Welcome to the debut of the Dark Ivory Statue "in
progress" photos! Joseph Michael Linsner, Eva Hopkins and I worked closely
together to make sure the statue came out as beautifully as possible. It's
finished now, so we'll be posting photos of the piece in progress over the next
couple of weeks or so while the piece is molded and painted.
We didn't document the armature, so the first step you
see here shows the figure of Ivory roughed in and all masses built up. The
purpose at this point was to check with Joe and Eva to see if the basic
structure was coming along as they envision the character. We hope you like her
so far!
The next step in the process is to refine the figure to
give Joe a good feel for how the figure will look in completion.The face portrait was sculpted separately and
joined to the figure.It was fully
approved at this point, so the head was baked and is fully finished.However, there can be many changes to the
body-the figure can be slimmed, or made more voluptuous or changed in any way
Joe and Eva advise.
Once the figure was finished, including the hands, we
made the mold. We generally do two versions of a given sculpture (the second to
be released as much as a year later), but nowadays, I want to avoid simply
doing the second version as a repaint.
So when we take a mold off the body and head, I can
sculpt different costumes on each body, thus giving more variation to the two
versions.In some cases, I'll also
sculpt a brand new hairstyle.I've done
this in the past with a number of figures I've sculpted.
Once the mold was ready of Dark Ivory's body and head, I
sculpted the hair, which you see here.
--CSM
PART FOUR
This stage shows the addition of the wings.At this point, only the front of the wings
are nearing completion.I thought it
might be interesting for you to see the back of the wings unfinished to show how they
are constructed. These were shaped from screen mesh on which I then spread
consecutive layers of sculpting material, baking in between layers.Next, I would do the same on the back of the
wings, then shape the edges and sand to the proper look.
In this update, you see the wings are complete, although
once they are cast in resin, I'll retouch them and check them over before they
are sent to the factory for production.Joe, Eva and I agreed that the wings should look more as they do in
later Ivory art and in the comics.I've
also added the shoulder armor elements, so here you see the effect of the wings
with the armor.
At this point I've added Dark Ivory's dress by smoothing
material onto the resin. There will be a good amount of smoothing after the piece
is molded and cast as prototypes for production.The dress flows over the base, but there is
still much to add to the dress, such as the arm details and the bust line of
the dress.There is also a lot of
sculpting to add to the base, although it won't have as many sharp points as in
the artwork. Next time, we'll see the finished piece-wings, base and
all!
Here we see Dark Ivory fully finished, although the wings
were being molded while I finished the dress.So you don't see the fully detailed dress on the figure with the base
finished and the wings attached.I
wanted the dress to have a very fine, ephemeral quality that made it appear to
cling closely to her body so I kept the sculpting to a minimum.
The base is somewhat of a simplification of the base in
the artwork, but it still has some nice detail with less danger of breakage in
shipping.
In two to three weeks we'll show you final photos of the
fully painted Dark Ivory statue so check back with us soon.
