This was a long time coming. While in high school, my dad asked me to sculpt him a chess set, made up a characters from our favorite comic, Calvin and Hobbes.
This project took us three years. And there was a lot to learn. I had some experience sculpting these cartoon-y characters, but what about making molds and casting? I was a complete novice. Another reason it took so long is because I wanted to make eight individual Calvins as pawns for one side of the board and eight individual Hobbes for the other side. There were too many awesome choices to choose from!
For those keeping track at home, that's 16 sculptures just for the pawns. As this project spiraled our of control, consuming our little house and all my free time, I realized I had to minimized the amount of other sculptures on the board. A king (Dad), a queen (Mom), a rook (Mrs Wormwood), a knight (Moe), and a bishop (Susie).
Sculpting took time, but it was just the start. We made a mold of each character and I made all kinds of mistakes along the way. Pro-tip: use a vacuum chamber to degas your silicon and resin and a pressure chamber while they cure. Because of my mistakes there was always a lot of model cleanup after we got the casts out of the molds.
My wife, who is a talented artist herself, agreed to paint the figures for me. And she did a wonderful job! She also did a lot of model clean up (I love you honey)! There are things about them that we wish were better. Are they still pretty cool? Yes!
Can you have a copy? No, definitely not. And we can't sell them. Mr Waterson doesn't licence his characters, which I totally respect. At the beginning of the hair-brained project I was going to make a set for him, but given how much time it took just to make one set (and a few copies for me and my brothers), I just didn't have the time. Sorry Bill. On the other hand, if he or his lawyers want to talk about it...
Let's talk about what I can do for you (demo reel on request).
