Creatures for Kids
This is such an awesome concept, it’s a charity art and toy auction helping children, to be specific—it’s a non-profit organization benefiting children at risk and I seriously think that more people should know about this!
In its second year, Creatures for Kids is excited to partner again with Vinyl Thoughts, the largest vinyl toy show in Texas, at this year’s Vinyl Thoughts Art Show 5. More than 500 art lovers will gather in Deep Ellum at Quixotic World, 2824 Main Street on September 25, 2014 from 7:00pm-11:00pm. The show will provide a separate area featuring toy and art pieces donated by generous artists specifically to Creatures for Kids, who has chosen CHILDREN AT RISK as the sole beneficiary. CHILDREN AT RISK has been dedicated to comprehensively addressing children’s issues through research, community education, collaboration, and advocacy since 1989. All proceeds will help foster positive impacts for children in health, food insecurity, human trafficking, and education.
Toby McGrubber
Founder of Creatures for Kids
I know I may sound like a semi recovered alcoholic with anger issues and a sexual affinity towards fire, but there’s always a soft spot in my heart for kids, little ones, or “peanuts” as me and my girlfriend call them. Again, once I got the go ahead, I sketched a few things out but I instantly went back to a character I’ve had in the works for a bit now.
Allow me to introduce “Sweet Meat”, a fat sweet toothed carnivorous pink bear, haha. He’s been in the concept stage for a long time now, in fact I’m pretty sure I drew him up immediately after Manfred and Vincent—and there he stayed, until called upon when I had more skills with the materials at hand. Honestly, what better place is there to introduce a fat pink meat eating candy fiend than at an auction for kids.
So here he is at the clay mock up stage, it’s based on a Kidrobot Bub if you were wondering. In fact I snagged a bunch of them for when I felt I was ready to make Sweet Meat. I used super sculpy here because I wasn’t 100% sure how I was gonna set up the face or hands, and I’d rather not break solid magic sculpt and waste my time / materials.
Once I knew what I was doing for the hands I started up in magic sculp, you can see here they are all done and primed..ready for the sanding. To make the tiny fat fingers with the Bub arms the generic hands needed to go, it’s possible I could have left them but it’s easier this way. From here they’ll get sanded a lot, in some cases I almost like relief sculpting—get that general shape and just carve, sand and scream your way to victory.
You can see Iggy’s head partially primed in the background on my custom made dunny head holder—a pencil with a wad of blue tape.
Alright, so like I said, the clay got replaced with magic sculp everywhere! The feet, hands and major parts of the face are all done. The hands got some priming and sanding love already, I make these animal feet so much that I almost never need to sand them, but the face…the face looks like a gnarled 18th century drunken Irish fisherman.
Same stage, just a front view to show that weather smashed face that only a mother could love. You’ll notice that at this point in the game I didn’t sculpt my usual side burns. I was torn here, every time I drew Sweet Meat he had similar sideburns to everyone else, and at one point he had a beard! I decided I wanted to keep that fat face and huge chin so my normal sideburns wouldn’t work with that.
These are the sideburns I ended up sculpting, they’ve got a furry feel to them. Especially when compared to the normal chops I usually sculpt, sticking off the head like they’re gelled in place. I think this new style helped keep the head fat and rounded since they really hug the side of the face pretty close.
From the front view they kind of make him look like a mutton chop murderer—and that tiny amount they stick off the face was perfect. Once I started looking at it from all angles I knew it was exactly what he needed. So I went to work on the opposite side, each side was done using specific tools, a #0 angled clay shaper, a custom tool my friend made me years ago, and my finger…when working with magic sculp keep water and a paper towel handy.
Look at that chest fur! Yea that didn’t make it into the final rendition either—kinda ripped it off immediately after this photo. I realized that my tattoo designs wouldn’t work with the chest fur in the way.
So this got ripped off, sanded down and another round of primer.
The whole gangs together for one last rodeo; here’s everybody all primed up and sanded butter smooth. Originally Iggy was gonna have a witch doctor mask and be a little more…fiendish. Once I really got to work on painting the face his real character just came through.
I wish I had taken more pictures at this point but his tattoos have been planned for so long that it was a blur of paint slinging and swears for the tiny brushes. Just like everything else I use the paint thinned so it’s easier to control.
Here’s Iggy, one of the Doublemint Twins and kin to Ottis “the Witch Doctor”. As you can clearly see I had intentions of making him blue. He was gonna have all this face paint like Ottis, the mask, maybe a stick…I dunno. I thought I could make him the kin in the background of my Witch Doctors Print. All I know is once I got into it blue wasn’t the right color for this guy.
I deferred to the usual whiskey filled animals for help, aka my friends and green was the majority color. A pink got thrown in there then changed to green, then pink, then green. Thanks to them and their color choices Iggy was born!
The dripping ice cream on his ear is hot glue that I let drip, mushed around and added more layers. Brushed on some thin lascaux paint and bam!! A drippy sherbet is made! The cone and ball of ice cream were both made with magic sculpt directly on the painted drips, and painted “wet” (while still curing) to help smooth it out and pre-tint it.
If your looking to see the finals then get your ass over to the my works page and check em both out, Sweet Meat and Iggy Doublemint.
Now for the best part of this post, aside from my amazing charm—here’s another bit from Toby.
It’s really been a blessing to work with such incredible artists and the great team at Children at Risk. This event is such a blast to work on and so fun to see so many artists join together to help such a great cause.
Toby McGrubber
Founder of Creatures for Kids
With all the amazing donations by such crazy talented artists Creatures for Kids were able to raise almost $2000!! That’s fantastic, and I’m happy to say that my two donations found a home and the money is going towards helping peanuts! If your looking to help out with this, donate yourself, your time, a friend’s time etc, then check out all these links down below.
For more information about Creatures for Kids, please visit www.creaturesforkids.org.
For more information about CHILDREN AT RISK, please visit www.childrenatrisk.org.
Thanks for reading and hanging out, while you read this I raided your fridge and hung out with your pets!