Shop Log 12/31/23 - 2023 Send-Off and Current Projects

While a new year is the time for new habits, I’m not ready to let go of my current mission to blog at least once a month. This is a record I’ve proudly kept up with since I started with blog over two years ago (hard to believe it’s really been that long) so here’s yet another end-of-the-month post made out of sheer desperation. And unlike my last few, this will be a relatively short entry because I’m literally writing this at the 11^th hour.

The first of the two top-secret (well, not anymore) projects I’m ready to unveil at this point is one of those secret compartment things made out of an old hardcover book. My plan at this point is after I make the actual compartment (and possibly 3D print a custom insert to go inside), I’ll deco the book to look like either a sorcerer’s spell book, an ancient alchemy tome, or a creepy grimoire like the Necronomicon. I want to get the functionality down first. Since I love books and I love crafting, this is a quick weekend project that I’m surprised only occurred to me yesterday. Granted, it would be a quick weekend project but it turns out that gutting the pages out of even a comparatively slim volume like this old math book is a lot more time consuming than I anticipated.

My other project, the big one at the moment, is my ongoing efforts to create a 5.5-inch, articulated action figure based on this vintage Monster in My Pocket Frankenstein Monster from the early 90’s. My plan so far is to have six points of articulation (a record for one of my attempts at a homebrewed figure): simple rotational pivot joints at the neck, shoulders, and waist, and two double-pin hinge joints for the elbows. The entire process will make for what I think will be a compelling series of articles, from the fabrication of 3D printed joints and armatures, to the mold and casting of gypsum plaster parts, to the clay sculpting, and of course the molding and resin casting. I’ve learned a lot about making action figures from my own research as well as the laundry list of previous attempts (failures is a bit much; I’ll call them “practice attempts”), especially since I’ve adopted 3D printing last spring, and Frankie here is a kind of trial by fire for a lot of the techniques that I’ve developed over the past year and change, which is in turn part of a much larger process for creating action figures that I am still very much tweaking as I work through this initial project.

At this point, I'm still relatively early into sculpting the master parts (and had to tweak the 3D printed armature once or twice) having mostly sculpted the torso save for his chain, which will be a detail that is hard-sculpted onto the surface like what you might see on a 90's Playmates figure for their TMNT or Toxic Crusaders line. But I still want to stay as faithful as I can to the original Monster In My Pocket mini figure's design. 

And of course, I still have a bunch of miniatures and one-off action figure customization projects still sitting around in various stages of completion but I am currently weaning myself off posting early progress (and I use that term loosely) pictures since it seems like over half of them you may never see or hear from again. Life is like that sometimes. But here’s to a more productive, prosperous, and less stressful 2024 both for myself and all who read this.