Making of the Octo Head: part 1
This was my favorite animal as a kid - the octopus. They have goat eyes. They have 3 hearts. (when I was 7 or something I made a cartoon of an octopus in love, and above his head was an arrow through 3 hearts. Obviously I was a Far Side reader.)
It is practically an alien, with
color changing and texture changing skills, puzzle-solving skills, ink-squirting skills, squeezing-into-anything skills, water-jetting skills, nun-chuck skills, computer-hacking skills...Geez, it's like Napoleon Dynamite designed him, if Napoleon Dynamite was cooler than the Fonz.
This one might actually have computer hacking skills, since he seems to have the most cybernetic elements of my heads so far, although that wasn't the idea early on.
A kind of Cthulhu like tentacle mass was in my head, and Marty (TGB) had a beak idea, so I started thinking about having a swappable mouth part, fitting in a glyos hole. This led to me making this octopus head WAY to complicated (partially out of respect for my favorite martian, and also to try to top the cybergator head) My mental image of an octopus told me that their jet-orifices could make two more glyos holes that would fit the design logically. I collected some reference images from the internet in a folder to use, as well as made some quick drawings based on the idea that they would be mechanical tubes. Most of my designing happened in the clay on this one.
one impressive drawing.
you'll also notice i have the goat-eye, the hyphen-pupil sculpted in at this point. I decided people who wanted it could paint it on and people who like the blank possessed look could leave it off.
This beak was too small.
I wasn't sure how to make the beak, which is centered underneath the octopus, poke out of the face in a way that seemed natural.
overcorrected, too big.
gave up on beak, went back to tentacles.
WILL HE EVER GET THE BEAK RIGHT?
Find out next time, in
OCTOPOID: PART II
THE LEGEND CONTINUES
spoiler: I make a middle sized one.
All I want to know is when/how do I get it? Or did I already miss my chance? That seems to happen a lot to me with this stuff...
ReplyDeleteVery cool design dude! As a kid growing up the Transformer Pretender Octopunch was one of my favorite toys so I love this head. I'm a huge fan of water creatures/aliens so I plan on making some sort of aquatic race into one of my next figures after I'm done with the Ston'emms.
ReplyDeleteI also like the choice of using axis joints for the hips, I'll have to try that out on my Armovors now. :-D
Don't worry, Poe, they aren't being sold until New York Comic Con, Marty wants to make as many as possible and have them all available for people he sees there (he hates to run out at events like that). Afterwords, I'm sure he will keep making them until interest dies down or the mold breaks down! By the way, if you're the Poe Ghostal who writes reviews, it's a cool honor to have you on this blog; I've read your reviews of toys I've made.
ReplyDeleteChris, I can't believe the brain explosion you just gave me. I totally forgot about that figure, probably haven't thought of him in about 15 years, half my life. But I know I at least coveted that figure on pegs in the store, but I think I actually owned him. I have a big nostalgic flashback looking at that packaging art, and since I remember that he opened up like a container, I must have played with him. Perhaps a friend owned him. Anyway, thanks for the memories, he was an awesome figure.
A weird full-circle connection, I found a custom figure that uses NECA bioshock parts in it, which I very-slightly worked on. I think I just helped with the rusty buildup texture. The large bioshock suits where handled in a group attack strategy by all the sculptors, but figures like the ladysmith and Spider splicer were handled completely by me.
And yes, little axis joints (particularly black ones) add to the poseability in the hips quite well.
Good news, then!
DeleteBTW, I've been trying to find some contact info for you but couldn't. If you get a chance, please shoot me an email at poe@poeghostal.com - I've got something I'd like to ask you about.
Okay, you got it. Also people who are on October toys can pm me if they need to talk to me more privately, or just ask for me to e-mail like you did here. I'll be in contact.
ReplyDeleteYo Jason!
ReplyDeleteCheck out this octo-link!
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6474/
In case you weren't in awe of them enough already.