Mermaid Hair - In 200 easy steps!

Over on Puppetsandstuff.com, Shawn Sorrel posted about a fabric (for lack of a better word) called Wonderflex. It's the top layer of this fabric roll, and has a sort of plastic-y feel to it.

I have been wanting to make a wig for my puppets for a while now, but couldn't find a good base to build off of. I ordered some of the Wonderflex (which hardens when you heat it) and decided to have a go.

I cut out a circle, pinned it to a styrofoam ball, and hit it with my hair dryer. (You're supposed to use a heat gun, but I wanted it to stay a little flexible).

I pulled it off the styrofoam, and had this:

 I trimmed the edges so I wouldn't have anything sticking up. I could have smoothed then down with the hair dryer, but I was impatient. (Shocking! I know!)

I knew I wanted to do mermaid type hair, so I picked green and blue wefts that I thought would work. I rubbed a copic close to the green color over the Wonderflex, and amazingly, it stayed. Yay! I did this, so if any of the hair parted and showed through, it wouldn't be a glaring white.

Then, I started the process of gluing the hair to the head-plate-thing-a-ma-jigger. (That is totally a technical term...that I just made up.)

So, I finished attaching all the hair, and stuck it on a head form.

Here it is from the back. The small spot on top is where I'm going to put a shell and possibly some netting later. But I thought it might look silly...

...so,  I grabbed a flexible mold about the size of the shell I want to make and tossed it on there for a size comparison. It looks like she's wearing a tiny purple beret. My mermaid is obviously from France.

I also trimmed the bangs a little so I could get a better idea of how the finished wig is going to look.

Here it is from the side. You can see that it still needs to be cut and styled, but that has to wait until the wig is on the puppet, so I can decide how long to make it, etc.  Overall, the process was pretty easy.

 I think my total materials ran about $8 or so. It took me about two hours to do everything. I wound up snipping and placing about 35 pieces of hair, so I admit that 200 steps is probably a bit of an exaggeration. It WAS fun, however, and I'm looking forward to playing with the Wonderflex when I have more time.

Professor Usagi

Just popping in to update my blog with a pic of my latest puppet. His name is Professor Usagi, and he's smart but always slightly befuddled. Usagi is Japanese for rabbit.

I am a bad blogger...

...because I don't update enough. So, I am just going to dump some pics and run off so I feel like I have accomplished something. Bwa-ha-ha!


This is a piece I made for the Women in Animation Show last month, held at the Animation Union offices. It's a cut paper diorama called "Paper, Paper Mario". I loved playing paper mario, so making a Mario out of paper made me giggle. Yes, I am easily amused. He's on three seperate layers, and his black outline is all one piece. Each individual color is cut out from a sepearate piece of paper and placed with a spacer on top of the black background so it almost looks like one piece.





Then, it was time for Claire's birthday. I wanted to do something special, so I made her cupcakes...that look like flowers. I thought these came out pretty well. There were lemon flavored.







And, finally, here is my friend Brianne. She was doing a signing over at Nucleus for her new kids book, "Billie the Unicorn". It's on sale at Amazon right now at the link here: Billie the Unicorn




I am not an amazon affilate or anything, so feel free to go to amazon and type it in!

Also, I was looking over my past posts, and I can't believe I haven't mentioned this over here before. I have another blog (that I am much better at keeping up with, I promise you.)

If you are looking for a job in animation or video games, please visit my other blog. I don't have any ads or anything over there either. It's just to help out those looking for work.

Thanks for being patient all! I know I will be getting a million emails saying it's about time, so I'm looking forward to it! Till next time!

Ben 10 - On A Glass

Last week was the annual Ben 10 gift exchange, and I was lucky enough to be invited to participate, even though I'm not at the studio anymore.

I wanted to make something for everyone to say thank you for not forgetting I exist as soon as I got laid off, so I made them these...

I'm super excited with how they turned out. I know the image is hard to see, but it's Ben's torso etched into glass.

So, want to know how I did it? It's simple and yet complicated at the same time...

First, I had to draw Ben. I had a stock image, but had to redraw it as a vector in inkscape. Then, I programmed it into my vector cutter. I cut the image onto Vinyl, weeded out the areas the needed to be burned, and affixed the vinyl to the glass.

Now, the trick is getting the vinyl off of the backing and onto the glass without wrinkling. I used transfer tape, but it kind of tricky.

Once the vinyl was on the glass, I applied etching cream, thusly:

After five minutes, rinse with water, spritz with windex, and viola! A glass with an image that's dishwasher safe.

I made a total of 24 glasses, and each one took about an hour. If you decide you want to try this, a couple of warnings:

1) The etching cream is caustic stuff. Make sure you wear gloves and a respirator. Also, protect your work surfaces.

2) Transfering the vinyl is a total pain. You need your tape to be tacky enough to pull it from the backing, but not so tacky that you can't pull it back from the image once you've applied it.

3) Keep it away from kids and pets. You can not only get chemical burns, but inhaling the fumes can be hazardous as well.

Other than that, it's a lot of fun!

My Time at Cartoon Network

As you may have guessed from some of my previous posts, I have spent the last six years working at Cartoon Network Studios.

Sadly, my time with them ended on Tuesday, after reorganization terminated my position and my department.

Overall, I'm sad that I won't be seeing all of the wonderful people I've gotten to know over the previous years, and esp. sad that I won't be seeing the Ben 10 and Consumer Products groups every day. However, such is the nature of animation, so I'm not angry about it or anything like that. I had a really long run, and I feel like I accomplished so much.

Out of all my projects, I think my biggest accomplishments were my recruiting and my mentoring... I would like to think that I helped at least a few really talented people get their foot in the door.

I also want to say how incredibly proud I am of so many people who were either former interns or students who let me help them. I'm so glad they actually listened, and if any of them are reading this, I will totally be hitting you up for help soon in finding a new job. You have been warned!

Overall, I think I am going to take a couple of weeks and just decompress. It's been a long time since I've been able to take a vacation, and while next week is already full for lunch dates, I will be open for some the week after!

I'm going to miss everyone from CNS, but I think it will be good for me to find another studio and get some new experience. I hope to work with you all again, and it's been a total pleasure!

p.s. If we have worked together and you see me, please feel free to give me a hug! Just no "sad faces", okay?

Batman The Animated Series on KTLA morning news (1992)

A few weeks ago, I was having lunch with Dan and Tammy, a couple of friends who had worked together years ago on Batman:The Animated Series. They recounted a ton of stories from the old days, but my favorite was about the crew appearing on the KTLA morning show. Dan had apparently dressed up as Batman and fought one of the other staff members.

They were only supposed to do so for a few seconds, but the anchorman just kept talking and talking...so on they went. Also, Dan had the eyes in the mask covered to appear more like the batman in the series, so he could barely see anything.

Then Tammy told me about how she had been interviewed with her iguana, and I knew I had to see the footage. Dan told me he had it at home, so after several weeks of bugging him for it, he brought it to me on dvd, and gave me permssion to post it.

I cut it down, and put it up on vimeo, the clips of which you will see below. I tried to get as many names of people in the video as I could before making them public, but if you recognize anyone who should be added, please make a note of it below or on the vimeo page. Please enjoy seeing the following: Tammy List, Haven Alexander, Robert Haverland, Keith Weesner, Jon Fisher, Shayne Poindexter, Jean McCurdy, Bruce Timm, Michael Deitrich, Frank Paur, Felipe Morales, Dexter Smith, Russell Chong, Troy Adomitis, John Calmette, David Karoll, Ted Blackmen, Steve Walby, Rae McCarson, Jeff Snow, Trish Burgio, Cythia Petrovic, Karen Kolus, Nicole Poulliot, Curt Geda, Todd Winter and Joe Denton

Interstital 1

Batman TAS - Interstitial 1 (1992) from lori lane on Vimeo.