CJ! I'm HOME!

Yes, I got back to the Great White North late Monday night, just before it became a LOT whiter due to an extra large snowstorm slamming into the north-eastern US/central-south-eastern Canada.

My Euro trip did me a LOT of good, although I do have to sheepishly admit that all my concerns about getting CJ done in time to take with me were all for naught. In hindsight it would have been a logistical mess to fit him securely into my luggage and still have room for more than one change of clothes and toiletries for the three weeks I was away. Plus explaining him to security would not have been fun (do-able, probably, but not fun).

But, between just taking a break and recharging my own batteries, plus being inspired by the various sites (everything from the breathtaking art pieces in the Louvre, the BIZARRE animals in the Natural History Museum in London, and a number of film props both at the International Make-Up Artists Tradeshow and an SFX/Miniatures museum in Lyon, France) I just couldn’t wait to get back to working on CJ.

It’s still taken me two days to do so, since I came home with both jet-lag AND a bad head cold but I finally made it into the workshop this morning and I couldn’t be happier. My prediction that my enthusiasm would return as soon as CJ started to look more like a Prawn than a set of pipes definitely came true.

This is where I had left off - just the basic armature covered with an even layer of clay.

The first thing I wanted to do was reattach the head I'd saved from my previous sculpt. Here's the underside of the head after using various loop and rake tools to widen the existing hole so I could fit it back on the current sculpt.

I put the clay shavings I'd scrapped from the underside of CJ's head under the hairdryer and let them get really soft, almost liquid. I put a generous glob (that's a highly technical term that is) on the stump of the neck and then fitted the head in place. The super-soft clay acted like glue, holding the head in position like so...

I then used more of the really soft clay to fill in and secure the rest of the gaps between the head and neck. Then I further bulked out the back of the neck to help start give CJ that crazy exaggerated curve to his spine, that caused me so many problems with the armature.

This is perhaps not the best picture to demonstrate it but after the neck, the next area I started to bulk out was CJ's chest to help extend that crazy curve...

At this point though I had to stop. Not because I wanted to, but unfortunately other duties called. I can't wait to get back to work on him tomorrow though!