you can have a 639?) probably in a mid-engine position ... and a three-eyed monster, as the driver. (Oh yeah, he'll be wearing the "Surfer's Helmet" from the "Lil Red Baron" kit.)

That's the plan, anyway. We'll see what happens, as things progress and solidify; or get even goofier than I've started with.

[wardster]

Here's a better close-up of just the monster's, uh, the driver's head-to-be:



You'll also note that I'm not getting overly fancy with my sculpting tools -- that's them, lined up, next to the "Surfer's Helmet" and the upper part of the still-in-progress monster's head. Yes, it's just blades from an ordinary handheld, hardware-store jig-saw. I only modified one: just ground too-sharp teeth off. (Edit -- I should have mentioned it, but so far, all I'm doing is to create sort of "rounded off" or "convex" surfaces. A few posts below, I'll show tools more suited to a "concave" carving style.)

I'm using them as scrapers and as "sideways files" if that makes any sense? (Meaning, that the teeth are on the edges, not the faces; so I'm holding them in my fingers, and using more or less a "combing his hair" motion, when I'm trimming things down, on what I had started with -- which was basically just big blobs of P&V, that I had gooped into the helmet, to fill the inverted helmet up. By doing that, I "cast it in place" as it were. In other words, I literally (and simply) made the head fit the insides of the helmet, as my first step (saving me the pains of trying to sculpt something solid, that fit okay) ... then, later, when it was hard enough, I popped the raw head piece out (I sometimes use mold release, and sometimes not; it doesn't stick super-ridiculously-hard to plastic pieces, most of the time) and began scraping, etc.

Later on, if/when I sculpt a car (truck?) body with the stuff, you'll see more of what I mean. For now, what I'll probably do, as far as explaining what I'm doing / how I'm doing it, with any of the "Plaster and Vermiculite" stuff, is to mention two sources that already cover it, really well. (For those who don't already know it, of course: I'm sure some folks are waaayyy ahead of me, on this fun and cool technique?!)

One way to learn a bit more is via a reprint of an old (1986 copyright date) booklet, written by Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, himself.

I think I got my copy from some place like Moon Eyes in Japan. (I think? Yup, I looked; a link is below.)

www.mooneyes.jp/product/760

It's called "How to Build Custom Car Bodies" and it's mostly black-and-white photocopies of his original photos; plus Large Father's words, to explain things. (You can't get any closer to the primary source than Big Daddy, himself, right?!) In there he tells why he began using it, and where he learned how to, and so on. Here's a link to where I got mine:

Before I found a copy of that booklet, I had a copy of Fritz Schenck's great DVD set, called "How To Build A Fiberglass Body At Home". It's a two DVD set. His web site says it's still selling for only $25 bucks. I gotta admit: the way I mostly learned how to use that stuff was to just watch those videos, over and over, on a DVD Player in my old shop areas, back whenever I was building or painting anything. I did that until I could almost quote what Fritz was saying, before he said it ... then, I got some material, locally, and practiced enough to really dig playing with the stuff. (It's fun! Try it!)

Here's Fritz's online shop's web address:

spritzbyfritz.com/shop/

Just scroll down a bit, on the link above, and you should find that DVD set. (And lots of other cool stuff!)

Okay ... with all that said, I'll shut up, now, and get back to actually working on some silly toon projects!

[Starryeyes]

Great read !!🤘🤘🤘🤘

[wardster]

Thanks, StarryEyes!

I try to give "credit where due" -- and Ed Roth definitely deserves it, as does Fritz Schenck, for sharing their tips with others, on using plaster and vermiculite, to do large-scale sculpting. I'm just trying to show it can be used for much-smaller-scale stuff, too. (Within reason -- but heads in scale with Weird-Ohs kits, or a bit smaller, are still well within the material's capabilities.)

Two pics, this time ... showing some "official" sculpting tools I have, that I'll be using "behind the scenes" for a while, until the next photo update of that head.





Basically, what's going on is that I bought a set (on eBay or Amazon; one of the two) of a dozen or so double-ended sculpting tools. Just generic ones; nothing super ridiculously fancy. And then, to make them easier to find and hold, I made them into "single-ended" tools. That's hot glue holding the metal tips in, until I later added some dyed fiberglass resin into the empty spaces inside the pen's bodies. (Another "Mad Scientist" experiment I was doing, ages back: adding not so much "dye" to the auto store or hardware store types of fiberglass resin, but the pearl powders that custom painters add into clear coats.) Hey, I like playing around with raw materials, and finding out how to do weird (and sometimes very useful!) stuff. What can I say.

(Edit -- After quite a bit of looking for it, I found the roll-up packaging thingie that set had originally come in. What it says on the outside is "Wax Carver; Set of 12; Stainless Steel; DD #312". It also says it was made in India.)

I'll probably add more info (if anyone's interested) on how I made them by as shown. That'll be for sometime later, probably over in the "tips" section ... but for now, I figured I'd just share a couple of pics of the tools, and a visual how-to on how I used raw Pentel RSVP pen bodies, as super-comfortable handles.

(Another edit -- I gotta pat myself on the back for having had the foresight, back when I did all of that tool-modifying work, to "make a map". I knew I'd forget, later on! It is serving as a reminder to me, as much as a possible help to other sculptors!?!)

[wardster]

Later on, I will probably end up using some stuff called "Balsa Foam" to do some of what I have in mind. When I get to that part of things, I'll be mentioning another product, called "Wood Hardener". That's this stuff:



I'll explain more, as I go, on this silliness, but the Balsa Foam is a very easily carve-able material, but that ease-of-carving it also means that the finished "sculpture" is very-very delicate to handle. What I have found is that I can carve Balsa Foam into some fairly detailed stuff; harden it with the stuff seen here; and then, it is much easier to make molds around it, without destroying it. (For instance.) Most of the other guys that have recommended Balsa Foam just harden the surface, only, using ordinary casting resins. Which works, to a degree -- but I've tried it, and it (the casting resin) isn't made to "sink in" and really harden things, below the surface. This stuff is made for that. I've tried it, and I really like it, for hardening up carved Balsa Foam. Enough that I'll probably be making some of the engine's parts out of Balsa Foam, instead of conventional materials.

[wardster]

Last pics / explanations for tonight:



What that is, are some customized, shortened ("chopped?") tools that I use, whenever I'm doing really fine work; stuff that's so fine that I have to be looking at it under one of those lighted magnifiers. I cut an X-acto handle down (as you can see) for one of these mini-tools ... and (not shown) some fine paint brushes, too. (I got tired of the back end of tools, hitting the glass.)

Another favorite is a small file that I had cut down in length, and ground the tip down into a long, skinny "cone shape". It's a scriber. (An idea I stole from a mentor of mine, who builds R/C Submarines, and who got really tired of scribing tools losing sharpness, since he's often scribing fiberglass with his. Thank you for that idea, David Merriman!) As mentioned, it was a file, originally; which meant that it was (presumably) made with really good steel. Because of that, it holds an edge for a long, long time -- in fact, it stays too sharp, too often, so I did what David recommended: I used a whetstone (for sharpening knives) to put a small flat spot on the sharpened tip. (It's supposed to be a scriber, not an accidental cutting tool.) Anyway, I find it great for things like scribing (or re-scribing) panel lines; marking where to drill holes with precision; and a bunch of other little tasks.

The super-short tool right under the metal box is a custom "resin air bubble popping" tool ... but it's really hard to see that one's tip's shape, and it's the tip's shape that's the important thing. I'll put a higher-res close-up image of it, anyway ... and will try to explain how I ground that tip (if I recall correctly, it's the back end of a drill bit; again, to be using high quality steel) which is that, overall, the whole exterior shape is sort of a convex, outward-rounded cone shape. Then, into that I cut sort of a concave, inward-bending "scoop shape," if that makes any sense. Same basic idea as a twist drill, in a (very rough) sense. The tool's handle is just an "X-style" head on an X-acto style handle; with a (unintentionally slightly off-center) hole drilled in it. I made the handle that short because the extra weight hinders me: it bugs my carpal tunnel syndrome, after long stretches, if it is standard length. And all I need for this tool is what's shown, length-wise. To open up trouble-some air bubbles (that I know darn well are JUST under a kit piece's surface and are GOING to show up if I try to ignore them) so I can fill those holes (usually with something like Magic Sculpt, which is another material I'll mention, at least in passing, later on) I just poke the visible but just-under-the-surface bubble with that device; spin it maybe half or three-quarters of a turn, just by hand / in my fingers; and whalla, an instant, much-more-easily-seen and thus, much-more-easily-filled hole. That tool cuts that chore's time WAY down, in my experience, when I buy some kit that has one of those "Oh good grief, this is going to take a while" bubble-fests going on with them. I still (with a really bad example of a kit piece) still have to work in sessions, not all at once ... but that tool rocks!



The metal box I'm holding that miniature set of tools in was a kid's mini-puzzle, from a dollar store. I got a kick out of it.

If it makes no sense why I'm mentioning this kind of stuff now ... it's the kind of stuff I'm "used to" but others likely won't be ... so, it felt better to "mention it now," in case I forget to mention it, later.

My hope is that others who want to play around with sculpting, or figure conversions, or what not, can find some tips and ideas they like, in the ones above. Your mileage may vary, but in my experience, sometimes a tool makes a job "worth trying" when it might otherwise be really intimidating, or just really time consuming, or what have you.

[Starryeyes]

Great stuff Ward ! Always good to feed the brain with new ideas and hey who doesn’t like more tools ?? Looking forward to reading everything word you have so graciously taken time to type 👍😬

[wardster]

Thanks again, StarryEyes! Much appreciated, good sir!

Here's a bit more ... but it's just a "Balsa Foam" sculpting tip example; it's not for this project:



What that silliness, above, is was an interpretation I made some time ago, of a logo on a character's heavy metal costume. It was from a cartoon strip called "Bloom County". Opus the Penguin was in a band, with a character name of Opus Croakus or something. He had said in the audition something like, he didn't know if the instrument he played (a tuba) counted as "heavy metal," but it was "weighty brass". They let him into the band. If memory serves, the band's name was "Death Tongue" (with the little double dots over some of the letters) apparently in reference to lead singer, Bill the Cat's ridiculously long, drooling tongue.

My point in showing it, in this context, is that you can do some pretty deep and detailed "bas relief" sytle of sculpting, just by scraping away a bit of a sheet of balsa foam.

I wasn't even using metal tools; if memory serves, I was doing my "sculpting" work on this one, with things like shaped wooden dowels, or shaped wooden chopsticks, and the like. I just ground the tips until they were a shape I liked; hardened the wooden piece with Zap CA "pink label" thin super glue; and used them. (A tip I've seen others do, kind of a lot, in "serious" figure sculpting magazines; especially in the smaller scales.) Some of those guys are sculpting things you need heavy magnification just to see, so they end up having to make their own sculpting tools, since most of the stuff that's commercially available is too big. I guess I'm saying that to say that the "intimidation factor" of using new tools and materials doesn't have to be very big.

Anyway, I had some scraps of Balsa Foam that were too small for me to do much with. I scratched my name or something into some of them, and then saw how the hardener (brushed on) worked. It worked good. So I did a slightly more "serious" project, which was this one. I had a bigger chunk of a sheet of Balsa Foam (it comes in two densities, and in sheets or blocks) that was maybe half of an inch thick, and a few hours to kill, so (back when I did all that) I wanted to see how detailed I could get things (like indications of individual teeth, etc.) using that VERY easily cut/shaped/smoothed material, with the material not trying to crumble away on me, too much, or falling apart too much, or whatever. I got it to look this way; tossed it into a small container (tin-foil style of metal baking pan from a dollar store) that had enough of the "Wood Hardener" poured into it ... waited a while ... took it out ... let it dry over night or whatever ... and was really (pleasantly!) surprised, the next morning, to see how much more strength the material had picked up. The wood hardener is made to get into things like rotted wood, via a brush-on process. It works great for that purpose ... using it with Balsa Foam was a "why not try it" kind of thing. But once it worked out that well, I was stoked; and gladly added the idea of sculpting-then-hardening to my "bag of tricks".

I should say this about the Balsa Foam material, too: it's great for making custom bases. That's the one use I see it used for, a lot, in things like articles for figure-sculpting / painting magazines, etc. So if a person wanted a quick and easy way to get acquainted with using Balsa Foam, make yourself a custom base! Fake tire smoke might also be something to try out ... ?

I'll get "back on topic" with the actual "Peppy's Blimp and Bike Repair" vehicle, before too long here. I'm mostly trimming / sculpting that plaster-and-vermiculite head down, into more or less a three-eyed skull's shape; which I plan to later harden (I'm pretty sure I tried wood hardener on P-&-V before; but with the thin super glue; I'll practice on some random chunks of P-&-V, with the wood hardener, so that I don't get over-confident and ruin a mostly-sculpted monster head, by not checking if the wood hardener works as well as super glue did!) ... and when it looks "photo-worthy" enough, I'll update this thread, again.

Meanwhile, my hope is that there's plenty of food-for-thought for you other guys, in terms of sculpting tips and tricks.

[Count Dragula]

This is all really cool!!! Thanks for sharing all of the tips/information that you have provided in this thread,Wardster!!!
Todd

[wardster]

You're very welcome, Todd! Glad to be able to do it!

We all have something to teach each other, around here -- or at least that has been my experience. Not to mention everyone's cool and inspirational projects, all going on, and inspiring us to do our own things.

(EDIT -- I added some minor sculpting tips or whatever, into two other threads, just now. Look for the threads I started, about Andy Pearson's work, over in the Finished Toons section of this board. There's not a ton of tips there, but "everything helps" if a person is new to that part of the hobby.)

(Another edit -- I just added more tips over there, so people who want to sculpt figures might want to check it out ...)

I've been away from this hobby for far too long, so it feels good to get back to building stuff (at least a little bit; not like I've done much here, yet, on this project!) ... I guess I'm just sorta "warming up" for a little while, right now. Doing more thinking about the next steps; plus practical stuff like finding wherever in the heck I put my stash of Balsa Foam bits-and-pieces, for later on; and, in the last few days, I've been casting up some "blocks" of the plaster-and-vermiculite stuff (just mixing and pouring it into butter tubs / containers) so I can have "blocks" of it that I can carve and play with, later on. Also I've been sort of "mapping out" (as it were) paper-based stick figures, so I can make armatures for figures, and have their limb lengths and stuff make sense, for both the size of what I want to build, and proportions of the individual figure. (I gotta force myself to stick to one project like that, though, for time's sake! I've been away from this stuff for so long, due to Real Life kicking my behind for too long, that I want to "bite off way more projects than I can chew" ... but I guess that's a good problem to have, at times!?)

I forgot to mention this tip: because plaster and vermiculite are just powders, that you have to add water to, there's nothing preventing a person from first using something like everyday food coloring (grocery stores have it; look in the baking aisles, it's probably there) so you can be carving (say) a green block of the stuff, for a monster's head. Or a bit of the "black" food coloring stuff, which (at least the stuff I got) is really more like "really dark green" mixed with some of the red food coloring, and added to the water, before mixing, gets something closer to a real "black" ... which means you can, with some practice and luck, end up with a "primer gray" or "neutral grey" color, throughout the entire pre-cast P&V "block".

More later ... for now I'm mostly doing stuff that's not easy to photograph; or doesn't "tell a story".

[wardster]

Okay ... here's a teeny bit of "actual progress" on at least part of this "silliness-on-wheels".





For right now I'm basically ignoring any actual work on the "car" itself (meaning: the frame / body / glass / whatever) or pushing it back, until after I get two other "sub-assemblies" built to a certain point. Those being: the scratch-built engine and the mostly scratch-built driver. I figure that once I have those two pieces mocked-up well enough, that I can visualize them for size, etc., and "wrap the rest around it".

As for explanations of the weirdness seen in today's pictures: it's one of the pre-cast blocks of "P&V" I mentioned. Off-camera, I used a miter box and a hand saw to cut up (and roughly "square off") a rectangle of (hopefully?) sufficient size, to be the V-12's engine block. To get things sort of "ballpark right" as far as the overall look, I got out a Revell kit of the 426 Hemi engine. Not measuring from it, really; it is more "eyeballing" and also "modifying, just a hair or two, here or there" as I toon-ize an engine block for my soon-to-be "hemi-and-a-half". I'll let this work sit for a bit, to sort of wrap my head around if I like the front view that I drew on it, or not. Oh: that white blob is the blower from the Drag Hag kit. I am sort of picturing the final engine with injection, only, but didn't want to rule out the blower, later, for some other build. ("Other builds" being if I like what I come up with, enough to make molds and cast up copies.)

I should mention that I made the top-and-bottom (and front-back and side-vs-side) surfaces parallel to one another, with what I call a "poor man's milling machine"; as seen (implied?) here. It's a model 395 Dremel moto-tool (an oldie-but-a-goodie I have had since the 1990s) that is placed in a Dremel-brand drill press. I just sort of slide a part around, manually, with my fingers, sometimes on a small piece of a cutting mat as a "tray," after having manually (with the motor turned off, of course) selected the cutting head's height, from the drill press's work surface. In other words: I'm just using the drill press as a holder for that moto-tool; with a fixed-height, or fixed-distance-from-the-table. I'm not using the "handle" at all. I'm pretending the handle isn't even there, and am manually wiggling the whole entire Dremel tool and tool-holder assembly, up and down the press's vertical support. Once it's at the right height, I lock it down, and don't change anything until the next vertical-height change, which won't happen until I turn the Dremel off, eyeball the newly "milled" surface; and take time to decide "what's next". That way, on any given "run" of the "milling machine," the only variable is whether or not I'm holding the parts straight, or accidentally tipping them at an angle (that is, keeping any vertical sides 90 degrees to the table) when I push / move the part around the table.

By the way: that's a Dremel-brand quarter-inch diameter router bit, usually for wood-working, that I mounted in the chuck. I'm using it as my "milling machine bit" mainly because it cuts well; it doesn't clog easily at all; and it has a pretty flat "bottom".

It's admittedly not NASA levels of precision, doing things this way; but it works well enough that I'm comfortable with it.



The P&V (Plaster-and-Vermiculite) isn't really super-ideal for this kind of fairly-precise work. If I didn't think I could "harden it" after carving, I'd likely use some other material. But since I trust that I can harden the carved or sculpted "engine block" when I like the shape, it's no big deal. I just have to be sort of gentle with it, and cautious, until I get to that stage of things.

[wardster]

Oops. I did this work a little while ago, but never posted any in-progress pics. "For the shame of me".



The things in the background are some wooden dowels, in various thicknesses; for when I get to the eyes. I plan to cover sections of them in putty, shaped like the "popping out" or "sausage" style monster eyes.

[Fletch]

Veddy interesting!

[wardster]

Apr 8, 2019 8:25:41 GMT -5 Fletch said:

Veddy interesting!

Thank you, Mister Fletch, sir!

I actually was gonna work on those eyeball pieces, a bit more today, but I got side-tracked on reading a new-to-me book: "Pop Sculpture: How To Create Action Figures And Collectible Statues" by Tim Bruckner, Zach Oat, and Ruben Procopio. Which you had told me was great, back when we talked about it in email, some time ago. I finally got around to buying more hobby books, and that was one of the first ... and in my opinion, it's even better than you (and many others, in articles, etc.) had said it was!

The cool thing about getting side-tracked by books like that is that they also inspire me to keep at it, sculpting-wise, and get me all hyper to continue ... so it shouldn't be time wasted or anything like that, by any means! So I'll be back to making funky (and disgusting) eyeballs, for this one, before too long.

[wardster]

Too tired for the "mega-long version" of an attempted explanation of intent, for now, so I'll just say:

"I'm apparently aiming at redefining the limits of bad taste, one figure sculpt at a time ..."









Actually, to be a bit more serious: I'm playing around with several things, at once. Seeing what I can get away with, and what's worth trying again, or not trying again, with this material, etc.

One things being: showing it's possible to make nice sharp sculpted edges, if you're careful; even around a fairly-deeply recessed area. It's really delicate, now, especially since I got it wet -- but it should dry up nicely by tomorrow morning-ish. That's the hope, anyway ... and if not, then it becomes "figure out how to fix it" ... but it should cooperate, well enough.

Really what's going on is that I decided that if I'm not gonna enter this particular build in the "Reunion" contest (a decision I made around a week ago, or whenever it was that I decided to do the "Kooky Klancy" figure scratchbuild, instead) then I have a lot of additional time to just do whatever strikes my fancy ... and with deadline pressure off, the part of the monster's head that was going to be under the helmet, cried out for "gimme some cool stuff to paint; instead of just flat, boring surfaces"!

So, anyway, another (simultaneous) experiment of mine, as shown in today's pictures, is playing around with sort of "dying" the porous material, as I go; using cheap watercolor paints. The hope and/or idea there being sort of a combination of making up for forgetting to dye the water I used when I mixed this batch up, years ago (oops!) so that it was not so bright and near-white (which color / brightness is good for painting stuff, but heck for sculpting shapes) ... and also to get an idea of how it'll look with actual paint on it, as I go ... without, I hope, making the surfaces any less "hardenable" or sculpt-able" ... but mainly I just wanted dark edges, for the next few steps, which will be hardening the sharp edges around the newly-recessed area; and then, glopping in some kind of material (probably pink-dyed; maybe "plaster only"?) where the exposed Monster Brains will end up.

But, sleep first ...