If i build it will they come? Episode Eight!

The last blog ended with me going mad. For those that havent read the 1st ever post I did I'll summarise. I was trying to sculpt mutants to pass the time productively as well as constantly looking at the armour I'd made so far & hating it. Then my sculpting got shit & all the mutants I was making were really bad. I basically had a crisis of artistic faith. Quite a large one actually where I found myself questioning my life & what the fuck am I doing with it & so forth. It may happen maybe once a year or so & usually in times of financial duress or some other random phase of shitiness that sometimes get thrown your way. I got over it though & made another monstery mutanty thing but decided I was going to keep it for myself as it evolved into something that wouldnt really fit into the world of Joey & Robins film. I'm getting sick of typing "Joey & Robin" all the time. I'll have to think of a name for them like Jobin or something.

Anyway yeah....the film. Work on the armour had stopped whilst Jobin searched for a workspace. Give me a call when you find somewhere. That call finally came one random day about 3 weeks later. I could have finished it by now. Or so I thought......the benefit of me writing this after it's all almost happened means that I now know how fantastically optimistic the thought of doing most of it in 3 weeks is. Under normal circumstances its not far off. However this whole job is anything but normal.

Jobin had secured not only a studio to work in but proper fibre glassing facilities at the university workshop. Cool, worth the wait then I guess. Then came all the gumpf.

I can't remember it all as there was too much to take in but it was stuff like: Before we can use the studio you have to email your CV to the head of the school for some reason & then go to the workshop to get inducted in the use of tools you've been using for years. But you can only do that at 4:30 because we're basically sneaking you in cos you're not supposed to be here & the bloke in charge of the workshop will get sacked if he's caught cos no ones insured. But youve got to let security know youre coming & you can only park in THIS FUCKING BIT HERE. ETC ETC ETC for fucking ages. At one point Jobin had us all on conference call trying to organise stuff. There were about 5 of us on the same phone line & no one had any clue who was talking to who. It got so bad it was funny. I remember after the conference had ended I got a text from Paul that simply read "Fuck me that was painful". And thats most out of character for "Rev" Paul Lewis so it must be bad. He even looks a bit like a vicar. Joey agreed with me about the chest armour as I'd had 3 weeks to come up with why it was shit & how I would change it. So that was cool. I was going to get a second shot at sculpting the chest & backpack & I knew how I was going to do it. Once again though time would be short.

And so finally I was on my way to the wonder studio after negotiating the payment of travel expenses. Only fair really as they seemed to now have much deeper pockets. I dread to think where its coming from. Some people do some mental shit to realise they're cinematic vision. Anyway I spent the first part of the day clearing all the crap out of the room (messy bastards,theres no need.) & organising it into a useable space. Thats when I noticed Jobin moving in to the part of the room I had mentally asigned as the armoury. Its cool to be able to do that. They had laptops, printers, faxes, speakers, phones, loads of bits of paper, diaries.......basically office shit. Shit that has no place in a workshop. Now I understood. Not only was this a workshop/studio for armour & prop construction it was Jobins special little production office to make them feel all grown up & real. Fuck that. Get out. Or in fact actually, stay & watch your stuff get decimated in a matter of hours. Im not being evil or cruel its just that I've dealt with these freebie jobs before & although their intentions are nothing but good, having these production crew aspirees in the room with you is no good for anyone. Without going into detail they tend to fanny about & get in the way & hold shit up as they run around "organising" stuff. Usually biscuits & tea & getting you to print your name on stuff & write down your phone number & email for the 97th time....."have you signed the NDA to authorise your usage on the website & obtain the key?" Eh?? Key?? I asked for some clay you weirdo! This usually only really applies to student based jobs I hasten to add! I didnt pay it too much mind as I knew that sooner or later as work progressed it would be virtually impossible to keep their little office in there & they'll just learn by experiencing it.

Anyway I sorted out the room as best I could & awaited the arrival of "The Mannequin".
If you cast your mind back a few blogs you may recall me talking of mannequins. I put up a random picture I found of a selection of mannequins to show how weird they are under closer scrutiny.

The maddest thing happened when paul unveiled our saviour that was to provide the basis for the new improved armour. It was made of the various parts of the mannequins in the random picture. What are the chances of that? Not content with making a series of weirdos the folks at the factory decided to create their own Frankensteins monster using the assorted parts in a mix n'match fashion............and now somehow in a tale of unkown twists it was standing here before me. And it had no fucking head. I was hoping to put the helmet on it so I could use it as a reference point for stuff. Further inspection of the specimin revealed that it too, like its limbless predecessor, had a most peculiar anatomy. Basically its because they're for fashion purposes. Theyre stylised representations of people constructed to make clothes look good. A bit tricky to work on if youre a novice suit maker doing the equivalent of going right to the back of the book & starting with the hardest tutorial first. I took measurements from myself & applied them to the mannequin & figured as long as I kept measuring & checking reference points from myself I'd be ok. I suggested that it might be worth getting a projector & enlarging a photo of the maquette to the correct size on the wall for reference. Then out of the blue Joey came out with "what if we did a life cast of someone?".

Next time

• Attack of the Mummys - man pukes in bucket - Music for new Star Trek film causes second man to lose it
• Robin draws a big Morph
• I might get round to some armour sculpting (it'll certainly be in the blog after if not next week)

See ya

Michael