Making The Cacolantern

My obsession with the 1993 video game DOOM continues. Back in November of 2014, I had this grip of inspiration to make 1 of the classic DOOM monsters at a large enough scale to look somewhat realistic. I had so much fun sculpting a small 2" version for "Icons of DOOM" in 2 hours, I thought it would be crazy fun to make a 12" version. It was fun but I severely underestimated just how long and how much work it was to make her. People sometimes get upset when I charge $3500 for a sculpture and don't understand all the time and materials that go into making something like this. Oh, and yes, I said her. I believe that these creatures are female, based on the DOOM sprites I referenced.

Humble beginings of the Styrophone-Ball

I started with a simple 10" styrofoam ball. After carving the mouth and eye socket, I mounted it to a base and coated the ball with a 2-part urethane resin to help seal the styrofoam. I jammed on the clay using Monsterclay, which is an oil-based clay. Little by little, I picked away at the details and shapes and slowly found my version of this sinister beast. 

Here is a quick 17 second turnaround after my first 2 hours or so on starting the detail. 

 I started with the inside cavity of the mouth and slowly worked my way out. It was tricky as hell to do this and I wish I had made the lower jaw removable. Good thing I have skinny fingers!

Above is an image of first-person sculpting! After what seemed to be months and months of a little sculpting here and a little sculpting there, I managed to make my way through this strange 360 ball of pure, intense detail. The horn textures were inspired by a bitchin' horn I acquired at Disguise, my old job, sculpted by Miles Teves for a film that never saw the light of day called "This Present Darkness".  Years ago, my old boss Paul Palmeiri brought this horn into work and told me about some of the monsters and designs he had a hand in. If I recall correctly, it was being done at Cannom Creations Inc? The film was based on the book by Frank Peretti and supposedly had loads of demons in it. One day Paul managed to throw some resin into a horn mold from one of the suits they made and now I've been holding onto that freaking horn for years! The subtlety of details and dynamic form always amazes me. Miles is such an amazing artist it boggles my mind. Have a look below, I can only imaging what the rest of this monster's body looked like. I owe a lot of my success in sculpture to Paul Palmeiri. He taught me a lot about sculpture and was always pushing me to the next level when he was my boss. 

So this little demon ended up with 12 horns and a shit-ton of teeth. I really wanted to make this Cacodemon my own and bring as many details out as I could.  The original inspiration for id when developing this creature for DOOM was a painting by Jeff Easley. I believe Kevin Cloud or Adrian Carmack partially pixelated the image from Advanced Dungeons and Dragon's 2nd edition Planescape manual. The creature in the image is called an Astral Dreadnaught. Check it out at the link here.  I wanted to pay homage to that original Jeff Easly painting as well and was at the forefront of my mind when coming up with the textures on my Cacodemon.

The most difficult part of this project was trying to figure out how the hell to mold it! I started by cutting off the horns and larger teeth. Doing this simplifies the basic shape. Horns and pointy objects are tricky  to cast out of a mold successfully without any air bubbles in the tips.  I'll talk more on that later. 

The trick was firmly attaching the sculpture to the board so it wouldn't move at all while in the molding process. If the sculpture moves, even a little out of place once I start the process, it can ruin the mold and possibly the entire sculpture.  To firmly secure her, I devised a simple 2-pronged pipe which I inserted into her rear orifice. Having just 1 prong or pipe could allow the sculpture to spin. Two posts  gives a mechanical hold preventing any spin. The image below is the simple 2-pipe-prong I built. I remember walking around the hardware store fitting pieces together praying it wasn't too big. Before I epoxied this into the sculpture I wrapped the pipes with floral wire to give them more teeth. The image below was taken post-molding and you can see that it took some of the styrofoam with it when I removed it from the sculpture. 

Once the sculpture was completely secure on the pipes, they were incased in clay and would eventually serve as the pour spout in the silicone mold. Now it was time to start laying up the clay. This thin 3/8" of water-based clay, called bubblegum,  is carefully placed over the sculpture. It's strange to see this but I have wrapped a plastic bag around the sculpture to keep the bubble gum clay from sticking to it. The equator-like ridge in the clay layup serves as the division point where I cut the mold apart.

Now the part I most dread...the fiberglass jackets! Fiberglass makes amazing molds and mold jackets but, they smell and are very toxic to work with. I think I spent four solid days wearing a respirator when making these molds. Below is a shot just before I was ready to pour the green rubber silicone into the mold jackets. The original 3/8' of clay was removed to provide the cavity to make the rubber mold.

Once the liquid silicone rubber is catalyzed, it firms up in about 8-16 hours. I use a 25 durometer silicone which basically means the hardness of the material. The higher the durometer the harder the material. 25 is pretty soft. Below is the front half of the mold after it was painstakingly cut with a special gutter key blade I make out of standard X-acto blades to create a uniform groove in the silicone to help the two halves key back up and fit together perfectly when casting parts out of the mold. 

At this point I could have just started casting pieces, but I decided to make things a bit more complicated. I wanted a smooth interior surface that would accept a custom eyeball and registration points for all my internal LED light fixtures. Because the mouth cavity is so cavernous and essentially, anything ridged would lock into the mold, it had to be cut out of the mold and dealt with separately. The image below is the clay-filled front half with the acrylic eyeball. To do this, I melted Monstermakers clay to paint in layers until I built a sufficient 1/8" to 1/14" thickness. Once this was done I carefully cut the mouth cavity out. with the layered clay on top so the pieces would register when this was eventually cast. 

Next was the interior mold over this clay skin, done again with 3/8" bubble gum clay, as seen in the photo below. The large tube in the bubblegum clay serves as the pour spout for the silicone once it has a fiberglass jacket. The smaller white PVC tube serves as the pour spout when actually casting the front half. 

The same treatment was done to the back half of the original case mold with some modifications. The three black PVC rings in the image below are the brackets to hold the LED lights along with the strange clay posts that will hold the electronics. The white PVC tube again will serve as the pour spout. The little white circular ports labeled A and B, are spacers that will allow me to insert the translucent blue nodes seen in the back of the Cacodemon that turn from brown to blue when it is about to fire a plasma ball. To make these simple spacers I cast the nodes in the original mold first and remolded them separately then put them back into the mold before I painted in the clay. All of this was a lot of problem solving and trying to figure out how things would fit back together once made into separate pieces with each part cast in different colors. The clay ridge was created by casting just the ring of the front half and fitting it on to help key up the two halves. I have to thank my good friend Mike Biasi for helping me figure that out. This clay ridge was curtail in fitting everything back together.

Once I figured out that bit, it was time to finish molding the back half. I also forgot to mention that I was designing these molds to fit very snugly into my pressure chamber with an interior diameter of  only 14 inches! This meant that my fiberglass mold jackets would be trimmed to the bare minimum.

Meanwhile, I was also making cup molds for each of the 12 horns and 2 large teeth. Below, my son Lucian helped me de-mold the horns. 

The Cacodemon eyeball was very fun and challenging  to make. First, I made a simple silicone cup mold of the acrylic sphere I used for the eye. Then I cast a resin copy and ground a flat area for the pupil  (see pic 1 below). Next, I took some Monster clay and carefully sculpted a gross pupil, referencing cat eyes. These pupils essentially work like sphincter muscles (see pic 2). Once the sculpt was complete, I molded it in a silicone cup mold, then cast an eye using a phosphorescent yellow pigment. Carefully, I painted it green but made sure that the yellow would still shown through. In the fourth image below, check out the painted eye beneath an LED light pad. Finally, I put that painted eye into the first mold of the acrylic sphere and filled it with water clear translucent resin to create the cornea over the pupil (see pic 3). My first attempt at this failed. The water clear resin I used proved to be unstable with the thin layer I was making over the pupil. All the eye parts were cast in my pressure pot to reduce air bubbles. This pressure pot with 60 lbs of air pressure in it, shrinks the bubbles making them invisible to the naked eye until the resin sets up which is usually in about 2-4 hours. This worked fantastically at first, but about a day after the eye was finished, the water-clear resin started to bubble and delaminate from the pupil. The resin was not completely set up. To resolve this I kept the mold in the pressure pot for 2 days to make sure the resin set up properly. In retrospect, I should have purchased newer clear resin. 

With almost all the molds being complete, it was time to start casting parts! Below is the front half mold fit very snugly into my pressure pot. The PVC tube sticking out with the orange funnel is the extended pour spout. The orientation of the mold is such that when the resin is poured it fills from the bottom up. This prevents air from being trapped in the mold during the pour. I have three tiny vents at the top of the mold that bleed resin indicating the mold is filled. 

The front half came out beautifully! I should note that before I put the mold in the pressure pot I carefully cast only the teeth in the mold in plain white resin. Then I closed the mold and put it in the pressure pot to cast the remaining in a bright red color. This basic color differentiation helps immensely when painting later. I think it also looks like the Cacodemon has rabies! 

The second half proved to be a bit more challenging. Essentially, I had to make a butt-plug to negate the original pour spout in favor of the PVC spout on the inside of the mold. This and other factors lead to a massive leak in the mold. A large portion of 1800 grams of red tinted resin ended up at the bottom of my pressure pot. I had to use a 4 foot crowbar to get it out :( 

With a little more trail and error I finally got the back half mold to seal properly. Before long, I had 2 halves to reassemble. I started by first painting the inside with black primer to obscure any unwanted light getting though, then silver over that. The silver helps to reflect the light. Next was anchoring the light pads and electronics. In the below image you can see the blue nodes encased in the back half now along with all the light pads. I should also note that all the horns were glued then screwed into place.

The final step was mounting it to a base then attaching the halves together. Even though the halves fit well together there was a 1/16"-1/4" gap in some places making the seam very noticeable. To fix this, Ifound places to screw them together, then I thickened some red pigmented resin with Cabosil which is very toxic for our lungs, put it in large syringes and filled the gaps. This worked beautifully as a seaming agent. The only downside is that if I ever need to get back into the inside of the Cacodemon, I'd have to break it apart. Below is a video I made after it was completed to show it off a bit. I especially had fun making a latex version of the Cacodemon to make the death scene. 

Someday, I need to make a Cacodemon that can fly and shoot, but that is for another time. If you hung on and read the entire post I have a treat for you!  Leave a comment and I will send you my high resolution HD sprites for this Cacodemon, as seen below! If you are interested in purchasing a Cacolantern you can find different offerings in my Etsy store here.

Enjoy- Jason A. Hite

Francesca?

Hi there! Just in case you happen to visit my blog, your email did not work when I tried to reply. Below is the message that a mailer demon ate....


Hi Francesca,

When I was your age I also wanted to be a comic artist and do animation. Professionally, I am neither but I have experience in both. Web comics are very interesting and fun to read. I'd love to see yours sometime and how noble to do it to raise money for charity! What is you web comic called?

My ideas come from many different sources. Music is among them. I listen to all kinds. Comics, too! The Brothers Quay are an inspiration to me as well. Most Stop-Motion animations is. One of the keys to making art, animation, comics, etc, is being persistent and consistent. You have to keep at it and exercise your talents like you would a muscle and always, always, ALWAYS believe in yourself, no matter what!

Thanks so much for writing me, I love to meet people with similar interests. 

-Jason :) 

Obesity

For awhile now, I've wanted to express my feelings in sculptural form in terms of the prevalent obesity rise in America. There are people who are very dear to me in this state, and I wish there was more I could do for them. What is interesting to me is that it is not socially acceptable to comment or advise on the issue like it is with tobacco smokers. Our society makes it far too easy to become this way with quick, easy, and cheap fast-food. Not to mention the serving portions tripling in size over the past 10+ years.  The sad thing is, I don't see it changing anytime soon. Everywhere you go, look at the ratio of healthy fit people verses the obese. It will not take long to realize how out of shape Americans are in. I don't really have any answers or great enlightenment on this subject. Nor do I wish to impress anger or insult to anyone reading this.  I simply wish to illustrate the odd beauty and utter travesty of what we humans are capable of doing to our bodies.

Like all sculptures that I undertake, it is necessary to first collect reference. This particular subject matter has led me to some very unfavorable places on our "world wide web". I've seen things that I cannot erase from my mind now. One of the favorable pieces of reference I discovered was from the movie Blade. Miles Teves designed and created the massively obese character, "Pearl." The images on his website (http://milesteves.com)  of this and other works are stunning!

After collecting my reference imagery, I created an armature using copper wire and aluminum foil. Once that was in place, I wrapped the foil in floral wire and liberally coated it with a 2 part resin to keep the foil from moving.  My 2-year old son also lends me his skills in picking up anything he feels I might need.

After mixing about 6 pounds of Supersculpy with Burnt Umber Premo (2 lbs Sculpy to 2oz Premo), I began the arduous task of covering the foil turkey I made.

 

In working on this, I found it very satisfying to try and make the clay look as if gravity has a say in every lump and fold. Now that the general shapes are in place, I raked it down, smoothed it out, and started my favorite part, detailing! Stay tuned; more pictures and exciting details coming soon!

Designing Costumes for Disguise

For 11 years I have worked for Disguise making Halloween product. My primary job is designing and sculpting accessories, but I also contribute costume ideas.  Here are some designs, and the costumes that they became. At Disguise, I provide the design concept, which is interpreted by a costume designer. If graphics are needed, that is handled by the Creative Services department. Once they have a mock up of a costume, I give input on the construction and graphics. We only have an allotted amount of money to  work with, so more often than not, we cannot afford some of the elements in my designs. In most cases, I also sculpt and paint the components that accompany the costumes.  Click on any of the images to see full size.

For these two military designs, I  had some time to think through and develop them properly. Everything was done in Photoshop. The completed costumes turned out OK, but there was so much more I would have loved to see.

I'm a huge industrial goth fan so when they asked for me to contribute to the Rot"N" Rocker line, I jumped at the chance to make the creepiest rocker on earth. Even though we could not afford to do the pants,  I was very impressed by how it all come out in the final costume.

This was originally going to be a vampire knight, but the executives didn't get it. So, he became the black knight once I added a helmet. My initial inspiration was in re-purposing a chest piece I did on a costume that was canceled a few years back. I thought with a new paint job that it was worth saving. So far, the buyer response has been great.

I had such high hopes for this one when I designed it. I was responsible for the sculpts and am proud of them, but the actual costume really falls short.

I was trying to make these designs with the parchment back round look; like they all came from the same world, ancient, and horrific. Here are a couple more  that I really liked. The Crypt vampire made it as an essential costume, but "The Monster" lost over the Black Knight and Reaper.

This was a fun little design I did in 2008. They were looking for a twist on a skeleton costume. I was inspired by things I'd seen in some issues of Heavy Metal comics.

I

 This is my all-time favorite costume I did for Disguise back in mid 2000. No one was saying, make a demon, or vampire, so I made what I wanted to make. I did dozens of sketches, but the one pictured is the closest to how it turned out. It looked amazing, but we could not get the factory to make the vacuum-form plastic armor in the correct thickness resulting in a brittle costume.

  These are other designs for the Biomech that I would still love to make.

I've done tons on ninjas, but these two represent two of my favorite designs.  The one on the left is supposed to be the very first ninja from ancient barbaric times, and the one on the right is a modern day ninja. Both are from the same clan and share a dragon insignia on their belts.

 Every boy at age 7 or 8 wants to be a ninja, I know this because I was.

 This was a idea and design I had for a pitch to try and get the Star Wars license. It never saw the light of day, but it was a blast to work on.

Once in a while I like to just draw stuff in my spare time at home. This was a fun project I did in 2008 that taught me a lot about coloring in Photoshop.

Creating Adam for the Automated Resurrection Sculpture

Before I blog about how I painted the hatch, I wanted to talk about how I made the Adam figure. It all started with my ambition to make another stop-motion film to extend the story with the Eva character I made in my first short, STASIS. I'm still in the process of making STASIS 2, but part of this journey is sharing the fun experiences along the way. Each thing we do has a story attached to it. This particular sculpture took me through a long 3-year journey. I always have 4 or 5 things happening at once; most of which are at my day job sculpting and designing products for companies like Marvel, Disney, and Hasbro. When I have the time and energy, I like to make things that go far beyond the constraints I have to deal with in the product world. I rather enjoy telling people how I make things, because teaching someone something is to learn it twice and perfect it.


Before I begin a sculpture, I sketch, gather references, and think about what the characters function or purpose is in the script. In Adam's case, he's been in cryogenic storage for a long period of time. He's waiting for the day medical science can correct a near fatal car accident that left him paralyzed. With this information in mind, I began to think about what the Hospital of the future might look like, what the doctors and nurses might be like, and what kind of technology might be employed in this miraculous rehabilitation.




Since Eva stood 13 inches, I decided to make Adam 14 inches. I started with finding a good image of a skeletal structure and then blew it up to actual size. I used this to build an armature using 1/8" & 1/4" aluminum wire for the overall structure, epoxy putty for bones, and small gauge steel wire for fingers. I then wrapped it all with metal floral wire, which helps the clay stick.

I employed a mixture of Supersculpy and Fimo polymer clay to make the clay a darker shade. When I plan on molding a sculpture and I’m using Supersculpy, I like mixing a darker shade of clay. This serves two purposes: Supersculpy alone has a translucency, which makes it difficult to see your fine surface smoothness. Also, mixing in another color strengthens and conditions the clay. I use 1 pound of Supersculpy for every 56grams (one small block) of soft brown Fimo clay for my mix.    

This character is eventually going to be a stop-motion puppet, so I had to pose him in a very static position for flexibility. Notice how the arms and legs are slightly bent. That is so I know exactly where to put the joints; and exactly when it’s posed in its natural bends and creases. Most people like to make the ball and socket armature first, but I prefer to sculpt the character first then have the armature made to fit. I find that it gives the artist more freedom to be as true to the design or character as possible. Plus you never know when or where another arm or mandible on your creature would look good. I accredit an old instructor, Rick Catazone, he taught me that. He made puppets and animated sequences in Evil Dead II.

Once the "naked" version of Adam was completed, I made a silicone mold of him, cast a hard resin copy to sand any rough spots, and then sculpted an external suit using a harder clay called Castaline. The idea I had for Adam’s rehabilitation was a complex exo-suit made to stimulate muscle growth, movement, and protect him from injury. I pretty much abandon my initial sketches and just went for it with clay. I find that the best work I do sometimes is when I don't nail myself to a 2D sketch or design. Working in the 3rd dimension allows for so much more exploration and expression. I'm not saying that sketches are not necessary. I just want to illustrate that a sculpture can evolve as you work, making it ten times more enjoyable.

This was the first time I worked with Castaline clay. It was a bit sticky, but overall I enjoyed working with it, plus I gained the experience. I kept chopped up bits on a small electric tea warmer over aluminum foil. This kept it nice and soft to apply and shape. Then once it hardened, I'd go in and shape it with pallet metal tools. Most of the circuitry was done with an Xacto knife. I'm not certain of how long it took, because it was an hour or two here and fifteen minuets there. It felt like forever. I love to create details with tubes, wires, or whatever I can find. On this piece, I wanted to have as much control of the detail as possible. In other words, I did it the hard way. The only thing that bothered me about making him a puppet was that the fingers had to be slightly thicker than I wanted them to be in order to accommodate the armature within them. Next time I plan on making a larger puppet overall so I can avoid that. Sigh...a small price to pay for functionality sometimes.

Next, I went onto another silicone mold! Most people like to do 2 piece case molds. I say, the hell with that! I hate making walls! I lay it up in one piece, pour in one piece, and then cut that bitch in half! In this shot with Adam in the pink stuff, I was trying to show my cutting technique.

First I take an Xacto knife, a blow touch, and a pair of needle nose pliers to put a kink in the blade. Then I take that knife and SLOWLY cut the center of my dividing edge. This makes a nice gutter key all along the mold. To finish the cut, I take a long bladed box cutter and wiggle it as I cut through the rest of the silicone. This makes a ridged edge for the silicone pieces to mechanically bond to one other. The key to doing this technique is to GO SLOW and BE CAREFUL. One slip and next thing you know, your mold has a huge gash in it. It’s worth it to perfect this method, because you don't have to make dividing walls in the silicone clay layup, which can save oodles of time.

OK, now that I've ranted on about that…I'll explain a little about how I reposed and re-sculpted some of the parts for the finished sculpture (seen above). After I made some nice self skinning poly foam castings with an internal wire armature, I started playing with poses above the Hatch sculpture and thought to myself; WOW, this could be a cool art piece if I do this! Why not!? I positioned it in an angelic rising pose and before I knew it, I was back at it with more clay. I found areas I didn't like too much. Like the top of the head looking too Hellraiser-Pinheadish, so of course, I changed it. The hands were too big, so I made the feet bigger, plus I had to patch tons of air bubbles in the poly foam. I'm sure I could have done it a different way, but I somehow managed.

Then of course I remolded it yet again, for the third time now. But this time it was not so easy. I had to have a support in the back of the sculpture because it would not hold it self up. This meant I had to mold it as is with the jackets! I had to do a lot of planning and thinking before I began. I would like to explain how I did it, but I then I'd have to write a small instruction's booklet with diagrams and images. For the record I DO NOT RECOMMEND EVER DOING IT THIS WAY! This is a no-no. I'm lucky I ended up with a workable mold. People tell me to let it go when I'm done, but sometimes I just want to make an art piece too!


Anyway, finally, here are a couple shots of the first gray primered casting with Adam on the Hatch base. I used 3 pieces of bent all-thread to attach him so his feet hovered about a half-inch off the base. In my next post I'll cover how I painted and detailed the piece.
Thanks for reading!