here comes the munny bride

I had the pleasure of designing and creating this mini-Munny for my friends' wedding this year! Originally intended as a wedding topper, the weight of the Munny was not workable for residing at the top of a cake. In hindsight I could have cast a mold though...

I was in charge of making the bride-to-be's mini-Munny, and my talented friend Angela would be working on the groom's custom Munny. I worked closely with the couple for the idea, and for the dress/jewelry details I worked closely with the bride-to-be a few weeks prior to their actual wedding date. The dress as per the couples' original sketch below was not her actual dress--the bride-to-be sent me sketches and photos of the dress she would actually be wearing. Here was the original idea (sketched by the bride and groom)




I found this Munny to be a challenge because the previous 2 mini-Munnies I customized had some form of armor, which I had a lot of fun weathering, and didn't have to worry so much about making the surfaces smooth. For this project, I wanted to make sure the dress looked delicate--meaning lots of details created during the sculpt instead of being applied later with paint.

A mistake I made on both my previous Munnies was taking apart the ENTIRE Munny, sculpting all these details onto it, and then struggling to put it back together or messing up my sculpt because the arms were too close to the body or the details I added along the neck prevented the head from sitting properly onto the body. This time I put the arms onto the Munny as I sculpted the dress to make sure I wouldn't have this problem again. When the dress sculpt was done I put the head back on and sculpted the hair.


The hair was another challenge in itself because I needed to make tiny ringlets! These actually weren't too bad to create... After fleshing out the general shape of the hair, I twisted each portion into a ringlet. Maybe in the future I could go through and create a million of even more tiny and delicate curls but I had a limited amount of time to spend on this project :(... as with all my projects I never have enough time!




I carefully removed the head and cured the Sculpey.

Next came the painting--I watered down my acrylic paints for the skin to keep the surface completely smooth and free from brush strokes. I used acrylic paint in a tube and it was too thick :( But watering the paint down saved me some money. Her hair consists of 3 different shades of brown.




As you can see I only sculpted the bustier of her dress--I had initially sculpted the ruffles--4 times, in fact, but I was not pleased with how they looked, so opted to cut little strands of tulle instead! These were hot-glued after I painted the body.




I drew the face w/ Copic markers because I tend to destroy all my very fine brushes.




I used a metallic paint for the bustier for pop, I thought white would look too flat. For the veil, I cut a piece of tulle, gathered it, and glued it to the top of the head. Instead of making a tiny tiara, I opted for acrylic jewels to adorn the front of the veil.

I sculpted a wooden staff from lightweight stone clay, painted it with acrylics and used clear nail polish as my gloss finish. For the orb I also used a combination of nail polish as shown below.




Now came my big problem with the alternate "weapon". The dress was so fluffy I could not incorporate a "magic element" as originally requested--this was my own fault as I didn't think about the Munny's actual proportions prior to sculpting the entire Munny :( Last minute change was to create a bow! I cut this from leftover Wonderflex and wound up some thread.

Angela and I stuck to the Zelda / magic theme and while I don't have a photo of her box, I created a triforce with gold lace and gold silk trim for the front.




Congrats to the happy couple :)

Scientist Munnarian

I've seem to have taken some kind of long hiatus from working on my cosplays to make mini-Munnies =_=' ! But in my defense, I'm.. practicing my sculpting skills--I need those in cosplay.

As you probably already know, I have an obsession with the Mass Effect universe, and it's a constant source of inspiration for me, just how Bioware's team came up with such an extensive universe and the character development in the games is brilliant.

One of my favorite characters is the Salarian Scientist, Mordin Solus. I'm not sure how you can hate him. Proof in this video below--

I started with a mini-Munny which I cut the ears off of, and also made incisions on his hands to create a Salarian's hands. I used original Sculpey for most of the details. I usually take apart the entire Munny and sculpt on each piece, but I did not want Mordin to be top-heavy and fall over (my previous 2 customs can't stand on their own without having to lean on something). This time I placed the head back on the body a few times to make sure he wouldn't topple over. The sculpting on the head took me a while (I'm still new to this, but I'm working at it!!!!) and you can see how impatient I was with the painting... painting the body even before I cured the sculpey on the head!

I did not sand Mordin's head very much--I wanted to keep the skin texture I had recreated in the sculpey, as well as the lines I marked with my tool. For his clothing, I sanded the surfaces and filled in some of the thinner areas with lightweight stone clay. 

Painting the clothing was fairly simple but a lot of painter's tape cut into small pieces were involved. Totally worth it if you want clean lines and edges.

For Mordin's head, I painted the entire surface with white acrylic paint first, then dabbed on a flesh-colored paint. I actually used my fingers quite a bit to keep the paint distribution uneven. I then added a medium brown tone, and finished with a darker brown at the back of his head. I applied the salmon-red details on his eyelids with a Copic marker because I didn't have the color... TOTALLY OKAY.

For his eyes, I actually used nail polish because I wanted a high-gloss effect, and this worked out well because the surface is perfectly smooth--those nail painting skills are coming in handy now, hurray.

I sculpted some additional details with lightweight stone clay after I painted his arms. This way I wouldn't have to worry about painting "around" these areas, and it looks a lot cleaner. Extra steps really go a long way.

And of course I had to add an accessory for Mordin--a datapad! This was made from semi-translucent stationery paper and leftover Wonderflex scraps that I glued and painted.

His "headgear" (for lack of a better description) was made from Wonderflex as well. Wonderflex is just so great as it is very light and will retain whatever shape you want after heating it up!

You can view the full-sized image by clicking the thumbnail below.

As always, thank you so much for reading!!! I will have another custom mini-Munny (commissioned) to post in the next 2 weeks as well as cosplay updates, because FanimeCon is in 4 weeks :O

SHOUTOUT TO THOMAS MARRONE @thomasthecat on Twitter, for coining the "Scientist Munnarian" term. THOMAS, I LOVE IT.



Near-sighted Mordin????

The Man & His Bird

I guess it was kind of inevitable that I made another Munny because I really have to practice my sculpting skills, and I saw that nobody has made a Mordecai Munny yet. Obviously I had to do something about this. I'm also addicted to making these because I love deformed toys. ANDD the best part, I always use leftover sculpey and materials so I really only spend $10 on the blank mini Munny. Win win win.

**Note: I am still currently working on Bloodwing so maybe the post title is misleading but there will be a bird in the very near future, ha..*

I started with a blank mini Munny (4"), same as my Bastion Kid...

Here was my sketch--



Because Mordecai's outfit is a lot more detailed than the Bastion Kid's, I wanted to sort out my ideas on paper first, and figure out what to omit, what to emphasize...

For Mordecai's leather mask I went back and forth between using actual leather and a layer of sculpey... and ended up just using sculpey so I could practice rendering leather. You can't see too well in the photos prior to painting the Munny, but I added cracked leather details with a sheet of crinkled aluminum foil. I then used floss (yes, floss for your teeth) to create the "seam" down the center front of the mask. I omitted the goggles because I would add them on after I painted the mask. I created some rough details in his beard, and added a little piece of sculpey to create a nose.








As you can see I had to condense and remove a lot of the details on his clothing because... well, the Munny body is so out of proportion compared to an actual human body. I decided to make the sniper rifle shown in the promo art (there are just... way too many guns to choose from in this game and I wanted this to look ridiculously huge) and used Wonderflex again for the base. I used bamboo skewers for the barrels. You can buy a package of bamboo skewers for $1 and use them for any art project. They're surprisingly helpful to keep around... I layered scraps of wonderflex for the details on the rifle. I painted this black and weathered it a little with some silver, brown and a dark silver paint.







I also had to make Mordecai's melee weapon he carries around on his back. Since I love giving myself a headache, I decided to make the sheath "functional"--you can actually pull the sword out and have the Munny hold the sword. I made the sheath out of Wonderflex, as well as the sword.  All painted w/ acrylic. I added some details to the hilt of the sword w/ stone clay. The sheath was then glued to the figure's back.





Finally for the painting I researched a technique for rendering leather, which is similar to my technique of creating brushed gold/bronze finishes on sculpts. I started with my lightest tone (this tan color) and used a makeup sponge to apply the darker tones. I used a damp brush to wipe off excess paint. I kept adding my darker brown tones while leaving areas to let the lighter tones peek through. I used 3 different shades of brown, I used a reddish brown, a grey-brown and a medium-toned warm brown. The dreadlocks ponytail was made w/ stone clay.









For his body I had initially sculpted the "harness" but it was too thick and when I put his head back onto the body, the pieces broke off :( So I just cut a tiny piece of leather for less bulk. 

I sculpted the goggles last, as I mentioned above, because I didn't want to paint "around them". I had an unused Munny accessory that I took the acrylic pieces from, and filed the edges into the shape I wanted. I painted the back sides of the goggles w/ nail polish because I thought acrylic paint would look too flat. The rims were done with stone clay.









For the belt with the daggers I used needles wrapped in stone clay.




I painted the rest of the harness details onto the leather pieces.

The holster and his knee guard were made w/ sculpey; they were pulled off from the original harness I sculpted after I realized it was too thick.




You can view the larger image on my deviantArt page :D
I worked on this on/off for about 3 days, just after work and on the weekend. As of the time I am writing this post, I realized that I am a few pageviews short of 50,000 all-time pageviews. Holy crap, thank you so so much for reading about my...... hobbies :D