Hatsune Miku Figure Sculpt Final

I present to you HATSUNE MIKU!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Isn't she so cute!  She turned out great.  I loved sculpting Miku.  This really turned out to be a great experience.  So far my only sculpting experience was a Foundation class I took at AAU.  I've been waiting a long time to actually take a character sculpting class, and now my wish has been fulfilled ^_^  

Miku at the moment is just made of Sculpey.  I haven't baked her yet, so she's still soft and vulnerable.  Soon, I'll bake her, do some sanding and work on last minute details then paint her with primer.  Don't know if I'll fully paint this one.  I like the look of Good Smile Company prototypes, so I think I may leave it as that - a light or dark primer with some minor paint details like the eyes.

What do you think?  I wonder if there are any anime figure sculptors outside of Asia?  I usually only come across action figure sculptors, or fine art figure sculptors.  

  

If you thought the pose looked familiar it's because it is.  I was inspired by this here picture, and made my own turnaround based on it.  I tried to do the original picture justice, but I needed to change up the hair to support it into the skirt. 

Fall 2012 Time of Change

It's now one of my favorite seasons of the year Fall.  The leaves are changing color and we get beautiful colored trees like this one here in the backyard.  Grass starts turning brown, but it only highlights the bright beauty of the leaves changing throughout the country.  The weather is also cooling down which I love.  It's perfect this time of year, in my opinion.  It breeds creativity for me.  I just love this time of the year.

Hatsune Miku Figure Sculpt Progress

This is my work in progress so far of my Miku bust.   The sculpture is made of Super Sculpey - Sculpey SS1 Super Sculpey Polymer Clay 1 Pound (Google Affiliate Ad) Specifically it's the Sculpey III Beige.  It's very soft and flexible, which is a great quality to have if that's what you want.  For this sculpt it was just perfect.  Next time I'm going to try Sculpey Firm.  It's a medium grey, but is far more resilient. 

This has been so much fun to sculpt.  I really admire anime figurines, and especially the makers of them.  I know today much of the work is done with 3D printers, but there are still a lot of them made out of good old fashioned clay.  Personally, I'm not such a big fan of technique, though it has it's luster.  But, the results are what really matter.  A good figure is a good figure. 

Making this makes me dream of making a diorama project.  It's actually been a goal of mine to make figures for every project of mine that I work on.  So far I'm working on a children's book and a boardgame.  I think some diorama's would be pretty sweet.  Especially if I made them into garage kits.  Hmmm... that's going to be a lot of work.  I'm gonna love it :D

NDK 2012

 

NDK 2012 has just passed.  The premier anime con in Denver Colorado.  A wonderfully exciting time of cosplaying, sitting in on various anime based panels, and sharing the love of the anime world.  I enjoyed my fair share of goodies purchased in the oh so famous dealers room.  I also had sold one of two art pieces at the artist auction.  I also got to meet some fashion brands from the New People store back in San Francisco, Black Peace Now and h. Naoto.  

There was much fun to be had by all, many young and many older.  This was the 16th year of NDK, and sure enough there were those from the start still enjoy this amazing con year after year.  Here is just a small sample of the goodness that happened over the weekend of NDK courtesy of GideonStyle.  You can browse his gallery of photography at Deviant Art http://gideonstyle.deviantart.com/

 

Persona 4 Arena: Fan Art

Finished these a couple weeks ago.  Akihiko and Mitsuru from Persona 4 Arena.  These blue line illustration sketches will be for sale at the 2012 NDK anime con in Denver.  They are nicely framed now.  Don't want to sell them, they look so good in the frames I found for them.  I'm currently working on finishing these illustrations for poster designs.  Mitsuru will be a vector project.  Maybe it'll make a nice vinyl?

The Face of saint02

Woshaaahhhh!!!!!!!  Better watch your back!  ( ^_- )  While I was applying for the Worldwide Otaku Report on dannychoo.com I decided to share some of the photos up here on my blog.  I'm a really big fan of anime and have somewhat of an Otaku lifestyle myself.  So, here's my room/studio where I get my creative mojo on.

Just got my new Tokidoki Inferno Hat to sport with my Skullcandy Tokidoki headphones.  I like wearing a bandana cowboy style.  It's nice to be a little different.

Spent a good amount of time putting the collage of anime/manga/j-rock posters and such on the wall.  When I'm not illustrating, I currently work in the plastic industry as a CNC Machinist.  The green florescent shelves are 9093 Acrylic for those of you who are interested.

These figures look so good on these shelves.  The shelves don't need to be back lit.  As long as there is a good amount of light in the room the shelves glow naturally.

Figures are very fun to collect, but hard to come by here in the states sometimes.  Especially, if you're trying to get a matching set of characters from a particular series. 

My room doubles as my studio which is packed full of reference material, two drafting tables, one desk for assembly work, a computer desk, and one sad small bed.

This is most of my manga, and a few classics.  I've been enjoying Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes lately.

On top the black shelf at the top is a G.I.Joe collection I have been building the past couple years.  I'm not a fan of the movie based action figures, but I do like the original style action figures.  If you glance at the books on the shelves you'll notice several interesting things some of which are Japanese study guides.  Hopefully, someday I'll master the language, but for now I'm a humble beginner.

Being that I live in a rather small room, I've made a desperate attempt to make the room inspiring as it's my work place in working on various art projects.  So, I painted a character I found inspiring online on the wall.  The wall is pretty much a comic panel in pink and white.  On the drafting table is an illustration study from one of Akihiko Yoshida's illustrations from Vagrant Story, a PS1 game I'm a fan of.  The illustration was done in my own technique a mixed media drawing using pen, marker, colored pencil, and acrylic paint.

This is perhaps my favorite figure in my collection at the moment.  This is Yagyu Jyube from Hyakka Ryoran Samurai Girls.  This is the only Nendoroid I have, and most definitely would love having more.

When I get the chance, which isn't very often, I do enjoy competing in rc drift comps.  It's kind of a hobby of mine.  It's pretty fun.  I put some Blackrock Shooter graphics on the car.  As you can see it's been used, as it should be.  A drift car should have it's share of scratches, dings, and other sorts of damage. 

I've kept some of my Spawn toys since I was a kid.  It's a good way to keep inspiration up when thinking of new character designs and while brainstorming on storyboard projects.  I think I might want to get some monster sculptures.  I'd like to work on some monster projects :)

I just love these characters by Shunya Yamashita.  Quite sexy and the detail is just fabulous.  I think I may try my hand at sculpting myself at this sort of thing.  Can I do it?  ...Yes, but hopefully I can realize this level of skill.  Oh, to experience such a feeling of satisfaction of making something so skillful.

I enjoy small figures too.  I usually have these kind on my desk, but there's getting to be a lot of them now.

These are kind of rival figures in a way, Tokidoki and Kid Robot.  Up front are my Kid Robot Street Fighter designer toys, and the middle group are the cactus styled Tokidoki designer toys.