Casper Bedmobile

Casper Bedmobile designed by Eric Winston of 32 Square and, fabricated at FSDS.

There is a still strangeness to mannequins. When we see them in store windows we relate to them in terms of how their clothing fits and how those clothes may fit us but little else. There is almost always a distant neutrality to them. It's as if they are designed to be emotionally disconnected from us and any other mannequins with which the window is shared, regardless of what mood the lighting, background scenery and accessory props are striving to convey. Through all the research, no reclined, interactive poses among mannequins could be found. In my career, I've spent a fair number of years in the figure building industry for both fine art studios and purveyors of museum dioramas. Those figures can be hugely expensive and time consuming and most generally involve life casting real people. This project would have neither that sort of time or budget.

So then, how does one make two stiff figures, lost in utter indifference to one another, embody love and intimacy? I started with a Sawsall and a really long blade and hacked the male figure to pieces. He started out as a seated figure and required merciless amputation of his head, neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, knees and hips. All of those parts were repositioned and fiberglassed back together.
After seeing her mate's brutal butchery only her head and neck required the same savage sort of persuasion in order for her to return such salacious sentiment. When the two seemed sufficiently smitten, they were recessed a couple of inches into their foam block(mattress) to not only create the illusion of a weight unbeknownst to their hollow bodies but, also to allow a fully assembled clearance through NYC tunnels.

The next stage involved plastic wrapping this new romance to keep them bound to one another in their facsimile of feelings and affection but, free from the hard coating that would render their bedding bullet proof.

There are many ways to harden fabrics for sculptural applications. Certain boat epoxies work very well because of their slow setting times that allow the sculptor to style the fabric for up to 2 hours. Polyester resin works as well but is harder to control, sets faster and looks heavy and wetter. As such, Polyester will require more resculpting and lastly, neither of those resins will give you a truly structural surface by themselves. Both will require extensive backfilling with a dense urethane pour foam. IE: more time and materials.

A number of years ago, I worked on a job for MTV. One of it's many props would include a hard coated, old sofa. It was an enormously successful effect. Though the sofa was entirely encapsulated in urethane resin, it looked very natural. Almost every organic nuance of the fabric was telegraphed to the surface of the resin and the finished piece didn't look heavy or wet in any way. Furthermore, once done, you could hit the sofa with a baseball bat and not hurt it. No dense foam backfill required.
The pillow and comforter were styled with the figures in position and hard coated in the same manner with successive misting coats so as not to weigh down the look of the fabrics and then more heavily coated, knowing that fabric was stiff enough to maintain it's intended shapes.

When the hard coating was complete, the comforter was lifted off of the figures like a convertible hard top. The figures were stripped of their protective plastic, painted and dressed in real PJ's. Everything else got painted with nearly no finish work to the hardened fabrics and the whole unit was installed on the top of a Mercedes Sprinter van that was outfitted with a fantastic custom sleeping space inside of it.

This micro mobile pop up stopped crowds and made people double take wherever it went. In fact a tunnel toll taker actually freaked out, believing that this was a publicity stunt with real people on top of the van. For more on this fabulous spectacle, please visit the good folks at SFDS by clicking HERE.

Homer's Dome Comic Con 2014

After I had finished my gig with Kara Walker as lead sculptor for her Domino sugar factory giant sphinx project I received a call from Eric Winston, owner of SFDS. He asked me to come in to discuss a 26' tall Homer Simpson Head that had to appear as if it were buried half way into the ground. It also had to serve an exhibit space inside of it. I was very excited about this prospect for all sorts of reasons. I like doing big sculpture. Kara's piece was 75' long and 35' tall with a head that was 16' from chin to crown, the largest that I had ever carved by far. Homer's head would beat that measurement by a solid 10'. Furthermore, Homer's head would have a 24' diameter, nearly as wide as the building that I live in. In fact, as can be seen in the image to the left, his head in relationship to his full body would put him at roughly 125' in height. He was also going to be an enormously high profile project used as the centerpiece of FOX FX Simpson's world at Comic Con's San Diego Bayside Park. Perhaps what most attracted me to this project was the immensity of his dome and the jigs required to accomplish it. Having done many fairly large foam turnings in my career, I have theorized for years on how to make truly enormous ones on a monumental scale. This was clearly that opportunity. The cherry on top of all of this for me was the chance to do another giant Simpson's project. Way back in 1992, when I was the Chief Sculptor for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the Simpson's were new comers to the cartoon scene, I worked on the creation of a 72' tall Bart Simpson helium inflatable.
As huge as the balloon was, I was only responsible for the 36" 1/24 scale model, it's fiberglass mold and subsequent casts. Though the inflatable was patterned directly from my model, i really didn't have anything to do with the balloons actual fabrication. Homer's head would be a full on, hands on fabrication that would require Eric's entire studio staff for more than a month. It's myriad components would occupy the majority of his 15,000 square foot studio. There would be so many large pieces and parts to this thing. Though Homer's head is composed from some very elemental geometry, cylinders and spheres really, there would be nothing simple about it. The jig for the eyes would be as big as a bathysphere, the jig for the dome sections, the size of a truck. The framing jig was pretty much the same size. The project would require more than 40 blocks of foam, a material that takes up space like no other and 1,200 pounds of hard coat would be used to make the dome sufficiently durable for it's intended purpose of being installed and reinstalled for various events and locations other than Comic Con itself.

 I spent the day before my meeting with SFDS making these sketches in Photoshop and Zbrush in order to better explain how I thought it would be best to proceed. I knew from my last call with Eric that the dome would have to be divided into 12 equal sections that could be nested together for trucking. Since the dome was basically a hemisphere, it was a perfect object for lathing but, of course, no one has or, as far as I know makes a 24' x 12' lathe but, I reckoned, a jig with a pivoting swing arm with a lower following axle could emulate a lathe's basic actions constituting 1/12th of the domes diameter. A bow with a hot wire would be clamped to the swing arm in various descending positions and accomplish the radiuses with about 2 dozen cuts per panel. The Photoshop sketch also illustrates block optimization, a very important thing considering how much foam would be required to create a 6" shell thickness as well as demonstrating that each panel would only have 2 horizontal glue joints.

Aside from being pretty much the last word in organic digital modeling, Zbrush is also excellent for throwing quick shapes around in order to previsualize their relationships. The panel shape is easily seen suspended within the 3  blocks. Anything that wasn't the intended panel would simply have to be cut away. The sketch also shows the basic wing and bed arrangement, both of which would be key in configuring these shapes.

My sketches were more precisely interpreted by Kelsey in both AutoCad and Rhino and then uploaded vector by vector to the CNC machine. The parts were assembled  and the jigs were born.

After the panels were cut on the first jig they were removed and married to the framing in the next jig.

Once framed, each panels interior side was profiled with a single hot wire cut in which the wire followed the framing. This was easily the most gratifying cut in the whole process as it yielded a near perfect curved plane in a single pass.

The eye ball jig was a similar lathing contraption that I've had in my head for years. It worked very much the same way utilizing a pivot and following swing arm in a vertical rather than horizontal orientation.

One of the trickiest cuts involved profiling the eyes to fit flushly against the curved walls that constituted the lower portion of Homer's head. After the eyes had be profiled they were fitted to sections of said curved walls and foam was injected around their perimeters to perfect the fit.

What would Homer's giant head be without a tiny (4'x4'x3') brain inside of it? After dealing with all of the complexities of creating simple shapes, the brain for all of seemingly convoluted complexity, was a delightfully simple, straight forward carve.

When all of the foam parts were completed, they were hard coated, sanded, filled,primed and painted.

Hands down, my favorite aspect of this project was that Homer's Head wasn't merely an enormous site gag on the lawn of San Diego's Bay Front Park, it was a theatre. The inside of Homer's dome was designed and created to serve as an immersive projection mapping screen. In the photo below, technicians and software engineers are working to calibrate and register the 4 projectors required to facilitate a seamless animation over the entirety of the dome's inner surface. The animation itself depicts Homer’s life flashing before his eyes as bits and pieces from every Simpson’s episode that has ever been swirls in extraordinary abstractions to promote Fox FX’s new Everysimponsever app. To see an animation of this please click HERE

This whole thing was a smash hit at Comic Con. There are so many rave reviews of it. It really was a show stopper, and it's all over the internet. It was a wonderful thing to have been so involved with.

For tons of fabulous articles and rave reviews please click HERE

Eric's team is second to none. Every one performed like a rock star from one end of the studio to the other. With major brain power and backs like bulls everyone there worked around the clock, day in, day out to create this wonderously hilarious thing. A first thanks to my team who trudged with me through the foam fabrication from beginning to end. They could not have worked harder. Their dedication and focus blew me away every day. Amanda, Fiona, Daniel, a million thanks to each. Your assistance in this project went beyond the beyond. To Mariana, Scott and Fred. They built the jigs which were nightmarishly complex beyond what most may suppose. Without their perseverance and craft, not a block would be cut. to Kelsey for taking my sketches, scribbles and unmeasured renderings and turning them into vectors that the robot could understand and Dodes for making sure that I would never want for what I needed, you guys are Awesome, as is everyone there. Last and most certainly most, Thanks for providing me with such an amazing sculpture opportunity and trusting in my vision of it's foam fabrications Eric, I'm so looking forward to the next big thing that I work on with you and your amazing studio.

For photos of the full build history please click HERE

For Pinterest gallery please click HERE

Sand Castle Video Cabinet and Play Tables

A Great artist once said "Castles made of sand fall in the sea, eventually". I say, not if they're carved from EPS and coated with an isocyanate polyurethane resin...and installed a fair enough distance from the ocean. Immediately upon the completion of the Dolphin Sofa for SFDS, I went to work on these sand castles. While the basic geometry of these pieces seemed simple enough, their textures demanded a lot of time and attention.

Once the basic shapes were assembled, and the television monitor was properly fitted, all 3 pieces required staggered block patterns. This represents a lot more work than many would guess. The patterns were first measured and drafted over the majority of the surfaces. In the case of the tables, all sides required detail, where as the video cabinet has a smooth back. The drafted patterns were then hot scored into the surfaces and all of the pieces were tied together and further textured with joint compound before hard coating and paint treatments were applied.

The play tables center spaces were filled with sand and sea shells and topped with glass and plexi. The video cabinet was not only fitted with a 52"monitor but an Xbox and other ancillary digital goodies. The sunglass on the far end of this shot sport double monitors (the shades were cut on the CNC machine, I merely glued the parts together and rounded the edges). All of the wonderful stools and beach ball chairs were designed and fabricated by SFDS. In the end an incredible childrens play space was created, one that will host and inspire much joy and laughter for many years to come.

I'd like to further thank Eric Winston and SFDS for providing me with and allowing my use of their images of the pieces installed in their intended environments. Every aspect of working with this fine studio was a pleasure and a privilege. I happily look forward to my next projects with them.

Dolphin Sofa

This first image is the Zbrush model rendered with Keyshot. The following 4 images show the 10"long Shapeways SLS 3d print. As you can see, it's a remarkably true to the model. It does however, have a bit of a tooth to it. Shapeways offers this material polished in a tumbler but, that process is reserved for print outs that are 200mm (about 7.5") or, less. 

 Sofas and couches come in all shapes and size but, this was a new one for me. I was contacted by Eric Winston, owner of SFDS, a fantastic, 15,000 square foot scene fabrication/design studio in the heart of Greenpoint Brooklyn. Eric needed among some other wonderful elements, a 10’ long, hand carved dolphin sofa for the Marriott Vacation Club in Newport Coast CA. I jumped at the chance. I’d been wanting to do a crazy sofa for as long as I could remember. I’ve done all sorts of crazy chairs, tables, cabinets and beds for as long as I’ve been sculpting but, in all of the that time, never a sofa. Eric cleared a huge room for me to sculpt it in. His excellent fabrication staff built a hotwire table for me from no more than one of my napkin sketches and boom, it began.

Half way into the carve, Eric's studio was visited by Mario Marsicano from Jellio. I've worked with Jellio on a number of interesting projects. I knew that Eric did projects with Jellio but, I didn't know that the sofa was one of them. There were so many diverse projects going on in the studio at the time, 2 major stage sets, a big job for instagram, giant wooden dinosaur assemblies, all sorts of different furniture designs, as far as I knew I was sculpting Eric and the Marriott. Finding out that this was for Jellio once my hands were already deeply into it was an additional bonus. For more with Jellio, click on the following links.
Gummi King
Ice Cream That You Can Sit On
King Kong

Eric's 5 year old angel, Ella.

 The above images show the sofa from various angles, carved, filled and ready for hard coating. The project progressed at a very fast rate due in largest part to my having figured out the sculpture in Zbrush. I have always done models in the past for larger sculpts. The luxury of doing models in Zbrush, as opposed to a more traditional clay approach is that you end up with a model that is not only more easily editable but, all of my build elevations were derived from it as well. The elevations were simply projected onto the block from different sides and the sculpture was immediately roughed out, top to bottom, side to side, front to back.

An astute eye may notice that the sofa against the grid only measures 9'. In order to increase the seating area, during the projection, the length of the sofa would be stretched to 10'. As a result, everything changed a bit but, all for the better. In a very long career, this was well worth the wait. In the wonderful world of fanciful furniture, this is an example as fabulously fun as you could hope to fathomably find.