THE WORKSHOP – Wee Zombie Bashing Bat – by Goatbot/Simon

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Knives

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! If you’re lonely and sad today.. take heart! A new Workshop awaits!

What a treat today is… A little back history first. When I first got into collecting 3A, I remember seeing all these pictures of Tommy Mission figures holding these awesome little baseball bats. They all had different decals, witty scribe.. some had blood splatters, nicks/scratches etc. I ordered my first Tommy fully expecting to have some variant packed in with him. To my surprise, no bat.. just a dumb glowing hand (kidding?). After a smidge of digging I came to learn that these amazing little things were handmade by a fellah who, going completely off his various forum names, seems to have an intense, yet healthy fascination with goats.

Huge thank you to Simon/Goatbot/Goatballs/Goaty for this fantastic workshop! He was kind enough to create not just one, but TWO different tutorials for us! The second we plan to post later in the week. This one is the most complex yet and you get play to play with power tools. Please be safe and don’t poke your eye out kid!

– Knives

Howdy folks, must be a slow news week as Knives has very kindly asked me to provide him with a tutorial or two… you lucky people .. its a big honor to have been asked so thanks mush.

To the bat tutorial then..

For those of you who feel the need for some blunt force trauma in your lives, nothing says emo better than 3 foot of hickory planted firmly in the jacobs… hopefully this tutorial will make enough sense so ye can make your very own baseball bat…

This is a wee bit more demanding and requires you have a few tools laying about but if you can do it, anything goes.

Materials :

power drill, cordless preferred unless ye have a bench vice or indeed a wood lathe (I use an 18v hitachi cordless impact driver drill)
fine toothed saw ( gents, mitre etc )
wood rasp
small hobby files or a dremel
sandpaper or better still aluminium oxide cloth 80 , 120, 240 grit should do it
12 mm HARDWOOD doweling , available in most hardware stores and model hobby shops. Ye can use lengths of twig, sticks etc but this will make th job way harder..
electrical tape, medical tape etc ( for the grip )
paint, pens, decals
bees wax or spray varnish
COMMON SENSE
dust mask
Well ventilated work space

Okay this my method only ! Those of ye with better tools and workspaces will no doubt adapt accordingly, I apologize for the picture quality as it was cold and no one was willing to take pics of me making toy bats… bastards..

Also a shout out to dedguy for inspiration and for making bats look so frick’n cool

To start off with I find it best to sit on a wee box or something low to the floor with materials and tools close to hand. Then I measure and cut how many bats I want to make..the bat should be around 13.5 – 14 cms but the over all length ye want to work with should be about 17 cm.. The remainder should be enough to fit snugly into the chuck of the drill . Bats come in all shapes and sizes so decide on the look ye want before hand. I make bats of differing styles and also of differing handle widths to accommodate various hand sculpts. Note its better to go too thin as ye can always bulk out the handle with “grip tape”. After inserting the wood into the chuck, engage the power to see how well the woods been seated… if its off it will wobble alarmingly.. just re-house it until it spins ” true” .

I then put the drill on the floor and brace it with a well planted foot across the battery housing ( as per the picture above) when its stable, select th speed ye require ( higher speeds work best) and away ye go .

With one hand operating th drill trigger I use the wood rasp to waste away the rough shape of the bat. I work on the opposite side of the wood to where I’m positioned taking care not to impose too much pressure on the wood..

Working your way from the chuck to the end of teh bat will have the best results but be wary of lingering too long in one spot lest ye thin it out too much.

I work my way up from the chuck end along th barrel of the bat a couple of times then stop to see how I’m doing… if I’m satisfied I’ll take a sheet of abrasive paper 80 – 120 grit, fire up the drill again and use th paper to smooth and shape teh bat to the required shape and finish.

BE CAREFUL HERE .. you can grip th bat with the paper but be aware that it can snap if your grips too tight, also the transferred heat can cause nasty friction burns to you if yer not careful… try explaining that to your girl friend or nearest medical professional.

I usually leave the grip end until last as this reduces th likelihood of it snapping at the weakest point. I use a wee elliptical metal file to flare out the bottom of the handle and to create the hand stop at the end taking care to thin out the wood below the knob so as to make cutting off the wood sprue neater and easier.

Once yer satisfied ye can take the bat out, cut it off at the base and sand the base and top of the bat by hand .. If I’ve done this properly ye should now be teh proud owner of a 1/6 scale baseball bat !

or have a fine toothpick…

or maybe a burnt hand full of splinters.

Once yer done with this part its then up to you on finishing touches. I usually polish the wood with beeswax, paint it if required, then add weathering and teh odd nick or scratch before a final coat of varnish .

Your AK crew is now tooled up and ready to roam the streets..or your shelves, doling out righteous woody justice !

Thats it …done and dusted.

Many thanks for your time and patience and a huge props to Rad Toy Review.

cheers !

We hope you enjoyed this Workshop. Check back later in the week as we bring you another from the mighty Goat!

We’d love to hear from you here, on our Facebook or Twitter page. We’d love for you to share with us your own customs. Let us know how we’re doing and what kind of workshops you’d like to see.

THE WORKSHOP – F_SEBS “Rusting with gusto”

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Knives

Today we have an all new workshop from F_Seb who many of you may be familiar with from his fantastic modeling, painting and character customization work. He’s gonna hold your hand and guide you through the steps he took to get some killer looking realistic rust fx on his BA custom bot. (Which had me asking, where’s the tutorial on THAT?) I know you’ll enjoy it and I think you’ll come out the other side a little more enlightened. Cheers!

– Knives

Hi all!! Before starting this custom, I had never successfully created any rusty effects as we can see on some tutorials. I’d read and tried the “salt layer” trick once a few months ago and the result was bad. I couldn’t get it to look right. I screwed up somewhere along the way I think. So on a whim, I decided to try a similar technique, but this time with sand..

Why?? I don’t really know why. At first, I didn’t think the result would be what I desired, but in the end it didn’t seem like such a bad idea. I’d made a few modifications to this little Armstrong, so it was necessary to paint it to make it more seamless.

1.I used spray paint (mtn94 is my favorite, low pressure) for the base layer. I wanted a brown color as you can find in rust. I waited a little bit until it’s completely dry and used hairspray to stick the sand. The sand I used is the same of that you might find in a Japanese garden for interior design, it’s very thin and perfect for the scale. I did several spots of hairspray and then applied sand to it. You can choose to put as much sand as you like. Variety of amount here will give you variety in texture later.

2. Once the sand is fully dry in place, I painted another layer this time in light grey. This is the color the bot might have been when it was fresh off the factory floor/clean. Note: If you have different base colors for different parts of the bot (ie: red arms, blue legs) just paint those parts accordingly.

3. Alright, let’s go to make-a-the-rust, or something like that!! So, here I used only two colors, Vallejo Clear Orange (70.956) and Liquitex black mars to get various browns and oranges. I then stamp on some more sand with a flat pencil to make irregular spots as well as do some dry brushing on the edge of the rust zone. Don’t forget to do random mixes of paint, it’s more beautiful with nuances.

If you’re wondering why I started by painting the whole bot brown in the 1st step, you should start to see the reason for it here. As the sand gets knocked off while you dry brush and stamp you’ll notice under the color is the nice rusty brown giving the effect of rusted steel. You can knock bits and pieces of sand off where you please to make little spots of under painted brown rust. Again more texture, more variety.

4. OK, here I use Tamiya paint X26 orange clear and the same mix of paints I did for the rust spots (Vallejo Clear Orange (70.956) and Liquitex black mars) To get the runny rust look, I take a round pencil and I drop a tiny bit of water to make “roads” running down the body of the bot. Immediately afterwards I drop a gout of very diluted paint. It will follow the road, leaving just a little color. Redo that step until it gives you the desired effect. Note: starting with a clear water “road” instead of simply using very diluted paint ensures that the drip goes where you wish without any risk of it running over something you didn’t intend it to.

5. Now you can do some dry brush with a metallic paint (for me Tamiya chrome silver) which gives a nice scratched metal effect. You can also experiment with different ideas that mimic real world aged metal. Burn spots, oil leaks, etc.. Apply your paints in light layers and build them up until you’ve reached the desired look.

We hope you enjoyed the workshop. You can check out more of F_Sebs amazing work on his blog: http://sebscustoms.blogspot.com/. We’d love to hear from you here, on our Facebook or Twitter page. Let us know how we’re doing and what kind of workshops you’d like to see.

Happy rusting folks 🙂

THE WORKSHOP – WWWETWORKS “SHIRT DECALS”

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Knives

WWWetworks is back with another great tutorial for The Workshop. Carlo breaks down the step by step process on getting your own pimp decals laid down on some tiny cotton T’s (or undies, jorts, tube tops, etc..)

Enjoy!

– Knives

PART 1: PREPARATION

Ok first you have to choose the image that you would like to put as a decal, in my case I found an image of lasstranaut and make sure that it’s above 500px so your image will be crisp and detailed.

Once you have an image ready, you will have to edit it in Photoshop by cropping the picture. In this example, I managed to separate the image and added a black background, so why black? because the shirt that I will be using is black, you should always remember to use the color of the shirt, etc. red shirt = red background. This is crucial especially if you have a very complex and small image with a lot of details. In this case I didn’t have to cut away all the inner parts of the picture because it already had a black background. Convenient and makes the process much easier. Once you’re done adjusting, just save it out as a jpeg or tiff.

Ok, in the next step you will need to measure the area on the shirt on which you will lay down the image, in my case its 6cm x 9cm.

Now open Illustrator and draw a box with a 6cm x 9cm measurement and place/import the image into the workspace.

Scale down your image and place it inside the square, the square is your guide so make sure your image does not exceed the given area.

Now you’r ready to print. There are two types of iron-on papers, light for light colored fabric and dark for dark colored fabric. In this case, I printed the image using transfer paper for “DARK” fabrics. Make sure you set the paper quality to “BEST” to get a high grade print.

Now you’re decal is ready to be applied.

PART 2: APPLYING THE DECAL

Now that you have your decal printed out, cut the black background leaving at least a 1mm margin.

This is another critical part because most folks don’t know that you have to peel the back of the paper before ironing it into the shirt

Position your decal carefully and grab a piece of onion skin paper (most iron-on papers come with this inside their pack).

Put the onion skin paper above the decal and set the dial of your iron to “cotton”.

Once the iron is ready, press it against the onion skin paper for a maximum of 10 seconds. Make quick presses to the sides and be careful not to burn your decal.

This is what it looks like with the onion skin paper after ironing. CAUTION! VERY IMPORTANT! DO NOT TAKE THE ONION SKIN PAPER OFF THE SHIRT WHILE IT’S HOT!!

Allow it cool down for a few minutes and you will see that the paper will actually start to detach from decal pretty easily.

Now you’re done! Here is the final piece, I added an acrylic wash to the decal and some weathering to help blend it in with the rest of the figure. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, cheers!

Custom TK by wwwetworks

Thank you Carlo! New Workshop tutorials soon! Follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook to stay updated!

Artist Spotlight – Chris Moore of “We Become Monsters”

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Knives

Today’s a pretty exciting day. We have our first Artist Spotlight post featuring Chris Moore of webcomemonsters.com. I want to thank Chris for taking the time to do this interview and for sending a skelechub for me play with! Don’t leave just yet, but do check out Chris’online store where you can grab one of his gruesome creations AND save a little money with the coupon code 2012die now through the end of January.

– Knives

Let’s kick things off formally, tell the world your name and a little about yourself.

C – Sure, my name is Chris Moore. I’ve done art in some form or another pretty much all my life. My training and degree was centered around industrial design, prop construction, and makeup FX. I currently work 8-5 doing tech work for a huge corporation, then come home and try to cram in 4-6 hours on toys. Luckily I have a very supportive wife!

I have one of those too, don’t know what I’d do without her. How long have you been making your own toys and what started you down that path?

C – I guess I really started making ‘stuff’ while living in Los Angeles. I had been there for a few years, didn’t really do much in the way of FX work, had not worked on my portfolio and generally didn’t touch art anymore outside of some doodling. I had always collected toys to some degree and then stumbled upon some Medicom Freddy Kruger and Alien Real Action Hero at a toy store. Well holy shit – I couldn’t believe there was an old school Gi Joe style Freddy and Alien doll. Keep in mind this is before Hot Toys, or even BBI / Dragon, as far as I am aware. From there I got into 1/6^th a bit, and my other big toy love, Chogokin. I don’t care for anime but give me some brightly colored goofy looking robots and I’m a happy guy. Anyways, back to 1/6^th, I loved that Freddy, nobody was making zombies at the time, so I made myself a few for my collection. I think I have something like 30 now, packed into 2 shelves of a Detolf. I needed a horde, and I wanted them unique. I dabbled in this fashion for years, just creating for myself. Over the years people had continually asked if I sold them and my response was always ‘Well then *I* wouldn’t have them anymore, so what is the the point?’ I had no desire to share my stuff if I didn’t get one – these were all made for me. Someone eventually directly asked for a commission, and it was hard to argue that – I’d be making it from day one for someone else, so I wouldn’t have any feeling of loss as the toy was never ‘mine’. Odd distinction, I know, but it was a requirement for me, for whatever reason. After that and getting into buying other indie toys, I saw that the process used for these small run resin toys were exactly what I went to school for, and then something clicked – I can use the skills I already knew to make my own stuff, keep it, AND share it with other people. I sold a bunch of my collection, bought some equipment and started working around July of 2011. First release was December of that same year.

Can you talk about your technique at all? Your Process? Do you do all the creations yourself beginning to end?

C – I do make them from beginning to end. A few started with a sketch – something I want to try to force myself to do more often as it helps you sculpt faster if you are not designing on the fly. Basically, I sculpt in Magic Sculpt and Sculpey Firm, depending on what I’m working on. Then I make my mold out of Silicone and start casting. I are just about done with a pressure tank setup as well, so no more wasted resin trying to get bubble free pours, and I should be able to do crystal clear resins and use some fun additives (GITD, Color changing, beads). Once the Casting is cured, I demold and do some clean up with a knife – nearly took my thumb off in October doing this, which delayed series 1 to December. After demolding and cleanup, the pieces need washed of mold release and then once dry, painted. I really do want to do some collaborations as well, though.

Where did the idea for your creations come from, what’s their story?

C – I’m no writer, so there isn’t much of a storyline to them. I just like monsters. I guess it’s more of a Secret Base thing, where it is just a slew of weird creatures, than a Three A thing, where there are comics providing a backstory. I can be somewhat self-critical, so I think this may be a safety mechanism – if I grew to dislike a backstory, no matter how happy I was with the figure, I’d grow to hate the actual toy. I’m much less confident in my writing than in my more physical art skillset. I think a story would make them easier to market in some ways, but I’m terrible at self promotion and have plenty of other areas to improve there without the additional issues I’d give myself trying to tie these guys together or flesh out why or how a fat skeleton slug thing can even exist. I’ll leave that up to the owners.

How many different varieties of monsters do you have currently in production?

C – Produced and in the store, we have Skelechub, Skellafella, Footlie, Stumple and Birddog. Currently in production for Series 2, I’ve got a new variation of Skelechub (new sculpt) a budget figure named Ghasp, and 2 others.

Where do you hope to see “We Become Monsters” in say, 10 years? What are some aspirations/plans for your future toys?

C – I’d love to quit my day job, but if that can’t happen in 10 years or ever, I’ll keep going. I’d *REALLY* like to do some sofubi style vinyl stuff but the barrier to entry is way too high for me right now, cost-wise. So what I’m doing is sticking with resin, for now, and experimenting with materials and articulation. I do feel there has to be a garage castable material out there somewhere that could be close to vinyl – I need to grab a new Burman Foam catalog and dig around a bit. I may take a stab at glass or concrete work as well – a combo of those with the cold cast metals I’m already using could allow for some interesting higher tier pieces.

What other designers/artist are you inspired by?

C – Whew, I’m going to miss a ton, but here we go: Secret Base, Gargamel, Super 7, Pushead, October toys, We Kill You, Monsterforge, H_X, Plaseebo, Defiance Speed, Emily Slade, Dave Webb..

.. and anyone I ever see making resins or customs and trying to get them out in the wild. There is so much amazing work out there. Almost everyone is super helpful too – best two tips for anyone thinking of trying this is ask for help – you will get it, and WEAR A RESPIRATOR.

Indeed! OK, changing gears a little.. Star Wars or Star Trek and Why?

Star Trek, original series. It is timeless and always hilarious. Seriously, it is amazing comedy. I like SW just fine, it just is not funny and comedy always wins.

You get one super power for a single day, what would it be and what would you do while you had it?

This is rough, I’d want a package option, picking just one is hard. I’ll go with teleportation, just for the cheap travel and awesome toy shopping and food in other cities. I love Tokyo, so eating lunch there everyday would be awesome.

Me, I’d have chosen the power to print money… and bacon.

Chris, it’s been fun. Thanks for your time and for sending me a Skelechub to play around with. Where can folks go if they want to procure one of your creations themselves?

The website, www.webecomemonsters.com has official release information and the store, for anyone who wants to see updates and WIP pics, they can find me on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/WeBecomeMonsters . Finally they can also follow us on twitter at @webecomemonster.