Long story short, basically, I decided I wanted to design a toy. Initially this was just a character design I came up with for the heck of it. And then I thought about bringing it to 3D, tangible form. My boyfriend and I exhibit at San Diego Comic Con every year with his publishing company Art Squared Publishing, and in addition to his books and caricatures, I also sell original artwork. But I've been wanting to branch out. I can't sculpt, so I enlisted him to sculpt a maquette out of Sculpey.
With the advice and assistance of a friend with knowledge of this stuff, we acquired some poly resin and silicone, and set about pouring a silicone mold around the clay maquette...
...and once that had hardened and cooled, and Binkus was cut from it, we ended up with a two-part mold. In that, we poured the poly resin mixture, and let that cure for a few minutes, then carefully pry it apart.
And voila! A perfectly snow white, virginal Binkus. The weird protrusions on his butt are from the airholes you must cut out of the silicone so when you pour in the resin, any bubbles will rise and not be anywhere visible on your toy. They were a little too-hastily cut, so they look a little weird... those get dremeled off. Then it was time for the paint job.
We tried out a few different shades for his belly before settling on a more grayish yellow. We eventually went to SDCC with 26, I think? We almost sold out of the painted ones, though the unpainted ones were also popular. Sometimes people like to customize their art toys. We've been promising to do a second run of Binkus, with a color variation, but a move and lots of other little blips on the radar have made that difficult. Our studio has finally been cleared out enough of junk though, that he'll be back in production very soon. And just in time too; I have plans for not just those color variations of Binkus, but a new pose, and an all new toy planned to be done by summertime. You can't just show up to these comic cons with nothing up your sleeve.
1 comments:
That's pretty sweet. Love that you branched out into such an involved medium. I'm enjoying your blog and your work, glad to have found you through my blog and Etsy!
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