Other WIPS

1. Creations 'n Chrome

I cannot rave enough about Gary and Kristin at Creations n' Chrome. I can't say enough good things about them. All the stuff you hear about how great they are on the internet is true. They overcame overwhelming odds, and after a few false starts were able to fully chrome Doom. Aside from their techical excellence in pulling off this paint job, they were a real pleasure to deal with. Kristin was a gem and always answered my email. And I was very nit picky to ensure that their paint job would be as story book to the comic as possible, and they were just super great in dealing with me. The final uber positive was that, after 4 or 6 months or how ever long it took to deal with this job, they actually charged me a little less than they quoted me for at the begining of the project. So, if you want to get anything chromed, and have any doubts whatsoever about this company, let me assure you THEY ROCK! I give them my full endorsement, like so many other satified customers who have posted nothing but good things about them. Below are the WIPS Kristin sent me as Doom was getting chromed. You can imagine how excited I was when I saw these photos for the first time, and realized that, indeed, it WAS a mirror surface! OMG!! Just how much of a mirror is quite apparent in the Reflection Photos I took.

 

2. FrockTarts

Ben lives in France and I live in the USA. When Ben mailed the final statue to me, and I finally got the box, you can imagine how excited I was to open it up and see my new masterpiece! The first thing that suprised me was how damn big the thing is. The sculpted cape is almost 3 feet wide and very heavy. As I unpacked and unwrapped the extensive bubble wrap, I was shocked, disappointed and just generally freaked out to recognize that the cape had broken while being shipped from France! I was crushed! So, after some frantic emails with Ben, who was really great about the whole thing, I came to the conclusion that this was a sign to try to get a fabric cape made. In the meantime, Ben sent me step-by-step instructions on how to repair the sculpted cape, and you can see in other photos that I was able to fix it completely, and it is now fully functional. However, that took a LONG time to happen and in the meantime, I got fixated on getting a cloth cape. So, I Googled this and I Googled that, trying to find out about fabrics, materials, making capes, and so on. And most importantly, I tried to find someone to make the cape for me. I checked some local seamstress shops and got responses like "I'm sorry, I don't know what you are talking about. Did you say 'comic book'? I only make wedding dresses". So, I kept looking and discovered theatre costume makers. I got in touch with several of them, all of whom politely declined (or ignored) my inquires about the project of making a cape. So, it was all looking more and more gloomy.

Then one day, I happened on a site of a woman who apparently loved to make capes and frocks so much that she nicknamed herself "Frocky"! Not only that but she made fantasy costumes of wizards and such and mentioned Lord of the Rings, and other pop culture stuff. And I thought "Oh...maybe someone who will understand." So I wrote her and explained a bit about the rejections I had been getting and appealed to her fantasy sensibilities to see if she would take on this project of making a "cape" for my "toy". Which of course, it isn't a toy...the statue is a work of art. And OMG she agreed! So Frocky, aka Jennifer Schmit, and I got into this project of making Doom's cape. I'll leave out the many details involved with color matching, finding the right fabric, what to do about the fact that we were some 500 miles apart (it's not like I could just drive the statue over for a fitting!). But we managed to work all that out, where, as you can see in the pics below, she had Doom's head for a few months, and I even had to send her a pseudo torso that I made from aluminum foil and insulating foam (shown in the last pic below)! But in the end, as you can see from the other pics, I think Frocky knocked it out of the park! Given the physical limits of trying to make a 1/4th scale cape like Doom's, I think she made the best possible cape that can be made.

One of the biggest differences with Ben's sculpted cape is that the fabric cape color matches the blue chrome color perfectly. I think the only way the could be accomplished with the sculpted cape is to use a metallic paint that reflects lots of different shades of blue just like the chrome does. But that would be weird because, well, Doom's cape is not made of metal...it's made of fabric. So, this Duponi silk (a completely new concept to me a couple months ago) works absolutely perfectly, the way it reflects the light. It's a perfect color match with the blue chrome on the armor. Again, the pics here don't do it justice. Photos of the cape are very sensitive to the light conditions, and you can see the very diverse ways the cape appears in photos. It's really quite amazing. So, here I share the WIPS Frocky sent me as she progressed from her cardboard box dummy with the green surrogate fabric, to the actual cape and cowl.

For any of you customizers or custom statue owners out there, if you want custom sewing, I super highly recommend Frocky. Not only was she just plain fun to interact with, but her prices were extremely good. That said, my friends, here are the cape WIPS...