"What I Did During My Summer Holidays"

[muffinman]

hey ho!
some have asked me what i've been up to over the past couple years, sculptingwise that is.
and so this is "what i did during my summer holidays"
first there was this:
"The Squirrel Of Death"


a comic book artist from berlin, FLIX, doodled a sketch of this squirrel in a comic book of a friend of mine
during a signing tour. she liked the character enough to ask me to make a sculpt of it for her birthday.
once she got it she took pictures of it and mailed them to FLIX.

[muffinman]

Flix in turn invited me to come see him at another reading/signing session and he asked me
to transform another character of his into a sculpt:
"Coffeeman"

[muffinman]

FLIX brought along another cartoon artist, Ralph Ruthe, to help him with the reading gig,
and Ralph, too, asked me then and there to sculpt a character for him:
"Jochen das Nashorn" (jochen the rhino)



with the help of my two workmates i cast and painted 20 Jochens which ralph bought
to give away or to raffle away. it was the first commission for our newly founded shop, FAKEHOUSE.

[muffinman]

now, all good things come in threes, right? guess what - Flix and Ralph told me they knew of yet another
cartoon artist who might be interested in having his characters sculpted. his name is Joscha Sauer
and he has a comic series called NICHTLUSTIG (notfunny). joscha told me that he wanted the whole menagery of
his main characters sculpted to have them manufactured as limited resin statues. first we wanted to make them ourselves 'on demand' but that would have been too expensive for the 'consumer', so in the end i sculpted the prototypes and we made a couple sets to send to joscha and the factory in china where they were then manufactured. however, the pics show the prototypes we sculpted, cast and painted at FAKEHOUSE.
"The Lemming Family"

[muffinman]

"Death and his Poodle" also for Joscha Sauer / NICHTLUSTIG





"Professors Wilson and Pickett and the Dino that always wants to borrow stuff" also for Joscha Sauer / NICHTLUSTIG





phew... and there's a few more characters still to come...

[muffinman]

with another artist, graffiti legend Flying Förtress, i came up with a limited run of keychains that
used his trademark signature, a stylized bear in a troopers helmet. i flickred through pictures of
his work and noticed that the cute little thing would make a great keychain. and since i had met FF
a few months prior and had also customized a couple TeddyTroops vinyl toys, i just went and sculpted
his little signature. i mailed him pictures and he was all for it. we made a few changes to the sculpt
and then put out 30 pieces of the grey/grey variant and another 30 in black/white a couple days later.
both variants sold out in about an hour each. we were very pleased to say the least.




well, that's what i've been doing over the last years. apart from that i'm now one of three proud CEOs (owner-managers)of our very own Mock-Ups-Shop FAKEHOUSE and i'm making vinyl customs on the side.

so, how have you all been?

cheers
mm

[loupegarou69]

Man your ability to take 2d and make it 3d is just amazing. And once colored...its just like the art pulled itself out of the page!!
Awesome.

[muffinman]

Man your ability to take 2d and make it 3d is just amazing. And once colored...its just like the art pulled itself out of the page!!
Awesome.

speaking of which: i can't seem to find the sketches Joscha and Ralph made for me for reference...
i'll keep digging...

btw, thank you kindly, loupegarou69!

[jedideni]

Scrolling down through the images in this post was like getting all the Christmas presents you ever wanted as a kid, all on the same day.

Beautiful stuff.

[muffinman]

thanks, jedideni!
you know, when finally all the revisions are done and the first master-hardcopies get pulled from
their molds it's a little like christmas, too. when the painted, finished things get a thumbs up from the
respective artists it's pretty much like new years! pop the cork and pour the wine!
and getting there can be like waiting for santa when you were little.
joscha and i go back and forth A LOT with those sculpts to make sure they're spot on...

[JimPV]

These are all terrific; really like "Death and his poodle" and the rhino on the scale. Fantastic!

[muffinman]

thank you kindly, JimPV!

[hedorah59]

Well, you know that I absolutely LOVE all these pieces! Congrats on all your success so far, here's to a great future for Fakehouse!

Thanks for taking the time to share with us your works!

[amusedjester]

excellent work, perfectly crafted. They were probably giddy with excitement when you were presenting them in person.

[muffinman]

hedorah: thank you, mate!
amusedjester: most of the times we ship the finished, painted hardcopies to the clients
so i don't really get to see their reactions. but i'll get either a phone call or message/email
and most of those go "woohooo!" or "yeah, baby!" and that's quite a reward, too.

[tombow]

mammamia!
I love them all!

[HairyAsHell]

Absolutely amazing skills man. Really inspiring. Thanks for sharing

[Otto69]

Dude, I always love your stuff. Your sculpts are always amusing and interesting.

[good30]

looks to me like you've been fortunate enough to have been able to work at what you love doing......& you can certainly tell just by looking at the AMAZING end products.

Many congratulations.

Please, please, please let us know if any of your new work becomes available

Stu

[muffinman]

thanks guys, yeah, it's definitely a pleasure working on projects like those.
working close with the artists, getting detailed sketches and stuff, laughing about weird looking wips...
sometimes the artists themselves (2D by nature) aren't quite sure how exactly a specific part
of their character should work in 3D and so it can be quite some labour to get there...
but when in the end it all falls into place it's a great feeling. sometimes i look at the finished
painted hardcopy and think "Hey, that looks cool... Who made that?" ..oh yeah, i know...