modernwizard | Entries tagged with peter

I finally got the wheels for Peter's walker in the mail today, ordered from a supplier of remote-control vehicles and supplies, RC Planet. I mounted one wheel on each foot of the walker with a piece of plastic-coated wire hot glued in a hole that I drilled through the side of each leg.

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Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/952302.html

I decorated Walker 3.0 with lots of black electrical tape and some black craft foam for the seat cushion. Besides breaking up the glaring expanses of fluoro orange, the electrical tape suggests joints or sockets, adding to the impression of a piece of equipment constructed from various bars. The black also stands out vividly on the orange field, attracting the eye and thus drawing attention away from the uneven texture.

To make the walker even more useful, I added a basket and a purse-like bag so that Peter can hold stuff. Now that it looks less like a horrible failure and more like a mobility aid customized by one of my favorite Zville denizens, I feel more well disposed toward the walker. Still needs wheels though...
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Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/948512.html

Five months ago, I received the 1:6 scale walker pieces that Batchix printed out for me. However, I was so bitter about my earlier failures that I just glared resentfully at the pieces for the next five months. I did not look forward to the assembly -- what with removing flash, drilling, pinning and gluing, I anticipated another messy failure and even greater bitterness.

I overcame my grudge last night to begin work on Walker 3.0. Batchix helpfully provided blueprints, some of which are shown below, to aid me in assembly:
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Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/948270.html

Sure, I have a wonderful little Rement gumball machine that I could use on the counter of Peter's resale shop, Rumpy Pumpy. However, as much as I love Rement, I love even more the satisfaction of finding a Valentine's candy dispenser for 88 cents the day after Valentine's and quickly repurposing it into a gumball machine that I customized by my very own self.

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Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/911868.html

Yes! After long last, Peter finally has a functioning walker that actually looks like a walker. This evening I glued the front bars on, hitching up the two side pieces. I then added the tires.

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Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/871991.html

Here's Peter showing off my latest attempt at his walker. Instead of making a walker with a seat, I'm just making a walker with a metal frame and wheels on the ends of the legs. Side frames are made out of wire coat hangers, with side supports out of 3/16" diameter dowel pieces, held in place by my best friend hot glue. I plan to prime and spray paint this all black tomorrow.

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Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/866517.html

I had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to fill the Rement Beauty Counter with bags. I have very few purses and such.

I am thinking of making Rumpy Pumpy a general secondhand store selling cool stuff. Then I could use some of my interesting accessories that otherwise would never appear.

In any case, I have to change the title of the Beauty Counter.

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Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/844829.html

Reduced the back of his skull globe and lengthened his legs back to original length.

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Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/838632.html

Here's Peter with the Rement Beauty Counter that I got in the mail yesterday. It's too short to be set on the floor as is.
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Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/838190.html

I raised it up higher by not gluing the wheels so far up the chair legs. I also removed the default plastic front cross brace and added double front wheels. Walker is now about 1cm taller [and so is Peter, for that matter, making him more proportional, thank God!].

This project is giving me so much grief. -_-

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Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/828387.html

More correctly, I should say that Peter has been altered to fit the walker. I took at least 2cm, possibly a bit more, out of both his thighs and his ankles. Yes, I am aware that he now looks ungainly, with long arms, massive hands and short legs. I'm okay with that. Very few people have idealized proportions. ^_^

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Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/821549.html

Here's Peter with the latest iteration of the walker in progress. I added a front cross brace and handlebars this weekend. They are made out of 8 gauge solid copper, which I bent with the help of a hammer and lots of cursing.

As you can see, the walker is too short. The handles should be as high as the creases in his wrists. I have spent so much time on this damn thing that, at this point, it will be easier to make Peter shorter than to reconfigure his walker. >:[

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Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/821482.html

I swapped them out for the Sideshow Dead Punk's. I have yet to paint his skull ring because I don't have any silver paint.

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Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/816694.html

...put Peter's original knobby, beringed hands on his new body? His current hands, Obitsu slender male defaults, are tubular, lacking in detail and completely flat. They have about as much individuality as hot dogs. :[

Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/816410.html

It's like Pilgrim's Progress, only less allegorical and more tedious.

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Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/816234.html

Painted skull globe and mouth corner, refined faceup around eyes and nose, started doing faceup around mouth. I especially like his genial smile.

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Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/816029.html

Filled in the crease at right of lower lip, sanded out divot in chin, added height to skull globe, started faceup. If you refer back to the faceup concept from a few days ago, you can see that he's looking similar, with allowance for added scribbling.

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Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/815795.html

Filled in more divots around skull, blended brow ridge further into forehead, smoothed out eye sockets, narrowed nasal bridge, added and refined nostril wings. Area where bottom lip meets chin and area around tip of chin still need work. Almost there!
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Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/815546.html

Filled in the deep creases on forehead and cheeks, as well as where jaw joins neck under ears [not shown in this photo]. Cheeks and jaw/neck joins actually look pretty good. Forehead still needs some filling in, and I haven't even gotten to the nasal bridge yet. I'm pleased with the progress, however.
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Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/813297.html

Here's Peter after I bulked out his chin more last night, then painted him all the same color so I could more easily see what work needs to be done.

Yes, the forehead clearly needs work!!!

Before sanding:

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Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/812503.html

He's undergone so many permutations, none of which have satisfied me. Friday night I had the sad epiphany that he needed a resculpt. I've tried a bazillion times to work with the Sideshow The Dead Punk headsculpt, and it continues to fail me.

I decided to try one last time, though, and strip the paint off his head, hands and torso. After untold hours and repeated applications of Pebeo, he was mostly paint-free. I then realized with dismay that the head's built-in woeful expression will never accurately capture Peter, who is friendly, even-tempered and relatively content.

Looked online briefly to find a bald male head with a neutral expression. Unfortunately, most male action figures look grim and constipated [grim because constipated?] and they have hair, so I could only find ones that were either bald/constipated or hairy/neutral, not bald/neutral. I gave up.

I looked through my drawer of extra bodies and heads. I procured a Triad Lola head, which I originally bought in 2009 for its "sarcastic expression," and plopped it on an Obitsu Slim Male body. I really like the sharp features here, as well as the deep-set, baggy eyes and the creases between the corners of the nose and lips.
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Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/810968.html

About six months after I acquired a base for a 1:6 scale walker for Peter, I'm finally assembling it. Here's its current status.
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Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/798146.html

Isabel:( Read more... )

Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/780478.html

Awesomeness has been achieved! The light blue reflects light, rather than eating it, while the added color makes him look more cheerful. Such an improvement from the black T-shirt!

( The man looks like an Easter egg... )

Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/758121.html

Why can't I get you right? I scraped off all of Peter's lumpy, indistinct eye paint this afternoon and redid his eyes yet again. I also styled his mohawk with diluted glue so that it stands in the appropriate position.

Peter is really hard to photograph. His dark skin and his black T-shirt just absorb light. I think I need to change his shirt.

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Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/757775.html

I made some 1:6 scale spaghetti this week. At first I coveted Rement's Fun Meals #8, Spaghetti and Meatballs, but it's out of print and running at ridiculous prices on Ebay. I am not paying $20.00 for a plate of plastic spaghetti! I don't even pay that much for a plate of real spaghetti.

Anyway, I decided to make my own. I mixed up some yellowish tan polymer clay and rolled it into a long thin string. The I swirled the string into a pile and cured it. After curing, I added sauce. The lumpy consistency of the acrylic paint worked in my favor, giving the appearance of tomato chunks and possibly pieces of ground beef.
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Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/748616.html

A smallipop, of course!

I finished making a bunch of 1:6 scale lollipops last night and tonight by modifying a tutorial by Linda Chang on WonderHowTo. She uses polymer clay for both lollipop sticks and the candy parts themselves, but I used toothpicks painted white, trimmed down and sealed with matte varnish for my sticks. I also lacked any colors of polymer clay besides white, so I tinted my clay with shaved chalk pastels, which worked really well! I was able to get surprisingly vivid colors, especially in my second batch of pops [red/white/purple].

These smallipops were really fun to make because they required very little effort to create a really cool spiral/swirl effect. My favorite smallipops are the green/yellow/white swirls and the red/purple/white ball pop.

Here's Peter and Isabel showing off my smallipops. I love taking pictures of both of them because they have so much expressiveness in their faces. Peter's all "Oh shit!" and Isabel's all "No shit." ( Read more... )

Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/744357.html

Ever since I got the idea for Zombieville to start by Isabel losing her left eyeball, I've been wondering how this would affect her ability to drive a car. From what I can tell, people with monocular vision can still drive in Vermont if they have a certain level of vision in their remaining eye. I have no idea what that level of vision is, however.

Anyway, I initially made the assumption that Isabel's newly acquired monocular vision would require her to give up her car and depend on public transit, a complicated proposition in Vermont. Chittenden County Transportation Authority runs a network of buses throughout the county [yay!], but they all center on downtown Burlington and are scheduled mainly to serve first-shift commuters [boo!]. I was hoping to dedicate at least one subplot to the challenges of being a carless and disabled bus rider.

Even though people with monocular vision may be able to drive in this state in certain circumstances, I think I'll still have Isabel get rid of her car. She and Peter are going to get into a minor accident, which is how they meet and how she starts becoming part of the Zombieville community.

Naturally, in order to have a car crash, Isabel and Peter need to have cars. Great...more 1:6 scale shit. :p

Given my limited storage space and photography area, as well as my penchant for compact cars, I decided that they both drive really small cars. It would be unutterably cool to find a 2009 Toyota Corolla in 1:6 scale and spray paint it silver to make a miniature version of the FLE car. I don't think those are made in cheap playline versions, though.

Cheap playline versions exist, however, of VW Bugs and Smart Fortwos. The first can be found on Ebay with a search under "barbie volkswagen beetle," and they even come in non-pink options! [The pink option appears to be currently in print and therefore much cheaper, though, at least on Amazon. However, deboxed ones in all colors can be had quite inexpensively on Ebay.] The second can be found on Ebay with a search under "moxie girls rc car." You can also find it for rip-off prices on Amazon. Reviews say that it's crappily made, but I don't need it to function as an RC toy. I just need it to sit there and look minorly damaged. Even if it's a little small [as playline cars tend to be], it will still work.

So apparently now my dolls drive cars. Uh oh. Look out, world. If you see a little fat doll with a little wry smirk driving a little Smart Car...for God's sake, tell her to get something more practical! Smart Cars, being small and light, are a ridiculous choice for transportation in a state that regularly contends with mushy, sloppy, heavy snow. :p

Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/727672.html

Here's Peter with a Band-Aid, a gauze bandage and new purple nail polish.( Read more... )

Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/726111.html

It's constructed, as usual, entirely from faux fur and HOT GLUE. Having perfected my pattern before dinner, I made another wig after dinner for Novella in the colors that I originally intended for her: pink base, with spikes of neon green and royal purple. I like it much better than the black-based one.

As you can see, awesomeness has now been achieved.

( Prepare yourself! )

I just hit LuxuryFauxFur, distinctivefabric.com's Etsy outpost, for 13 more 3 x 5" swatches of faux fur, setting me back a whole $3.60. Now that I have a working wig pattern, I can get about 3 1:6 scale wigs to a swatch, which means that I will soon have way more faux fur than I will ever need. But you can never have too many swatches of cool fabric. Coming to me eventually are the following:

Tricolor zigzag stripes in the following combinations: black/purple/turquoise, pink/neon green/royal purple, pink/black/red.
Two-color blends in the following combinations: black/magenta, black/grey, black/reddish tan.
Tricolor spiked shag fur [of the style used above] in the following combinations: brown/black/green, brown/black/red, brown/black/light blue, black/blue/purple, neon green/pink/royal purple, red/blue/green, red/blue/black.

I'm very curious to see how the zigzag patterns work out in a small wig.

Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/723361.html

In case you haven't noticed, Peter has been modeling most of my recent 1:6 scale accessories and set pieces. That's because he's the only finished Zombieville denizen of average height that I can stand. Both of these qualifiers are important, because Béatrice is finished, but she has dwarfism, so she's not as easy a reference as a Zombieville denizen of average height. Theophany is finished, but her personality annoys me too much to let her in pictures frequently.

Other Zombieville denizens exist, but they are not ready for modeling:

Anna needs her hair finished. I'm having an epic fight with it, to be detailed later.
Carter needs a headback, a custom body constructed [fat doll!], faceup, eyes, hair and clothes.
Chaz needs faceup and hair.
Isabel needs a custom body constructed [fat doll!], faceup, eyes, hair and clothes.
Novella needs faceup, eyes and hair.

Okay...anyway...here's Peter showing off the blender that I got from stupid.com. It started off as an Xmas ornament, hence the little metal loop at the top. It's a solid piece of painted resin, 2 inches high, which scales out to 1 foot in 1:6 scale. There are no removable parts, but it's well sculpted. I also may be biased toward it because its design reminds me of the blender in my kitchen growing up. ( Read more... )

Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/721777.html

I just used one of my scraps of faux fur to replace Peter's molded plastic mohawk with a fiber one. Much better!
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Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/721484.html

My package from stupid.com, containing a toilet and a blender, arrived the day before Xmas. Finally got around to playing with the toilet today.
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Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/721251.html

I finished shelving books on my 1:6 scale bookcase made from a repurposed drawer organizer. A shipment of premade dummies in two sizes arrived today from Factory Direct Crafts, so I spent from about 1:30 to 9:00 PM [with a break for an appointment, a brief trip to the grocery store and dinner] completing the project.

I'm not the sort of person who feels the need to scan actual books and print out their covers in 1:6 scale for a library appropriate to each character. However, I was dissatisfied with the plain, undifferentiated spines in the earlier iteration of the bookcase. I spent most of those hours creating unique dummies with the help of solid origami paper, patterened origami paper and gift tag stickers with vaguely Xmas- and winter-related patterns.

I also endeavored to arrange them in an aesthetically pleasing fashion, representing a variety of heights and colors, as real bookshelves do. Then I glued them into blocks of several books, but these blocks are not glued to the shelves. Instead they are kept in there by the fact that everything is wedged so tightly. I'm sure there's a technical term for that, but it escapes me at the moment.

Anyway, behold the bookcase! Though it's currently displaying Peter's interest [flora], this bookcase, like pretty much in my collection of 1:6 scale set pieces, will be used wherever a full, well-used library is needed. In fact, the shelves with the flowers and lava lamp I have intentionally left open so that their contents can reflect the bookcase's current owner: cacti for Peter [have to make some of those], 1:6 scale figures for Ellery or Isabel, zombie dolls for Theophany, mementos mori for Lucian, etc.

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I'm in the process of shelving things on a lazy 1:6 scale bookcase. It's a lightly customized bamboo drawer organizer [$10.68 from Walmart].

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Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/715389.html

Peter is one of my favorite LHF characters who never really appeared, except for once, in the very last episode. I've been thinking about him recently, since he wrote himself into Zombieville :p.

If he's going to be a secondary or tertiary in Zombieville, he needs some upgrading. His bloodstained clothes will not do, and his molded plastic mohawk should be replaced with a faux fur one so that he doesn't get so easily off-balance.

Today, when I rescued him from storage, I redressed Peter and mocked up how I'd like to redo his eyes. I still think he might need either magenta or yellow tight pants...Black and white seems too staid for him. ( Read more... )

Crossposts: http://blogofstench.livejournal.com/712367.html

My two zombies meet. ( Read more... )

I'm still coating his hair with matte gloss, but I thought I'd take a picture of Peter as he stands now. I still need a cutesy graphic, the equivalent of a My Little Pony, for his shirt. However, he's finished for now. Since the last photo, I added purple to his shoelaces, blue highlights on the green and pink parts of his mohawk and a red wash to his eyes. I also gave him a safety pin hanging off of one earring. I thought he might cheer up after I fed him a lollipop, but he still looks intensely worried. :(
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Below is a picture of Peter in progress. I've painted his boots green and his mohawk green and pink. I've also swapped out his white sleeves for ones with a stars-and-stripes design. Peter is unhappy and confused because his eyes are covered with masking tape. ( Read more... )

May I introduce Peter, standing in front of his packaging? I haven't customized him yet, just turned his Rabid Weasels T-shirt around and trimmed the neckline in preparation for putting a different graphic on it.

I really like the attention to detail in this fig, especially the little buttons on his vest and the specially sculpted bootfeet in awkward, decaying positions. The Prometheus body is okay, with a decent range of motion around the neck and relatively tight joints, but I don't like the caps on the shoulders that make putting the arms down by the sides difficult. I can't wait to repaint him a bit and otherwise customize him and make him my own!

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I'm very far behind the curve with this news, but Sideshow has continued its The Dead series with more characters -- no more women, of course! :( -- including a shambling Punk with a mohawk and sticky fingers. I really like him as a character base. Needs more color, chains and pointy ends, though. If I got him, I would decorate his outfit with safety pins and add some pink to his hair.

EDIT: I just bought him with the last of my Amazon credit, meaning that he only cost about $50.00. I can't wait to improve him! Watch this space!

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