Day 299

Now I'm moving onto Star Wars. Someone had already done Star Wars carved crayons but they aren't that great in my opinion. They were using the normal sized crayons though so I'll give them that. These two here were done with large crayons. Both of these were difficult to do. There were a lot of weird angles and shapes and details. I constantly had to look at reference pictures to try to get everything right. Despite the difficulty, I liked how they turned out, especially the Storm Trooper helmet. Some parts are a little off, but enough time has passed from when I was staring at photos that I forgot where the problems are. I do remember not being happy at all with how Darth Vader looked when I finished him. His face was just off but I'm ok with it now. Vader has that iconic chest plate so I included that. The Storm Trooper's chest is pretty plain so I just stopped with a helmet.

Day 298

I wanted to do carvings for Jake and Finn from Adventure Time and I wanted to use the large size to match Princess Bubblegum. Unfortunately, I didn't have the right color for Jake. I just had yellow and orange when he should be somewhere in the middle. Finn on the other hand is mainly blue and white and I wasn't sure how I would do that. I think I'll have to mix colors via melting which is tricky so I decided to do that later. Instead, I moved onto Futurama. I decided to do Zoidberg and Bender since they're the only main characters that are a solid color. There's also Kif but I don't think he's that popular. Both of these are the normal sized crayons. I think Zoidberg came out really well. I wasn't sure how the flat bug eyed Futurama look would turn out in three dimension but it works.

Bender wasn't too bad either. There wasn't enough room to make the eye shield stick out as much as it should. I tried to make a really narrow antenna but it ended up breaking off which was for the best. Instead I just stuck in a wire on top and then covered that with melted wax. Overall, carving these crayons is going a lot quicker. Obviously, they're smaller so there's less to do. I'm also keeping it simple too. With the Game of Thrones ones, I wanted to use as much of the crayon as possible. So with those, I was doing two or three times as much work compared to these. The flip side is that I have to try to copy something that exists and is familiar compared to just a bunch of animals. 

Day 297

So my idea to get people to buy my crayons is to carve geeky things. Geeky people tend to buy geeky things they don't need. I should know because I'm one of them. Back when I was doing the Game of Thrones crayons, I thought it would be fun to do Adventure Time characters so that's what I did. Above I did Princess Bubblegum using a large pink crayon I had leftover. She wasn't too bad to carve. Luckily the hair allowed me not to have to carve all around. The crown ball could be thinner but I didn't want it to break off.

BMO was a lot harder. This was my first time carving a normal sized crayon although there wasn't that much carving to do. There was a lot of engraving lines which I don't like to do because it's hard to make straight lines and if you mess up, it's a pain to fix. Despite all that, I liked how it turned out. When you look up close like in these pictures, some parts looks a little rough but in real life it looks pretty good.

I was thinking about how I would ship these if I were to sell them without having them break. I just searched tube canisters on Amazon and eventually ended up looking at plastic test tubes. They came with caps so they seemed perfect (and were cheap). I had to get two sizes. The smaller one is just the right size for the crayon. The larger one is a little long but there weren't any other options. They're nice for storage too. The crayons are safe from breakage and from touching and coloring each other.

Day 296

Looks like we're back to crayons. Back around when the art show happened, I talked to Shiu Pei and she said maybe carving crayons could be my thing and I could sell them on Etsy. Now this idea had already crossed my mind. The artist who carved the crayons I originally saw online mostly does stuff for shows or commissioned work. I saw one price though (which may not be right) that was $500 for two crayons. Now that's a little high. I figure if someone is willing to pay $250 for one crayon, then maybe someone will want to pay a tenth of that for one of mine. So I thought I would spend a week carving crayons and then put them on Etsy and see what happens. My expectations are low but I figured it wouldn't hurt to try. There does seem to be a void in this arena. Besides the previously mentioned artist, there aren't many examples of good carvings that I could find online.

So first things first, I needed to buy more crayons. I forgot if I mentioned this, but the crayons I carved for Game of Thrones were large sized crayons by Crayola. Large was nice since there's more wax to work with but there are less colors. The pack I bought only had 16 colors which sounds sufficient but wasn't really since blue and purple were super dark. They may leave marks in those colors but the wax itself just looks black. So I had to buy normal sized crayons and got the pack on top which had 150 unique colors. Now I have a lot of colors and a lot of crayons in general. They were pretty cheap too. I got 150 for the price of 40 large crayons. Unfortunately, there weren't many lighter shades of blue and purple. Most still looked black. Above you can see a comparison of two sizes. The normal crayons feel significantly smaller and are going be a challenge to work with.

I also would like to sell my Game of Throne crayons. Unfortunately, I want to sell it as a set which makes the price high. Although now without art gallery fees, I can lower the price. I wanted to submit it to the Game of Thrones Tumblr (where they post GoT artwork) to promote it. However, I needed a Tumblr account first which was a hassle. I didn't want to have a half assed page if they looked at it so I tried to make a nice looking one. I definitely do not like Tumblr and its interface but I found a template that I liked. It's just photos and no text. Over this past week, I've been posting my GoT crayons and any future ones will also end up there. I haven't submitted to the GoT Tumblr yet but will soon. You've already seen the crayons but you can check it out here if you want.

Day 292

 

Now for some random things. Above I just changed the whites of her eyes to actually be white. I think she looks a lot different which that change. More friendly and less creepy.

Above are some of the different paint layers. On the left is just the base layer. Next to that is a combination of the next two layers. Here there's more rough painting like the coral in the hair and on the waist along with the eyes. Third is a combination of another two layers. These paint layers have a higher resolution to allow for more fine detail like all the spots and dots and cracks in the barnacles. Last we have a combination of all the layers minus the base layer.

Here is what the color map looks like when it's unfolded flat. And below you just have a view from the top.

Day 291

So here's the final result. I think it turned out well and it was fun to do. It helped that it was a really well designed character to begin with so kudos to Shiu Pei.

I didn't put in much effort towards painting the lowest portions of the model since they weren't a focal point.

Below is a comparison to the original drawing. A few things I was aware were different like the hair and lips but didn't want to change. My lower body is too slim. I tried to make them wider when viewed from the front but didn't make it wide enough. The overall head shape is a little different but that was mainly due to trying to make a three dimensional head fit the big eyes which Shiu Pei didn't have to worry too much about.

Day 290

So moving onto painting. The first thing I did was apply the base layer of colors all over. Then I focused on all the hair accessories. Using a few new layers, I mainly just copied what Shiu Pei had done. The pearls will get a coat of shine eventually.

Next I painted the hair and put in some dark and light streaks. It's a little subtle but when I do the bump map, it should stand out more. I also did the eyes. Shiu Pei's drawing had fairly dark eyes but I made the irises more visible here.

Then I moved downwards. The coral on the waist aren't made of many polygons and they're just simple bumps. So I used the paint to try to add in more structural detail than there really is. The leg area was a little tougher since it had a slight gradient color change, dots and dark mottling. This may sound weird but I'm strangely proud of the brown mottling.  

This left all the brown spots for last. It was hard getting the right look with dot size and density. It's not as intense as it could have been. It looks good up close but kind of fades away as you get further away. After doing all the colors, I did the bump and specular map. The only thing I did with the bump map was to make more definition in the hair. For specular, I made the pearls shiny, put a little shine in the eyes, some streaks in the hair and then some spots of shine along the waist. You can see some of that below.