... just reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally slowly.

Remember that post I made over a year ago saying I was making models of the main characters from Frankenchicken? Well, let's just say that time passed rather swiftly without any progress until fairly recently. Happily, I have just gotten another model, imaginatively called The Dog, at the ready-to-paint stage:

I use Daas over a wire and polystyrene skeleton that I shape and sand back. He's pretty much ready for painting.
Some points about his character:
He was modelled on a friend's beagle that, alas, is no longer with us. The Dog's character is pretty dour but he has reason. He was once a therapeutic animal for patients in a children's ward at a hospital, but with closure of the wing, was consigned to an experimental laboratory. There he was used as a test subject for an artificial vocal device and titanium teeth. The former was developed for humans that have lost their own vocal chords and forms part of the collar around his neck. The advantage of this prototype is that it is not locked to any particular voice, so he is able to mimic pretty much any sound he hears. This makes him an excellent choice to head Communications, hence the earpiece and microphone. The titanium teeth was a trial for police dogs that had previously damaged their own teeth in bringing down suspected criminals. I believe this is actually a true experiment that was done. For The Dog, it merely allows him to be even more intimidating.

Which is exactly what I've been doing lately.  However, there are three half-finished character models on my work desk that really need to be attended to, plus the story writing.  Argh, I've been so slack!  I seriously need to get back to getting this thing ticking over.  Le sigh.

I'm in the process of making little models of three of the main characters from Frankenchicken.  I had relatively good success with FC himself, so I thought I'd try with the others too.  I modelled them first in plasticine, very roughly, to check the chapes and masses before doing the base in polystyrene and wire, on which I'll put the modelling clay on.

Thanks to Kyle Evans for writing this article on Frankenchicken on Canned Geek!

Ready for the FC website:

I seem fated to draw stuff that people can liken to a current animation project. I got "Oh, it's like Chicken Run, isn't it?" when originally pitching Frankenchicken and was forced to say on numerous occasions "Well, yes in the sense that it has a chicken in it, but you wouldn't say to someone who was pitching an idea that had a human in it "Oh, that's just like Total Recall, isn't it?"" Naturally, I was wasting my breath, but one must at least try. Now that I'm developing the design for the rats in Frankenchicken, I will inevitably get "Oh, that's just like Ratatouille, isn't it?" Which in itself isn't a terrible thing. I lvoe the look of Ratatouille and am really looking forward to seeing it. However, I don't want people to think that Ratatouille is the reason I'm drawing rats. Cos it's not.

JC has done a great job in updating the site.  more will be added as I pull my finger out and do more character drawings.

Here.

Yes, what the hell happened to it?  Well, realising that design is not my strong point, plus my knowledge of Dreamweaver is pants at best, I asked JC to do a better website.  And he is.  Phew.