Part 2: the physical builds of the project! (Part 1)
Although the antagonist bust sculpture was the earliest piece I did, I’m going to show the environment first so I can keep all the characters together. Ok? Ok, YAY
THE COTINIS CASINO THEATER
To start, everyone had to have two things before construction could start: plan views of all the walls/floors/ceilings, and a rendered 2 pt perspective illustration of what it would look like all put together. I won’t bore you with the plan views, they’re not where the meat and potatoes of this thing lie
(Yes, the wallpaper and the portrait are stretched pngs, but that’s because I actually did print out that same wallpaper and portrait and glued them on)
Why the Theater? While a casino floor or a private poker room would have been incredibly fun to do, the majority of the story revolves around the events that happen in the Theater. It’s significant to all three characters, as it’s Prasio’s stage and Buster’s bar, a place where they’re both easily accessible—and observable—to Gibbs without the need for any behavior that’s unbecoming or downright rude (snooping, sneaking, impersonating, etc) of a normal civilian looking for a bit of weekend fun. As explained in Part 1, it’s also where the climax of the story occurs! Materials used include various shapes and sizes of wood bits, some paper, pre-molded plastic, satin, acrylic sheet, acrylic beads, felt, dollhouse tile flooring, PLA (3d printed chairs), acrylic paint, copper rods, and two miniature dimmable lights with a small control box. Total time spent on this was 5.5 weeks.
As for the character sculpts..
Unlike the main character and side kick, who got full-body sculpts, the antagonist was limited to just a bust. Seeing as it was the first time any of us in the class were sculpting in this level of detail and anatomical/canonical accuracy, I am incredibly grateful for it
Made of mainly sculpey, tinfoil, and steel wire with a wooden block for a base, he stands roughly 9” tall in total. After all the colors of acrylic paint were laid down and the details cleaned up, his clothes were glued/taped on top. His collar is construction paper, his tie is material from a pocket square, the vest is 2mm sticky craft foam, and his lapels are satin with gold paint. His wings are made of paper straws and thin acrylic sheet, which were then wrapped in chiffon and coated in some gold glitter glue. The base is wood wrapped in green felt and bordered with 5mm EVA foam, and the chips, die, and cards are the real thing (the chip stacks I did have to hot glue together, though the lone black one is free standing, same as the die—the cards are also glued to each other but they’re not glued down). Total time spent on this was 4 weeks.
There are some things that I think I could’ve executed better, such as uh… not giving him a nerd neck, or making his hair and wing shells more pearlescent, but I’m still very very proud of it and love how it came out.
MC/SC SCULPTS - GIBBS AND BUSTER
Hmm, I’ve run out of image slots and I can’t include the turnaround drawings I made of their golden poses, but it’s nothing that can’t be seen here. Similarly to the bust, these were made of mostly sculpey, foil, and steel wire, though much thinner copper wire came in handy for things like hands and feet. Unlike the bust, however, we were not required to paint these due to time constraints, but we could if we had the time. Whichever way, final photos still had to be of the greyscale gesso stage. I did not have time to paint mine, and I will not for reasons* I’ll get into in a sec. Now these ones were a bit of a pain in the ass, I’ll admit, but it was mostly because their heads were giving me so much grief (don’t tell anyone, but I actually had to get a friend to help with Buster’s—we traded projects for about an hour or so, and they got me a solid bartender badger face base to go with🙏). The bar counter and shelves are made of wood and lots of superglue, and the base is one I got from Hobby Lobby. Unfortunately, the wall of the bar warped a bit when the whole thing was baked, but it’s not too bad unless you’re specifically looking at it. The bottles were added when all the gesso was painted on, I got them off of Amazon and stuck them down with a little bit of hot glue. Total time spent on this was 3.5 weeks.
*As much as I wish I could show these off from any and all angles asked for, all I have as proof of their existence are these photos. I cannot work on them anymore, and I will not be able to do so until sometime around this coming holiday season. As for why, I am incredibly proud to say that all three of my builds were kept by my professor to be put into the school’s gallery next semester:)) They’re also going to be officially juried among the work of a handful of other students’ projects, and first/second/third place winners and honorable mentions will be revealed when the gallery is open. Yay!!!!!!!
I had so so much fun working on this story, despite the hours of sleep sacrificed for it, and I really wanna continue developing it in the future! I’m always open to any questions there might be about its world and its characters or the inspo behind it—in fact, I’ll probably be putting more posts together about it soon🤔…
