I really enjoyed working on these stooge trolls for the Pekin Days Art Show. I was able to explore some new techniques and refurbish some others. But best of all, I really liked working on their personalities.
As you can see here, Larry got his nose job. I just shoved in a section of copper wire into his nose and that did the trick. And you can see he’s now holding a pen. Since I wanted him to be holding the straps to his bag, I wanted to use the pen to keep his hands in place while I sculpted them. The pen is nice and smooth so it’s easy to shimmy out of his hands before baking. The piece of fabric I have is a section of firm canvas that I used to create the texture for his overalls. It worked pretty good:
On both Moe and Curly I used texture stamps. These old stamps were ones that I purchased back in Los Angeles when I first got there. I was looking around fx shops to intern at (and work for after) and was stocking up on supplies. I picked these up before I knew how easy they were to make. Ah well. I’ll come up with a how-to post some time in the future on these. Anyways, I took these out of storage and they came in pretty handy for my stooge trolls. Each troll used a different stamp. Moe got his…:
And Curly got his. Curly had all those growths and saggy skin so this “veiny/wrinkly” stamp worked well:
I got them to the point that I wanted them in terms of sculpting. Next I removed the pen from Larry’s hands and baked them;
Something I didn’t mention earlier in this post (but I went over it in the Little Buddy troll post), was attaching their tails. The coiled rope behind them is what I’ve been using for their tails. I cut off a section and stick it in their lower backs while sculpting. Then I remove it and clean it up. That gives me a nice pre-sized hole to snuggly fit the tail I make for them after:
After baking, it’s on to the painting. And the first step is to come up with a good paint scheme. I wanted to have each of them based in the primary realm. Red for Moe, Yellow for Larry, and Blue for Curly. The one the changed the most down the road was Larry – he turned out green. But it was still based in Yellow and I think that came through:
My next post for these guys will be on finishing up the paint, adding leather, adding tails and even feathers for Larry.
Stay tuned – More to come!
Josh Hagen 