Week 29 (26 Jan - 1 Feb 2003)
Flying jellyfish
"And that's the story of how I lost me leg and me hand to a giant starfish." The grizzled captain scratched his chin absently with his hook-hand and looked out to sea, his one eye shining bright.
"And your eye?" the weather-worn bard asked quietly.
The captain continued to stare, his eye shining like dark water.
"That was a little later. Many a man loses his eye to a flying splinter or ill-aimed harpoon. Still others leave them behind in drunken brawls. Mine I lost to another awful beast of the sea.
"After my misadventure with the starfish, I vowed never again to set one of my remaining limbs in the water if I could help it. But the sea taught me that was no solution. . . in the deep steaming tropics, she sent out a flying jellyfish to take one more souvenir from my already-battered body. . . ."
This week's sculpt is an attempt to depart a little from what I'm calling my flat period. This guy is based on a 1" washer with a single fairly thick-gauge wire used as an armature. I started out with a layer of putty to give later detail somewhere to stick, then sculpted the cap. I added the tentacles one or two at a time, usually with putty leftover from whatever else I was working on: I carefully rolled out a strand, set it into place, and smoothed it with a round tool.
I added the inside fringe next to hide the join between the tentacles and the cap. There's a bit of putty textured with small holes between that and the outside skirt. I added the brown detail to the cap last before moving on to the base.
The texture of most of the base isn't showing up well in these scans -- it's actually all in little crests like the bit at the bottom of the second scan. (Pay no attention to the brown piece. It's just Cthulhubot's head being used as a chock. . . .) I added some rocky texture to the lump under the tentacles, then tried for foam at the edges between the rock and the water. I tried to have it both ways with the base, in that I think it could easily be painted up as earth and moss. Committing to one or the other might've been good, but I'm reasonably happy with it.
I think this is my best piece so far (though it still needs work), and I'm looking forward to applying the lessons I've learned to future pieces. I'm currently working on figuring out some good rocky textures, as well as trying to finish up some other works in progress.
Back to week 28 (19 Jan - 25 Jan 2003)