"The Secret Lives of Demons" project is done.

It's finally all over and done with. About 51 photo shoots, 73 Demons and about a year and a half later.

Just ordered the prototype book today. We'll see how it turns out, then by mid-March it'll be going online for sale at blurb.com for $44.95(US). Softcover only, maybe hardcover, I'm not sure just yet.

Overall it was a pretty awesome experience. I intended to have about 100 different demons, but 73 isn't too bad. Also intended for about 100 shoots, that was just utterly unrealistic.

The makeup itself is pretty simple, I'm sure there's some folks who might criticize it for being limited in that aspect, but the point was to use generic makeup that could be sold and used by anyone online - so keeping that mind, it did turn out pretty damned well. The 2nd volume will be much more elaborate than this. Hopefully.

Until then, here's a couple unused photos from the whole project, ones that probably will never see the light of day otherwise.

Creating Cthulhu, Part Six - The Last Part

Once the sculpt was done, I just hot glued it to a plastic foam board base.

It's looking a little shiny here, that's because the first coat of DragonSkin silicone has been applied. It was brushed on to make sure it got into all the little nooks and divots and whatnot.

The 2nd coat, a little thicker. It's normally clear, but I tinted each layer to better see what was going on. The first was slightly green and this one was obviously a little more tinted and yellow.

Using Thivex I thickened the ssilicone so it wouldn't run, I was able to trowel it on, filling in all the undercuts and deeper indents.

A few more thinner and thicker coats and we're left with this after several hours. I think there were 6 coats in total, I lost count.

Then I made a two part support shell. A wall was made with regular old clay.

Here's a view of the cleaned off first half. It's a little messy because I tend to cut corners.

Both halves of the support shell. This is made from a material called Plasti-Paste II, pretty simple and quick to work with. It's a little ragged looking still, I will be cleaning it up soon though.

And here's the mould freshly freed from the shell.

And the original sculpt, totally intact freed from the silicone glove mould. It's inverted in this picture, looks kind funky.

Then using some SmoothCast ( I forget what number it was) and some Urefil 3 to extend the volume of the resin, I poured it all in. First though, I used a black version of the SmoothCast, called Onyx, to do a thin surface coat that would be solid black, the other resin was used to fill the whole thing.

And not too long after I pulled this from the mould, here it is alongside the original sculpt.

And it's finally done. I'm not sure if I'm going to do anymore with it or what. The picture is a little brightened, the actual piece is somewhat darker. Still looks pretty awesome though.

And that's done. I'm hoping to do a couple more, work out a few kinks in the process and have them online for sale by next week. They'll also be going on eBay for sale as well. Not sure of the price just yet, it's pretty expensive making something this size out of solid resin, so I'm thinking in the neighborhood of $80 and I debating doing it in a finish or even different colours, not sure yet.

And just for some additional information. The sculpt was done with Monster Makers Premium Clay, from Monster Makers. The moulding and final casting materials all came from Smooth-On, purchased here in Canada from Sculpture Supply and Sial.

The Viking Demon

Did yet another shoot for "The Secret Lives of Demons" and the whole project is slowly drawing to a close.

I might've mentioned this before, but the final deadline for shoots is Feb 29th, at least that's the plan. And then hopefully in a couple weeks I'll see a final copy of the book.

Creating Cthulhu, Part 5...and other stuff.

The sculpture has been done for awhile now. I ran out of steam updating about it specifically and now I'm just waiting on some silicone to come in to make a mould of it and off we go again.

Otherwise, I've been busy with "The Secret Lives of Demons" project, it's coming along really well. Just did my 45 photo shoot for the book today (that's a bit of an approximation, I lost track a long time ago). Just 5 more to go and this bad boy is done. As much as I've enjoyed, and still do enjoy, working on the book, I've got so many other things rattling around in my head I'd really like the time to focus on them - since there is something of a deadline looming.

Next week I'm hoping to get some new product prototypes out, such as the Cthulhu statue, the Mayan Cthulhu Totem, the Shamanistic Demon Head, a demon fetus in a jar specimen, another demonic antiquity that's just a charm of sorts (very simple looking and rushed for a photoshoot on Sunday) and I think that might be it. Otherwise I'm starting in on some Shrunken Demon Heads and a couple other minor little pieces and foam weapons.

Creating Cthulhu, Part 4

Close to finishing up. Just some little bits here and there to clean up, smooth out and add some detailing to. The spine area was just started in this first picture, got a bit of work to do to finish it up. I'm guessing I'll probably get to start moulding tomorrow or Wednesday.

Creating Cthulhu, Part 3

Had a couple hours to work on this again today. Got it mostly smoothed out to where I started doing some of the detail work. Got a long ways to go, but it's shaping up really well. There's a lot of detail already done that's not visible here. I'll probably wait until the final resin version is all done up to do more detail photos.

Creating Cthulhu, Part 2

I won't say it's been easier to do this then I thought, but it's still pretty damn tricky. I am pretty happy with how it's coming along. Most of this was done only a few hours after the first post about it, so really this is only 3, maybe 4, more hours work to get it to this state. Now comes the really hard stuff, smoothing it all out and getting the lines nice and clean.

Creating Cthulhu, part 1

Every sculptor (and I feel a little arrogant using that term) in the genre of where I'm interested, seems to have done a Cthulhu statue of some sort, at some time. The first one I came across was done by Richard Allen Poppe, who seems to have vanished from the internet. He did some really great stuff, sold mostly through eBay - but eventually his accounts (both eBay and PayPal) were shut down apparently from too much bad press. I had some minor communication with him, he seemed like a decent guy to me - but for whatever reason just wasn't able to keep up with the demand for this work and ultimately gave up. At least that's my impression of it, I could be completely wrong. While there are others who would love to bad mouth him, I won't do it here because I don't really know the truth.

This here is one of the few remaining images or mentions of him I could find online:
http://www.templeofdagon.com/artists/richard-allen-poppe/
http://in-tenebris-scriptus.blogspot.com/2007/12/richard-allen-poppe.html
http://propnomicon.blogspot.com/2010/11/cthulhu-fhtagn-poppe-edition.html
http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?t=4832

Of course there have been others, dozens and dozens of others, but his Cthulhu sculpture was the first one I really liked and the only I ever purchased - not to say the others sucked, but for whatever reason, his stuck out to me. Just do an image search for Cthulhu and you'll see what I mean, they range from fucking awesome, to a little crappy, from freakish to funny and everything in between.

So I felt it was about time to give it a try myself. A little while ago, just for fun, I did a Mayan inspired Cthulhu totem, very simplistic at best - but it served it purpose for what I wanted to do with it. But I still wanted to do a good attempt that would fit in with the countless others, so I started this week - with the intention of mass production (on a small scale of course) for sale online.

 

This here is a very rough blocking out of my version of Cthulhu, about 5-6 hours I guess at this point. The picture doesn't really do it justice, as seems to happen so often when I take pictures of things I've sculpted. I wanted the head to be rather massive and out of all the ones I've seen and mostly none of even tried to capture, is a bit of a sense of weight. Most of the times his tentacles just seem to float or be totally weightless, whether or not I succeed at this is another question - maybe there's a reason you don't see it, maybe it just doesn't work very well.

It's about 7 1/2 inches tall, might be slightly taller in the end. The final version will be mostly likely cast in resin, haven't decided on any sort of colouring or whatnot. I can say it won't be realistically painted, I'm making it as though it were a statue, not a real version of him.

I'm not going to do wings, most other variations have wings, the Poppe version I have doesn't have wings either and I kinda like it like that, less cluttered feeling I think.

I'm hoping to keep updating this, with less rambling, as I progress and even hope to get some pictures of the moulding and casting process. If I remember to do it.