I said HEY

WOW, time does fly by! Sorry for the delay of blog posts, I plan to rectify this right now.

I have individually spoken to people about various events of the past two months and mentioned things on my twitter but I thought it would be best to post about what’s going on. Especially for people waiting for Barrelmon!

The adventure of Barrelmon:

When I got Barrelmon, the best way to recast it would have been to split him into parts and cast each individually. It would have been the best way but TOVI and I didn’t want to cut up her sculpt, she put many hours into it and I didn’t want part lines in the final product, especially on the eye sockets. Wanting to cast it as one piece, I knew with my skill level in moulding and casting, it would be best to hire an expert. So I started my first quest; to find a local caster that was happy to cast in one piece, this was hard, many telling me it wasn’t possible and giving me outrageous quotes to steer me away.

Then, I found someone that knew exactly what I wanted and everything was perfect! I booked him for the start of March. Then he got delayed on a few projects and I told him that was fine, but then it got delayed into his holiday and my booking got pushed back till after. Wanting March to be the release date, I said I will attempt it myself. He gave me some tips and I ordered my supplies.

Moulding and casting is tricky, I have done it for one off simple prototypes before but producing a quality run is entirely different. Barrelmon is quite a complicated sculpt with many undercuts and thin twisting sections that can create issues, the biggest being pockets of air that can’t escape that prevents resin to fill the entire mould. Knowing this, I planned out a mould, which replicated quite well.

Sadly, Barrelmon himself didn’t make it out of the mould alive! Poor little guy broke all over when I took him out! This was okay I thought to myself: “I have a mould now...... I can cast many!” Yet, there were more air pockets than I first anticipated, which produced poor resin casts.

I have been editing the mould by cutting out channels for the air to escape but with little success, I am pouring casts that may have less air pockets but more issues seem to arise by my edited moulds. It’s a battle!

So, with Barrelmon in pieces, I have been trying to recover the mould. I am still trying to rescue the mould but I am going to now cast the individual parts he broke into. It will be easier making the mould but it will require much more hands on work putting together and cleaning up once cast.

For me, it has been a great learning experience with developing projects. So many discoveries with unexpected problems. I love attempting all directions to solve problems and I think I have been too caught up in dealing with them and not informing people of what is going on.

Thanks for everyone who have shown support and patience with this production - I really hope to get Barrelmon out there as soon as possible, but quality comes first!