The Wolfman

Generally, I work with DST differently from any other client. They bring me on as a development studio rather than merely a sculpting and prototyping vendor, so I’m able to pitch ideas and drive the project in interesting directions. After my initial excitement at hearing DST wanted me to contribute to their new Universal monsters 7” line up, I kind of sat back and thought, now what?  It’s not like these characters haven’t been done over and over. I went ahead and began looking at a lot of the action figure and statue interpretations that had been done and I kept coming back to how I was introduced to the characters as a 6 or 7 year old. Aside from the old movies playing on TV fairly regularly, there were the Aurora models arguably, the most iconic collectible representation of the characters (if not the likenesses) ever done. My first discussion with DST was how they felt about an amalgam of articulated action figure and a dynamic pose. As always they were receptive to what I suggested but wanted to make sure that what I had in mind would fit with the work that had already been started by one of my former McFarlane cellmates Rudy Garcia. In order to get an idea of where to begin, I had them send me shots of Rudy’s Monsters with a ruler so I could scale my figures to his established scale.

In term’s of implementing the idea of dynamic pose really mostly affected how I wanted to portray the Wolfman, in an attacking stance. I roughed out a lunging pose and shot that for DST’s guys to chew on  and they green lit it.

A couple of notes here, aside from dynamic anime chick statues, I HATE when an action figure is married to the base and I don’t want to be stuck with some one else’s lame idea of a cool pose if it’s a character I like. So, number one I wanted him to come off the base and stand independently, so he had to stand flat footed and I kept the dynamic aspect mostly in the pre-posed legs with the upper body containing the articulation from the waist up. This also meant compromising between a super crouched extreme pose and something more upright that would allow me to maintain the figure’s center of gravity for balance.  The base itself should provide enough atmosphere and perceived value with its size and detail without adding unreasonably to the production cost  of the piece.

The base itself should provide enough atmosphere and perceived value with its size and detail without adding unreasonably to the production cost  of the piece.

As far as expression I wanted something more bestial than is usually done with Larry so I screen-capped a few frames out of the scene where he gets his foot caught in the wolf trap.

And then the finished clay…

Universal revisions were fairly painless:
See pose Photo_WM1 from the style guide. His hair is off model. It slightly tapers outward from the ears up and is not as high as the hair on the model.
His chin also extends slightly more downward to a point. It is not as rounded as the model is.
His nose looks too large at the end of the model.

And the paint master…

View the full Wolfman in Progress Gallery!

The Bride
Elsa Lanchester was a singular beauty, huge dark eyes, full lips, dimpled chin, and yet almost a comic book beauty with the striking aspects of her facial structure. Unfortunately, the one licensor comment on the figure was that use of her likeness not included in the deal. Consequently, despite pulling off a pretty fair likeness she had to be transformed into an idealized beauty rather than the actual actress.
For the bride’s pose I decided to convey grace and sensuality to add appeal to the figure and allowed indication of the rib cage and female form to show through her wrappings. Elbow articulation to be added  in addition to the head and shoulder ball joints and waist turn.

I wanted to have layers on the figure so the robe is a separate pvc sleeve that can be removed to show the bandaged body.  I am not a fan of gimmicky fabrics and textures on sculpture for their own sake, but I did want to find something that would add to the detail of the figure and the “B” representation of her, aka. without the robe. To that end I used a fabric tape that I overlapped and frayed a bit and it reproduced beautifully when cast up.

The Robe I shaped out of sheet wax initially and added my own castiline-wax hybrid on top to finish.

The base is a simple stone floor, I took some artistic license and varied the stone sizes and cut it in a jigsaw pattern to make it more interesting. The posts are actually situated in front of her resurrection table in the movie and the chains and wrappings add a nice contrast to the stone floor without adding considerably to the overall production cost.

Finished clays for submission to Universal…

Revised head- removed chin dimple, made eyes less prominent softened jowl area to genericize face.

Paint master….
For the colors we decided to play up the contrast between slightly dingy yellowed bandages and the pure white robe, and being a non portrait head bring some comic book to it with an accent on the widow’s peak and the paler skin tone.

View the Bride’s In Progress Gallery!