Mr Blank the Monster Maker?!? (part two)

In the last post I was working on the Yoda/Slimer figure, but since I haven’t started molding it yet we’ll have to get back to that later… Until then, I went ahead and started working on my next idea: a figure for my band Rat Babies!

A few months back I managed to get a few friends together at the JOKER JOKER Gallery and went into the woods wearing all black with skull masks over their faces and shot a music video for Rat Babies latest EP release entitled “Speak Hard Answers”. The editing of the short film isn’t done yet but I thought it’d be really cool to release a figure of the shadowy figures from the video… Here’s a preview clip of the video, I created this when we first released the “Speak Hard Answers” EP back in March of this year:

In the video shadowy skull-faced people follow, observe, and interact with a struggling and confused guy lost in the dark woods played by “Uncle Chunk“. I won’t get into too much detail of the storyline’s meaning or anything yet, more on that when I have the film done. But for now I have the figures done…

image (6)

Because there are so many different shadowy characters in the film I decided that for the figure I could use just about any random figure I can find, and so after a trip to the J&J Flea Market I had a pile to customize. First thing I did was create a flat blank face on the figure using Apoxie Sculpt.

Once that was done I had to paint the whole figure black. This takes a couple coats to fully cover the figure. Next I sprayed two layers of Krylon Matte Finish clear coat to protect the paint job. Then bringing the figures inside I painted the faces using Testors Acrylic Paint, which also took multiple coats of paint, making sure to get full coverage and not see any streaks or black bleeding thru. Once the face is painted on I had to give it a few final touch-ups of black and one more clear coat to cover it all. Here’s a couple pictures of the process:

Next I had to create the backboard for the figure. I printed off the background artwork onto sticker paper down at Bel-Jeans Copy Shop, got the 2-ply fiber board at The Loft Art Supply store and brought it all home to assemble it. Once the art was stuck to the backboard I spray painted the red skulls across the top using a stencil I cut out. I glued on the blister and put a few more finishing touches with some splattered red paint… And voila, it was done!

While all this was happening my friend, bandmate, and now toy making guru Dain Marx of Buzzard Guts, was at home making his own version of the same figure design, but of course his was very different then mine, which goes to show you how this bootleg toy making world goes… anyone can make a figure, even the same figure, and each one will be different. Here’s a screen capture from his instagram:

Capture

When it’s all said and done though we ended up with some pretty damn cool figures. And I’m extremely happy that the first debut figure from Mr Blank Toys is a figure for my band Rat Babies, cause after 12+ years of being in this band it’s about time we did something like this!

Would you like to buy one of these figures? Well then you will need to come out to the next Rat Babies show at Go Bar on December 11th cause these limited edition figures and other merch will be available at the merch table. Rat Babies will be playing with the bands: Mala Fides (pdx), Holly Pauly, and Sinister Laughter (who will have a few toys available as well!) started at about 9:30pm. More info on the FB event page here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1783860078310934/. Hope to see you there…

Hopefully I’ll be able to get to the molding and casting of the Yoda/Slimer figure soon. If so I will be posting updates of that next time.

UPDATE: If you couldn’t make it to the show mentioned above and you would like to purchase a figure you can follow the link to our shop here: http://mrblankisdead.com/shop

 

 

OTHER AVAILABLE PRODUCTS from MR BLANK TOYS: