07/30/99-- Oh waow... not only are they bare & nekkid, but they're see-through too! Where else, besides The Visible Woman model kit, do you get to indulge in such shameless, decadent voyeurism? I'm not sure what I'm going to do with these, but I needed to test the vacuforming technique on this material. The Dragon figure whose limbs were harvested for this project won't be needing his display box ever again, so the big sheet of clear acetate was fair game. I doubt that any of my Dragon figures will ever need their boxes again, so there's plenty more where that came from. By working on this figure so tentatively-- attaching the putty boobs to a vacuformed shell--it allows me to take a flexible approach, with a lot of different options. Internal detail can be built up directly on the original body or the putty shell can be engraved with detail. The clear shell can be used in parts, or not used at all. The clear shell can be airbrushed with clear areas masked out, or tinted. Also, by backpainting the clear shell, you can get an extremely shiny & chip-proof finish. Some of these things you can test before committing, and other things you can't without running the risk of having to go back to square one. No one wants to do that, so you always test the least risky ideas first. For example, practice your tinting & painting techniques on scrap instead of doing on-the-job training. You can see some of the attraction of working with fantasy & sci-fi designs. Because it's a low-brow genre, it doesn't need to make sense, despite what some would have you believe. Clear boobs on a she-bot? What possible reason could there be for that? Duh... Because it looks neat? Think Giger's Alien. Imagine the space battles in Star Wars without any sounds because of the vacuum of space. Nahhhhh... Who wants that? Imaginary stuff is supposed to be fun, not scholarly. (Well, in fairness, it can be both...)

08/01/99- Sci-fi buffs will be familiar with the inspiration for this project (at least where it seems to be heading). The photo on the left was taken from The Metropolis Homepage, maintained and edited by the Rev. Douglas Quinn, C.S.P. The film is a milestone in our cultural heritage, so it's definitely worth checking out. I've decided to name the figure "Maria 2K robot". These days, everyone seems to be asking "Why 2K?", which is a good enough reason for the name change. I assure you, it's not that big of a problem. (So I'm entitled to a few stupid jokes, okay?) James, aka GIjOEdad came up with a neat & original idea: "...figure's see through chest--"liquid" (was thinking of the water/oil time wasters they sell at Spencer's-something akin to a lava lamp), then adhere the plastic to the figure so that it wouldn't leak..." Wow! What a cool idea! To expand on that, how about a faux circulatory system with a bulb-pump? If we try to make sense out of this fictional creation, it does seem logical that the protuberances would be used to store liquids rather than radar equipment or headlights. Practically though, sealing off liquid would be a problem, since glue or a silicone sealant applied directly to the inside of the clear shell would would probably mar the exterior view because of the irregular glue line. However, one solution would be to have separate clear domes or sacs behind the clear skin. This allows you to move the sealing seams to the far-back, where they'd be less visible. Thanks James!-- it's a kewl idea and it's definitely worth playing around with. Another interesting idea came from Sean Vandehey (who seemed apprehensive about proposing this, since it might seem "sick"... Sick??? Here? In this web site??? ;^) : The figure as a robotic Overseer of Hell, with screaming, tortured faces behind the clear torso shell's boobs... It's very imaginative, and would make a terrific garage kit sculpture, since you'd be able to use the sculpture's base to develop the environment. I'll probably stick with something more droll though, since the figure is already tied to an existing work.

That's another issue: Since I'm not duplicating the Maria robot from Metropolis, I have a lot of freedom, but feel I should maintain the "look & feel" of the original. It's sort of like music-- when you improvise, you don't play completely random notes or no one would relate to what was going on. Instead, you string together familiar sequences, hopefully in a way that feels inspired and aesthetically pleasing. Same thing here. The overall look is the same, but there are differences. This saves you some work wracking your brain looking for inspiration too... I spent hours looking at magazines to get ideas of how I might do the legs. There are only so many ways you can do these things! Eventually, I decided that there were a lot of elements from the original that I could approximate, just to serve as a starting point. The shins are close to verbatim in the layout of the elements. In the upper picture, the balls and pipes are similar to the original, but the hydraulics on the sides only suggest some of original's detail and serve to reinforce the mechanical nature of the figure. The stuff littered around the feet are the kinds of basic shapes & details that I collect for this kind of "kitbashing". Hopefully, the N-scale model railroad wheels won't be immediately recognizable once they're puttied & painted; I like 'em because they have the spike on the end. Kitbashing isn't a quick process because you don't just throw stuff together. The "art" of this is selecting parts that you think look good together, so there's a lot of trial & error. Once you've positioned the basic shapes then you decide where to putty to blend the mish-mash together, and where to add additional surface detailing.