# Guiness Driver



## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

Henner gave me this image of the live steam prototype he just built. He needed a driver and I needed to repay him for his generous gift of time and materials; not to mention it'll make a great figure to offer on my site. So today, I finally sat down and with the plans he gave to me, and DAZ3D Studio I started planing my next figure. Unfortunately this is going to be an old fashion sculpt with clay, but I still like doing the foot work with some modern tools like DAZ3d. 








I used to be stuck using their generic figures, but now that I have accumulated the necessary tools to not only make my own characters, but to animate them too, I can use my own characters. So for this project I decide to use a sculpt in progress, based on Cy Crumley. (The likeness still has a lot to go, but the general appearance is enough to use as a model)
I took the image that Henner sent me and set it as the backdrop in DAZ. I loaded Cy(work in progress) in to the scene and using the grid on the floor plane I lined hm up to fit in the scene posed in a way that made him look like he was standing there on the engine.








Henner also sent me that plans he is working on, which makes it a heck of a lot easier to pose the figure to fit. Our biggest concern was the burner. You can see it takes up the space in front of the figure, so I scaled the figure (Henners drawings were already scaled) and pasted him on to Henners top elevation. His foot print fits well and looks to have plenty of room for positioning.








I don't always get luck like this, but his elbow appears to be positioned just right with a small amount of room for the soles of his shoes. Now in the unreal world of planing I can see this figure will fit perfectly, but in the real world nothing works out exactly as planed. More than likely I will need to bend a few parts in to place once the figure is casted, but I think I can move on to the next step which is sculpting the figure. I'll post some pics as I go, and hopefully once it is done, Henner will post some pics of it on his loco.


----------



## Mike Reilley (Jan 2, 2008)

Damn eunuchs are gonna take over GRRing now....


----------



## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

That's a pretty big package, definitely not a eunuch! 

Greg


----------



## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

I could include images with genitalia :-D


----------



## kormsen (Oct 27, 2009)

Posted By rkapuaala on 24 Sep 2011 10:32 PM 
I could include images with genitalia :-D 

what for?
as most of the readers here are males, better detailing is necessary only on female figures.


----------



## Spule 4 (Jan 2, 2008)

Reminds me of one of the many nude "Ken" dolls my daughters have laying around....


----------



## Pete Thornton (Jan 2, 2008)

better detailing is necessary only on female figures 
_Now that's a sexist remark if ever I heard one! _ 
P.S. The beer has two 'n'.


----------



## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

Maybe Pete,,,, maybe :\


----------



## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

Roughed out the armature and tested him on a mock up of Henners loco. Now I just have to do the likeness and put some clothes on the guy.


----------



## kormsen (Oct 27, 2009)

right now, his profile reminds me of Lord Voldemort


----------



## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

Don't speak that name!!!


----------



## kormsen (Oct 27, 2009)

OOOPS...


----------



## HMeinhold (Jan 2, 2008)

Rick,
I can't wait till the figure is ready. Of course I will make photos of the loco with the engineer (driver). The figure actually gives a sense of scale. BTW, I am working off the plans of Bob Bath in the UK, who built the prototype and posted the plans on the internet. 
Regards


----------



## elsiekillen (Oct 7, 2011)

now this is weird. ill prefer the other one. @import url(http://www.mylargescale.com/Providers/HtmlEditorProviders/CEHtmlEditorProvider/Load.ashx?type=style&file=SyntaxHighlighter.css);@import url(/providers/htmleditorproviders/cehtmleditorprovider/dnngeneral.css);


----------



## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

Got a little more done tonight!


----------



## kormsen (Oct 27, 2009)

with that vest you defined the personality already. 

when you add to a figure, do you smear the material on bit by bit, or do you preform parts and lay them on? 
for instant the sleeves - will that be "sheets" to be rolled around the arms, or blobs smeared flat?


----------



## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

Thanks Korsmsen, 
My method depends on which part of the clothing I am doing. 
For the shirt I don't do the whole shirt, just the part that shows through the vest. I flatten out some of the sculpty with a dowel, till it is so thin you can its very fragile. I lay the sculpty on a piece of paper first and then roll it; that wasy I can pick the piece up off the table after rolling, curl the paper and pull it off. 
I prep the place it will go with liquid sculpty. I brush it on and let it set a little so that there won't be a lot of liquid gushing out all over. The piece is also cut to fit the area of application and to resemble the garment. 
I lay the figure down on the table carefully place the piece of sculpty on the area that's been brushed. I have a tool that I made out of rock mable that has a curved very small smool surface that I used to pat the sculpty down until it firmly adheres. I try to avoid breaking through to the surface below so that appears to be like cloth. 
I then form the colar. and make a tie from a separate piece of flatened sculpty and place it on the unbaked shirt after I have the wrinkle details I want. 
On thicker cloth with heavier wringles that have deeper furrows, I use some of the same techniques, but I create little rolls of sculpty first, that are tappered and look like the heavy wrinkles. I squishe then on to the liquid sculpty preped surfaces and blend then in a little so that they look like the wrinkles I am sculpting. Then, only if they need it, I lay the very thin sheet of sculpty on top and carefully pat that down. 
The pants require some tubular pieces at the cuffs and around areas of the buttocks and thighs. Sometimes I only needed to add an additional layer of very flat thin sculpty around the legs. and blend it in,,, as I did with this piece. Other times I need to cover the whole area with the thin stuff. 
If you are putting thin stuff on top of unbaked sculpty you don't need to prep it with the liquid. 
I also find it necessary to bake between garment pieces some times depending on their complexity and the dynamic characteristics of the cloth. Its the sort of decission that is hard to explain, and I think might be dependent more on my skill level than anything else.


----------



## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

A little bit more progress. I need to put his ears on, some lapels and I'm leaning towards reshaping his head so that I can make two different types of hats for it. A fedoar type and the driver type cap. Then I can start adding the details and cleaning it up. I put it next to the first bachmann figure I tried to modify to work with my Lanakila project. Needless to say, I didn't like the results and started sculpting my own.


----------



## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

I'm thinking of casting at this point. I think he would look great standing in a bank or an office and leaning on the water cooler. Then I could cast another one with a hat head.


----------



## kormsen (Oct 27, 2009)

thanks for the explanations!


----------



## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

You're welcome. I hope it was clear and helpful.


----------



## kormsen (Oct 27, 2009)

if it was helpfull enough, we will know, once i dare to make a figure...


----------



## toddalin (Jan 4, 2008)

Isn't he currently on "Dancing With the Stars?"


----------



## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

Posted By kormsen on 09 Oct 2011 05:24 PM 
if it was helpfull enough, we will know, once i dare to make a figure... 
Kormsen, you should give it a try. There is a really good tutorial floating around by Wallas. I think they have a sticky link here for it. Its what I first read when I got started 6 years ago. 









I cleaned him up a little and next I will cut off his arm and prep him for a mold. At this point I can get better detail on resin than sculpty. I decided to offer him without a hat as well for those who don't like hats and for those that do he will have the original Guinness hat pictured about and a fedora hat, which will fit on a peg that I'll carve in place of his bald head.
And yes, he is the figure recently featured in 'Dancing with Stars'.


----------



## toddalin (Jan 4, 2008)

Posted By rkapuaala on 09 Oct 2011 07:06 PM 
And yes, he is the figure recently featured in 'Dancing with Stars'. 



Right, I knew it was JR Martinez!


----------



## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

Which one is JR Martinez? The pretty one or the guy?


----------



## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

I thought I woud include the steps I take to part out a figure. Here you see the figure with the arm already parted from the figure.
I have already carved the female slot on the shoulder. One thing to keep in mind when you are going to part out small figures; don't make your armature connect at points where your figure will be divided. I have an armature in the torso and head, and then a separate one between the torso and the legs and then two seperate ones for the arms. As it turns out I only need to part out one arm, the one that goes out an angle from the body. So I took my exacto knift and carfully cut around the area I wanted to part making sure that it was not a straight cut so that the two parts would naturally key together.









This is a very preparational step. I use talc for this, I don't know if corn starch will work. I pour a little talc into the small dish you see and using a small brush I thoroughly coat the inside of the female part with the talc till it is white. Thie talc prevents the male part from adhereing to the surface of the sculpty.








I brushed a little liquid sculpty to the stump of the arm, and then rolled out some sculpty into a tube and carefully fixed it to the arm. Then I used a combinations of tools to get the rough shape of the pin to match the female hole in the shoulder. Make it a tiny bit larger and then jam it into the hole. Some of the clay should squeeze out. If you did a good job on matching your pin it should be just a bead of clay around the seams. You can take that bead off with a narrow pointed tool making sure to move the bead away from the seam in the direction of the arm and not the shoulder. Finally you place it into the oven and bake it as long as you would if you were backing the thickness of the surrounding walls of the holes. In my case they were just under 1/8 inch thick so I baked it for 15 minutes to be sure. 
Let the piece cool in the oven.... do not touch it till it is just warn. Move it out of the oven and let it cool completely.








Once the piece is completely cool very gently pry it out of the hole. After you pry it out you should be able to easily insert it again and have a piece that looks like the image above. If you look close you can barely see the seam.
I've used this method on several larger pieces in the past, but this year I started using it on 7/8th scale pieces and perfected the method for doing it on smaller pieces. This year alone I have done 12 f7/8ths scale figures this way with no issues. 
Parting the piece makes them easier to cast and remove from the molds.


----------



## tj-lee (Jan 2, 2008)

Amazing work! 

Best, 
TJ


----------



## Phippsburg Eric (Jan 10, 2008)

Fantastic Richard...the amount of detail and the confident yet natural poses...Wow! He looks Irish and proud of it. 

I have fun too but what you do is many levels beyond me!


----------



## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

Thanks Eric, thanks TJ. He is covered in RTV right now. So tomorrow I should have the first casting of him without a hat. I'll use this to form a hat head and then a couple of hats.


----------



## HMeinhold (Jan 2, 2008)

Rick,
here a suggestion for another type of hat. This is a sketchy old photo of a Welsh quarry loco driver. Jacket, pants and vest are pretty much the same as the Guinness guy, just the hat is different:



Regards


----------



## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

Thanks Henner,,, I like this portly fellow, I just might have to sculpt him too.


----------



## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

My mold making skills are improving. My original came out unharmed. This is an image of the cleanout piece and the original both assembled.








I am making the peg on top of his noggin for the hat to fit. I've given up on hats that are scullpted to fit a head, they are hard to cast and still don't look completely right. Sorry about the fuzzy image, my android isn't good on closeup shots. 
Note that I still need to plumb the peg up so that the hat can slide on and off easily. More to come tomorrow as I make the hats tonight.


----------



## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

While working on the hat I thought,,, why not just cast it with the hat on??? Need to do a little bit to the back of it.


----------



## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

I made his pants bagger. I'll cut in some more detail and this should be ready for the mold.


----------



## HMeinhold (Jan 2, 2008)

Hi Rick,
looks fantastic! I showed the picture to the Guinness and she can't await her new master







. BTW, do you have enough preorders for a production run?

Regards


----------



## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

Nope, but I'll do a limited run. Those that have already ordered will recieve theirs at the price on PreOrder. The limited run will be Custom painted only and be quite a bit more. But, who knows, its not Oct 31 yet and I have had folks come in the last week and order enough for a production run.


----------



## tj-lee (Jan 2, 2008)

Amazing! 

Best, 
TJ


----------



## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

thanks again tj 
I finished the detailing this morning and I am ready to put him up for a mold. If anyone is interested in seeing pics of the lay up for mold making let me know on this thread and I will post images of the layup before I put the forms on and after I put the forms on.


----------



## tj-lee (Jan 2, 2008)

Rick, 

> is interested in seeing pics of the lay up for mold making 

I'd like to see if it is not too much trouble. 

Best, 
TJ


----------



## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

Here he is, standing in the clay bed. Next I'll put a paper form around him.

If you want more detail try these videos here.
How To Make a one part mold.[/b]


----------



## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

The first castings. I removed the sprews from the feet and the arm but thats all the cleaning I did on this. I came out so well I'll have to give this one to Henner. The last part of this thread will be completed in a couple of days after I finish painting him.
Unless Henner tells me other wise, I figure I'm going to paint him with black pants and shoes. I dark brown jacket and brown vest, I tan shirt with a red neck tie. His hat will have a dark brown crown with a redband and black brim. If anyone knows the actual colors of the Guinness uniform let me know now, I'll be cleaning him up for painting today, but tomorrow I'll be painting. Last post in 3 days.


----------



## HMeinhold (Jan 2, 2008)

Rick,
I just consulted Bob. Here is his reply:

Remember this is only my opinion and taking into account the 
period which was clothing was pretty dour. White for the shirt, 
Black for the trousers (pants), Grey for the jacket , Dark Brown for 
the waistcoat (vest), Black tie, Black hat / cap and brown boots. 
Hope this is OK.

Regards


----------



## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

You got it Henner.


----------



## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

Got the base coat finihsed today. I'll let it dry for 24 hours and start on the finish coat and bring out some of the detail.


----------



## Don Gage (Jan 4, 2008)

Great figure! 
Will he be offered as part of your line? 

Don


----------



## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

Thanks Don, Its too early to tell yet. I still need 4 more preorders before I can afford to go into production mode. If I don't get them then he will only be offered as a custom painted Exclusive. I need 12 more orders for his predesessor the bald business man.


----------



## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

Henner, he is done. Send me your address in email and I'll ship this out when I ship out the rest of the preorders on Tuesday. He needs a coat of dull coat, but I need to wait 48 hours before applying that.


----------



## kormsen (Oct 27, 2009)

it has become a real jawdropper!


----------

