Customized Muggs

Megabyte Mugg

2009-04-28T09:11:00.001-07:00

Ah, who could forget a villain like Megabyte. Charismatic, poised and enunciates quite well. Too bad Tony Jay will never get to see this.

Sketched on the Mugg. I was torn between drawing the nose on his face, or actually sculpting it. But since my sculpting skills are not the best, I opted for drawing it on.
His back. There aren't many references for his rear, so I referenced it from the character sketch in the Reboot art book. That version included wires connected to his back, which I was also tempted to add, but felt it wouldn't be true to the show version.
Blue, gray and yellow paint to enhance all the metallic layers I'll have to be putting on.
All the painted layers. Gold, silver and metallic blue (which took a hard time getting right). The blue doesn't look that shiny, but in person, it really does. His eyes also need to be adjusted, as he simply looks psychotic.
Eyes fixed, mouth line draw in, and head fin molded and painted. Sean helped with the fin, as I didn't want to chance using clay again, so he suggested that Mighty Putty stuff. It ended up working really well, but began hardening within 10 minutes, so it looks a tad bit lumpy. The two things stopping me from using this stuff again is that 1. it's expensive, and 2. it smells like ass rubbed in dead fish.

The top of his head fine. You can see some of the shininess in the blue, but it's still a lot better IRL. One of the hardest Muggs I've ever had the pleasure of doing.

Bob Mugg

2009-04-28T08:54:00.001-07:00

I got asked to do everyone's favourite blue Guardian from Reboot, Bob.

I started doing things the smart way and actually sketching the Mugg on paper before putting it on the Mugg itself. Made things a lot easier for me to follow and correct.
Skin tone done. It seems a bit dark in the picture, but I promise you it's a lot lighter. My camera just really sucks.
Orange bits done.
Most of the suit done. It took me forever to get those blue-green shades perfect. Also added more yellow to the orange so that it wouldn't look so red.
Bob's back. You can see his gauntlets are painted silvery. It took me exactly 6 coats of silver paint to actually make it look decent. Note: always paint gray on as the first layer.
Drew on Glitch with Sharpie, as I didn't trust myself with a paintbrush to make it look decent.
Boots, PID and belt are done, and finished the outlines. He's still missing eyebrows.
Hair molding time! I threw away 10 bucks just to use ol' Predator as a guide for molding, using Crayola Air-dry clay. As you can see, I don't really like the Predator at all (IMHO, he's a douche)
Right side.
Back.
Left side.
Sadly, when the hair all dried in the morning, it had all fallen off Predator's head and became impossible to piece all of the dreads back together. This is attempt number 2 at hair, molded directly onto Bob's head.
Success! It dried, and although one or 2 piece seemed to be crumbling off his head, a little glue and paint for cover-up worked wonders. As I mentioned above, dark grey was painted on first, and then 2 coats of silver paint.

Dark Naoko Mugg

2009-03-29T13:39:00.000-07:00

I did a combination of these two, since I didn't want to paint a completely black Mugg.

The pencil work was probably the most fun to do, and it was also one of the most difficult outfits to draw.

Let the painting begin! The top and metal bits first.

Then the eyes and gauntlets.

Outline the hair to actually make it more neat this time.

The completed thing. The orbs were made of Sculpey and were painted with blue glow-in-the-dark paint, as were the eyes as well. I had wanted to give her black claws on the ends of her fingers as well, but that fell through really quickly when I couldn't make the Sculpey work how I wanted.

Croakter Mugg

2009-01-07T11:36:00.000-08:00

Croakter, Anuran engineer who takes pleasure in the company of robots and machines. Also equipped with poisonous tongue and currently gender issues. Infinite Vector character belonging to Robert.

Gold eyes and buttons, and 3 layers of orange paint. His overalls are going to look nice and spiffy and I'm liking his goofy grin already.

Fancy blue overalls, after 4 layers of blue paint.

The back of his overalls. It's hard to get anything centred on these Muggs.

Completed Crokater, with 7 layers of blue, white gloves and silly smile. All ready to fix stuff!

Detail of his pants and pockets: gold-ink marker as "stitching". What's not pictured is the tiny wrench I made for him, from a tiny wrench Sean had with some Sculper molded onto the handle so that it would fit in his hands.

Ewan McRae Mugg

2008-12-29T18:41:00.000-08:00

Meet Ewan McRae, 3rd year student and Demongate High, summoner, and the one responsible for freeing Fenrir (technically twice) from his bonds to quicken the end of the world, as well as wielder of the sword that once kept Fenrir's jaws open. Also previous boyfriend to a kumiho and current boyfriend of a 1/2 succubus girl who is really 3 years older than him (statutory, anyone?)
Not one to be messed with and resident girl-magnet.

Perfected skin tone, after 5 layers of paint. I'm really started to get irritated with how lumpy this peach (salmon?) paint is. This was the first Mugg painted with the new technique of mixing water in.

After hair and boots have been completed. Again, I hate painting brown things, because it takes forever to get the tone to look smooth.

His eyes and tie, which is sadly not in the middle of his body. I'm really proud of how the eyes came out, since I drew them over 3-4 times before I liked the shape.

Top of his head, showing his hair. I realized after a few too many layers that the 'poof' was too dark, so I tried mixing some white in.

Completed Ewan, with goofy smile, summoner badge and prefect badge on his arm. It was after I sprayed it that I realized I neglected all those lines I drew in for his pants zipper and such (sad face). I was tempted to make a Sword of Tirfing for him to wield, but hadn't had the experience of using Sculpey yet so I didn't want to chance it at this point.

Ferdinand Mugg

2008-12-28T18:39:00.001-08:00

Good ol' Ferdinand, how I've missed your seemingly apathetic ways and mercenary-like tendencies. This is another character of my fiance's that I missed gaming with and just had to do him as a Christmas present. I decided to give Sculpey a bit of a try instead of just painting things on and making it look flat. Sorry that there aren't any progress pictures. I seemingly forgot to take any, since my back was killing me from working on it all day (about 6-7 hours of continuous work).

Here's the ponytail, ears and tail done in Sculpey, before baking and painting. What's not shown are the tiny pieces of armour I did.

The finished piece from the front. Took a million coats of that brown paint for the pants and it STILL looks messy. I was also worried that he looked too cat-like, but there wasn't much I could do at this point. The ears...were a trial-and-error thing as to where to glue it, especially on that curved head.

Ferd from the back. I'm really proud of that tail, but the ponytail...not really (not to mention it's not placed in the middle of the head).
Otherwise, this was a lesson on "how to do sculpey properly next time". I like how the paint job came out on this one better than the previous Muggs I did (I haven't uploaded them yet because they're presents for people that I haven't given yet), as I took the advice of some forum posters to mix some water in with the paint.
And since I was messing with some Sculpey, I decided to make a companion boibadonk:
For those who are out of the loop (which is like all of you), a boibadonk is part bird, part baboon and part donkey. It showed up in this page of Darkbolt and this page of BreakPoint City.
Tiny, stupid and very out of focus. But at least it's a tiny bit of cheer he can bring to his office to show off to everyone...who...don't know what it is....

The first Mighty Mugg!

2008-12-22T08:10:00.001-08:00

When the Muggs finally came, I knew I had to do Zelthar for Sean's present, since the grumpy dark elf is one of his favourite DnD characters. (wait, you didn't know we were nerds by now?) So on came the sketchings on the white piece of plastic.
The pictures that follow are going to be different from the above picture, as that is an older character design and he has since been redone. They were also taken with my phone, so they're not the best quality.

Tada! It took me a while to get the right shade of yellow for his hair, but even this is still dark compared to the first picture.

Next came his shoulder sword-belt thing, with a tiny black shield insignia on it. You can also see a bit of the gold on his arm and leg adorning his boots.

See that tiny gold logo on the shield? That itself was painful to do, as my hand is not the steadiest. Red orbs have also been included in the gold parts on his belt, boots and gloves.

Doesn't he just look so cheerful? I'm actually quite proud that I could paint eyes to look that half-decent.

Ears and his earrings.

Face, after 2 coats of brown.

Face, after 6 coats of brown, and lines are drawn on with a marker, since I can't do a good job with paint.

A finished Zelthar! It's too bad you can't see his angry scowl with all that brown paint. But I assure you, it's there.

Just what any angry dark elf would need: a faaaaabulous feathery white coat to wear over your clothes and armour. (thanks so much to Neil for helping to make this coat for me; I just had to glue that feathery stuff on)< Voila! A pissed-off fruity drow complete! Well, almost. His finishing touches will be some swords made out of sculpey, but I think I've made Sean wait long enough for his present

His feathery goodness from the side.
This whole project wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be, except for the occasional smudges of paint and me just being crappy at painting. But all in all, I'd make one again.