Munny

Post Show Sale

Thanks to all who purchased a tree ent or golem. My show at dragatomi with Troy and Jesse went very well and I managed to sell all the ents in the series of 6 plus it\’s original, and then also sold 3 of the golems plus the original. I really appreciate the interest and support in my work, you guys help me do what I love and I\’m eternally grateful.

SOOO…

that means I have some golems remaining. 5 to be exact. These casts are part of a limited resin series of 10 of a mini munny each signed and numbered. Show\’s over now and I just got my pieces back yesterday. I\’ll be reducing the price of everything. The golems were $175 plus shipping, I\’ll now be selling them for $125 plus shipping. If you want one, let me know by emailing me.

Other pieces from the show will be posted up in my big cartel site soon.

Vinyl Roots Preview #1 @dragatomi with @JRYU @TroyStith

OK, you\’ve seen a couple of these guys before, and although my wife says, \”haven\’t you done that idea to death?\” I said, \”no, in fact I\’ve only done two.\”  Believe it or not I did the original tree ent that got me a win in Munnyworld almost two years ago and the another munny ent shortly after but otherwise, no other munny ents.  SOOOOO, I figured I\’d make a series of them.  This isn\’t your average mini munny though, I stretched the body an additional 2 inches to give the added tree effect. The series is limited to six of which two are reserved for a couple special individuals in my family.  Plus the original is also available, so that makes 5 that will be at the show.  Each one is handed painted, signed and numbered.

Bacon from the Dunny Eater Series


Say Hello to Bacon. This little guy tries as hard as he can to be mean. He\’s even borrowed a bloody halberd and shield from his father but try as he might, deep down inside he\’s just a sweetie. Bacon is part gorilla, part boar and all around nice guy.

Bacon was made from a 7\” Munny, wire, plumber epoxy, screws, polymer clay and leather. This was my first attempt at this size and I loved it. It\’s perfect. Large enough to allow for all the detail I want and small enough to be practical. Want to see how I made this? A lot of you probably saw a lot of images I posted over the last couple weeks. I wasn\’t just showing off. Nope, I was amassing as many pictures as I could to assemble a tutorial. Plan on seeing a tutorial from me within the next couple weeks.
Let me know what you think of this guys. Feel free to comment on what you like, and dislike so I can improve with the next one.
Oh, and did I mention, this fella will be for sale soon 🙂

Munnyworld DunnyEater WIP Pics

So it was suggested of me last night that I might want to make a video of me sculpting. Now there are a lot of great videos out there already of artists far, far superior to myself but never-the-less I do believe that I would have something to offer if I made a video. Each artist has their own insight to common techniques and even the worst artist may be the best of teachers. My mother was a teacher for her entire career and now that she\’s officially retired she still subs. I guess what I\’m trying to say that I think that the teaching bug is in me and eventually I would like to go down that path. I even taught at a high school in Sarasota FL back in my college days.
So a video will eventually come I think. But for now I\’ll start to chronicle my process a little better. I have always tried to do this but lately I\’ve been doing a lot of commissions and in order to respect the clients right to first viewing I haven\’t been posting my WIP pics.
However, I have taken lots of pics of most of my work so while the current sculpt is baking and cooling I\’ve decided to post WIP of the Mega I did for Munnyworld last November.
I\’ll just have some brief notes here, nothing too instructive. But I will make notes in the future and expect for a detail tutorial be be done.

k, so here we have the first go of it, in just about a hour I threw on a rough sketch of the right arm and chest, took longer, much longer to mix the sculpey, think I used one package of blue scupley 3 and a box of super sculpey with my pasta maker

in this pic you can see a box of firm sculpey, I\’ve used this a few times and like it a lot but it\’s not a soft to work in as super sculpey, it\’s plus is it\’s durability after it\’s been baked

I\’ve now quickly sketched in the other side along with the abs and side flanks
I\’m just trying to keep it loose and figure how I want things to look, I frequently have no idea what I\’m going to create when I get started, just a basic concept in my head and I let myself discover it as I go along, this is a really poor way to work and causes a lot of additional work backtracking, I do not recommend it and hopefully one day I\’ll remedy that bad habit
MAKE THUMBNAILS, ROUGH SKETCHES, COLOR STUDIES


starting to smooth things up a bit here

now working on my back
at this point I\’ve got my anatomy book out cause it\’s been years since I\’ve done anything like this and although I have a general idea of where things belong I want to make this a real a possible
notice also the rake marks in the clay, I like to get the clay on there in basic shapes first and then use a raking tool to remove and refine the shape

the back of this guy was a bit annoying, no offense to the great people at KidRobot but the Munnys and Dunnys are anything but symmetrical which made it tricky for me to say the least

I\’ve now roughed out the feet, I\’ve decided to go with elephant-like feet
oh, yeah, and on these bigs pieces I like to use the lazy suzan so I can work in the round, constantly turning and viewing the piece from many angles trying to see the correct shape

see that line at the bottom of the stomach? a good friend was kind to ridicule me for making it look like a pouch, eventually I would remove it
I show my work to friends and family frequently as they\’re going to be your best critics
fresh eyes are a god send

here you\’ll see the pouch is gone and some strange blue rash has appeared
I ran out of my premixed clay and had to make more, unfortunately the art store did not have the same color and I had to use a different blue

oh, and this is Penny, my 55 lb lap dog, she will occasionally join me while I work

UP THE IRONS!!

so at this point I realized that the arms were just too static, and I also decided it would be really cool if my Troll was actually in the process of eating a dunny
so I used plumber putty and armature wire to hold the arm in place
Plumber putty is a great 2 part epoxy that comes in a roll, you slice off what you need, mix it to a consistent color and within 5 minutes its hard as a rock

I\’m now about ready to move on to the face, again I used plumbers putty along with a screw
I did this so that the clay would have something to grab onto. I also sand the entire munny with a course grit sand paper. really want to be sure that the clay adheres to the vinyl.

forgot to mention the dunny,
yes I ripped a head off a dunny, sketched in a spine and put him in place

ah, there he is, mr good-looking

woah! what happen, apparently I got forgetful with the camera
so I finished the face and added a nose and ear ring and then I took alcohol with a brush to the entire piece, smoothing out the roughness and adding the fine detail

primed this guy

there\’s the war hammer

I\’ve now butchered three dunnys and created the necklace, there\’s the hammer again, I used floss to measure how much vine wire I would need

first coat of acrylic paint, looks like an army man, lol

2nd coat of paint too bring out the highlights, now he\’s looking super glossy, like some gross sweaty troll

added color to the lips and toes

sorry, took no pictures of me painting the hammer

I\’ve added the vine wire and leather

Detective Sam Spade

Following my two recent commissions, the vampire and the artist series suffocating piece, I was asked by the same private collector to create a custom munny with the police officer theme. To be honest, I\’m not a huge fan of police officers especially after my recent experience with jury duty. But after mulling this concept over I did remember one detective that has always arrested my attention. That would be one Sam Spade. Sam Spade is the legendary character from the 1941 film classic, The Maltese Falcon, portraited by one of Hollywood\’s best, Humphrey Bogart. Now in the film, Bogie plays a private detective and not a police officer, but I took some liberty with the character and suggested a Sam Spade from his years prior to his private practice.
The custom was created using a 4\” Mini Munny, wire, polymer clay and acrylic paint.

Ent Munny #2


Check out my latest Munny custom. It\’s a bit different from the last one. I decided I wanted a more childlike face than the tikki one I had done before. I also put more effort into the tree itself. I fashioned this after a real bonsai and I\’m pretty happy with the results. I cut out the belly and made a little world in there. Originally I had planned on making a squirrel to live in there but as this is a mini Munny the squirrel was so tiny I had a hard time with it. It also blocked the view of my cool shrooms which in the end was the deciding factor to leave the guy out. For the colors I also changed things up a bit. Once I finished my sculpt I began planning the colors of the piece. Unlike the awesome painter Bryan Collins, who says he typically thinks of a color scheme before he ever thinks of the concept itself, I generally avoid the color scheme all together and then struggle with it later on. This is something I\’ll eventually(hopefully) get over with time. Anyways, I was looking around to some of the artists I like for a little inspiration and saw on 64 colors site a piece that was all too similar this ent and I was a little disappointed because I really don\’t want to look like I copied anyone else. If I did colors similar to what I had done with my last ent, this would end up way too similar to one of their pieces. So I made sure to avoid using the same colors. For that reason I chose a green scheme. I think this makes it look more like vines than a tree, but what they heck, I like it anyways.

What do you think?