A blank piece of paper. Occasionally the most daunting thing an artist will see before them. I'm a Sculptor. That's what I'm best at but I also draw from time to time. I used to draw all the time as a kid & would quite happily sit in my room at night drawing anything I could think of. Obviously being a child in the 80's I was mostly influenced by Star Wars & Transformers & took great pride in my drawings of AT-AT's (or "Darth Vaders dog monsters" as I used to call them until I found out they were called AT-AT's). I was MASSIVELY into Judge Dredd which would cause problems at school & with the parents of other 8 year old's who did'nt really want 
their kids reading about a fascist anti-hero & his ultra violent adventures enforcing the law against all manner of mutants, cyborgs, zombies & even a ravenous T-Rex called Satanus. Don't even mention The Dark Judges.I continued with drawing throughout secondary school but never really coloured anything in as I was so hugely influenced by all those Dredd's of the 80's & the sublime black & white artwork of Brian Bolland (who is very good at colouring in). Today everything is colour where as then it was slightly less common in comics etc. Basicly im not particularly good, in my opinion, at colouring in to a standard that I would call professional..... I still call it colouring in! Same with drawing. Soon after getting into sculpting when I was 18 I gradually drew less & less & so 15 years later I feel that while my sculpting is fine my drawing is still lagging behind. So every now & then i feel the urge to get better at it by doing some more of it.
Joey & Robin had provided me with my latest opportunity to try & progress a few levels. So there I sat with
my blank piece of paper. Luckily I also had the "Napkin doodle" to help me. Sure it looks like it was drawn by a child but that doesnt matter. It's the gateway into their minds & shows me kind of what they want. I stuck some music on that I figured would put me into the right mindset. I chose some pretty heavy music at first to make me think of epic, mean as f**k robot dudes kicking the shit out of monsters. As the drawing progressed I came to realise that it was in fact some rather dark drum & bass that helped me visualise the robotic, futuristic nature of the armour. My wall was chock full of reference images to help in
spire.I'm not one of those guys who can draw something amazing first time round. It usually takes me 3 - 5 attempts to get something i'm happy with and this was no different. Several cups of coffe & roll ups later I had my first design scanned into Photoshop ready for colouring. As I said colouring is not my strongest point but photoshop allows me to try out lots of things without ruining anything. I've also got a couple of "How to" books that help me along th
e way. I took my first design to the extreme & bulked him up to the point where he barely resembled the doodled napkin man. In fact it looked nothing like it but I thought it was cool & showed it to them anyway just to see what they thought. Too big. I spent the whole of the week doing variations of designs based on their increasingly contradictary requests - most artists will experience going back & forth over & over again so you get used to it. Niggling at the back of my mind was the fact that as far as I know they can't even afford to have it made anyway but I did'nt let that hold back the design.All of the finished designs are spread throughout this in the order th
ey were done so you can hopefuly see the evolution. Some of the pictures are cool some of them are pretty shit in my opinion but they all help towards the final thing. See if you can spot the one that reminds me of Grace Jones! You may have to have looked at it for far too long before the resemblence becomes apparent!The idea is that this armour is pretty much indestructable & provides the wearer with enhanced strength, reflexes, senses etc whilst enabling them to operate in the post apocolyptic environment & do battle with all manner of nasty beasties. Pretty standard stuff really. At first I was slightly unsure as to what they exactly wanted as they were confused with wanting it to be high tech & futuristic but also a bit cobbled together & archaic. As I write this im actually about 4 months ahead of you so I now know what it's going to be
& i'm making it.Gradually the design was refined to a point where we thought we had it. Then I told them my estimation of how much it would cost to make the suit that I had drawn. They looked like they were going to cry! I was gutted for them as I was by now well into the idea of making this suit. Unfortunatly their proposed budget would just about cover the helmet. Joey had his heart set on having a built from scratch, sculpted suit of super cool armour just like you would have in a mega budget film so iI explained to him that it's just not possible to have that for the amount of money he's got. BUT you can have something created with alre
ady exsisting things. I proposed the idea of getting some second hand body armour such as moto-x armour or something & customising it & they could have a sculpted cool looking helmet as well. He was'nt convinced but told me to do a design anyway. So I went home & got an image of some real life man in body armour & painted over that. Needless to say Joey just could'nt get into it & everything stopped.About a week later he called me & said he had more money. Just enough to do the suit he wanted. Ok then cool. I made some final little tweaks to the design that had been bugging me all week & was given the all clear to go ahead & take the design further in a sculpted maquette. Excellent! Drawing was begining to get on my tits as I could'nt draw what I actually saw in my head. It was close but not it! And once again my "colouring in" resembled some nifty comic art. Cool but not what I was trying for. They loved it though so fair enough! In the end we toned down the archaic nature of the suit as it did'nt really fit in with the world it came from. Elements remained though, mostly for the"that does look kind of cool even though realisticly speaking they wouldnt have or indeed need one of those" factor. EG: great big shoulder mounted floodlights on a stealth suit full of nano technology with state of the art futuristic in built helmet display & targetting systems...but they cant see in the dark!
Anyway, the sculpting was next & with it the oppurtunity to really get stuck into realising this dude. But that's for next time. Be sure to tune in for:- The maquette that was such a mean mother f**ker I couldnt fit it in the oven!! (you'll also find out what that means as well)
- Two, yes two false starts on the actual full size suit & the helmet.
Cheers,
Michael
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