MORE ZOMBIES COMING!

Return of the Limited Dead

It's been a crazy week, but I wanted to thank everyone who followed along with our production blog, as well as all those who bought the zombies at the Monster Mania convention last weekend.  All twelve went.  Who knew?

In addition, I've received a buncha emails and been made aware of posts on certain message boards (Mego posse, represent!)* asking where they can pick these up.  So, it seems the answer "they're only available at MonsterMania" isn't being accepted, so we decided to whip up a few more.

Our original intention was to have 20 made for MM, but we only had time to complete 12, so there are various incomplete bits of another 8-10 around the shop.  We're going to design a new card for online-only, and we'll most likely have another 10 as of next week.  If you subscribe to the FearWerx newsletter or belong to either the FearWerx or MegoMuseum message boards, you'll be notified.

*humor the old white guy, don't laugh at him.

ZOMBIE TYPE 1: PRODBLOG #12

All Lined Up And Ready To Go

Day 12: Wednesday, June 10, 2009
T-minus one day and counting. And not a moment too soon. Scott Lefebvre comes by tomorrow to pick them up and bring them to MonsterMania Connecticut this weekend.

And one final shot, before they leave the building. All carded, signed, numbered and clamshelled, ready to go. Only twelve of these suckers and that's it. A steal at $49.95 each, if you ask me -- much more time was put into each one, but I'd feel guilty setting a higher price at this point.  This is what they'll look like once on the table at the con:

I hope you all enjoyed watching us put this project together. It was a first for us in many respects, but if all goes well this weekend, we'll be doing this a lot more, especially for all you zombie-lovin' gorehounds like me.

Joe Sena

President/Creative Director

SphereWerx, LLC

EMCE Toys/FearWerx brands

ZOMBIE TYPE 1: PRODBLOG #11

End of the line

Day 11: Monday, June 8, 2009

T-minus three days and counting.  Well, sadly we didn't take pics of this crazy weekend, as we frantically painted heads, hands and guts, tore fabric and generally beat the hell outta these guys.

And due to the trauma, we've officially reclassified these as "Class 2" zombie which, in War of the Dead lore, is a zombie that reanimated due to a bite, but has been up and about for a while and therefore is more ripe than a zombie that just jumped off the gurney a few minutes ago.

Anyway, here's a decent shot of the completed figure.  I didn't like the lighting on this one as much as the one we're using on the packaging, but the leg wound is more prominent here:

And here's the front of the package, done in classic MEGO style with a few fill-in sketches I literally did a few hours ago.  

And my favorite part, the back of the card.  I love the angle and lighting of the shot we're using here, and all the War of the Dead background story we've crammed in.

And with that, tomorrow we print the cards, I'm gonna sign all 12, stick 'em all in clamshells and then Scott comes to pick them up and take them to Monstermania.

And now I'm going to bed.

ZOMBIE TYPE 1: PRODBLOG #10

The Zombie Is Shrinking...

...and so is time!

Day 10: Friday, June 5, 2009

T-minus six days and counting!  This last step was entirely in Paul's hands: getting the scrubs sewn and shrinking the head sculpt.  I'm really happy with the way the outfit turned out, especially with the Mego-scale "spell hands" Paul has had in stock for just such an occasion.

Without his head, I'm reminded of David Gale in Re-Animator.

Speaking of head, it's long history of bad luck continues.  The "hydroshrink" process involves casting an original in this specific substance, which yields a damp, spongelike cast.  Over time, the cast dehydrates, and it shrinks to a hard finish at 50% of the original.  During this time, the manufacturer can "snapshot" different sizes as it shrinks by getting a new mold of the smaller versions.

So, when the hydroshrink cast reduced to classic Mego proportion, Paul made a new mold, the this is the result:

What I'm happy about: I'm amazed at how much detail it captured.  I thought I'd completely lose the lines in the skin, but it looks like they stayed.  That will be great for the paint.

What I'm not happy about: To my eye, the proportion is a bit off.  Look at the chin in particular.  Looks like the chin receded a bit, which makes the head look wider and rounder.  It also seems to have shrunk the nose, which is fine, given that the one I resculpted (after the dropping-on-the-floor incident of May 25) made him look like Karl Malden.  Plus, to add the neck plug, Paul cut the cast a bit too close (in my opinion) to the neck wound, and we lose one of the smaller "attempted bite" details below it.

I mean, it could just be that I'm so used to looking at this thing in its original size for the last month or so that the new size is disorienting me.  You be the judge:

And at this point, I lose Paul, who is off to get his ass kissed at MegoMeet, the annual gathering of Mego loyalists in Wheeling, WV.  Although there will be some time left when he returns, my conservative project management philosophy makes me take stock and cut off pre-paint development here.  Given what Paul and I have been able to produce together, I can now safely say that, if I get all the painting and assembly done over the weekend, we will definitely have a dozen of these puppies on the table at MonsterMania.  Anything else we can make between Paul's return and the event itself will be gravy, but clearly this will be an ultra-limited release.

To ensure that, this will most likely be the final post until we report that they're all completed.

Cross your fingers.

ZOMBIE TYPE 1: PRODBLOG #9

In (un)Living Color

Day 9: Sunday, May 31, 2009
T-minus eleven days left. I'm going to spend the day doing paint tests, even though we're not sure how the final head will size out after the shrinking process.

Meanwhile, the diabolical Dr. Mego has mocked up the outfit (sans gore) with the new scrubs he's sewn and the stock labcoat (which cutomizers can order for their own projects at MegoDoctor.com).:

That's pretty MEGO -- simple and small, with just enough lines for the collector to know what it's supposed to be without all the tedious (and expensive) detail of a larger format doll or figure.

So finally, I set about doing the paint test on the head. First, I create a thinned-out greenish tint to lay down as a base. This will creep into the cracks and lines of the skin via capillary action.

While wet, I quickly wipe it down with a cloth, keeping the recessed paint in the cracks and leaving just a thin, translucent layer of pea green over the Caucasian flesh tone as an underbase.

After the underbase dries, I then continue on with the other colors, a muddy brown for the hair, a light yellow/tan for the dead flesh overlay, a pale bone for the eye and teeth, and several variations of red for the wounded areas. All these colors are flat, and after they dry to a nice matte finish, I go back in and slop gloss dark red around the mouth and the neck wound to simulate wet, fresh blood.

While I'm doing this, I've delegated body assembly to my most reliable helper, my son Alex. At twelve, he's built a bunch of plastic models already, so adhering the chest and thigh wounds is an easy task.

And I should state that yes, that is his workstation in the pictures. When he's not doing homework at it, he's busy with his own enterprise, "Miss ng Eye Productions". MonsterMania attendees have seen his work, as he does custom drawings of popular cartoon characters as zombies. At the last one he attended, he made enough money from his art to buy himself an iPod. Although some parents may wrinkle their noses at the chosen subject matter, I'm more than supportive, as I hope he can sell another 30,000-40,000 drawings to pay for his own college education.

By the time Alex finishes with the bodies, I finish the paint test.

Well, although I can spot an imperfection or two, I'm really happy with the results, especially the texture of the skin. However, I'm concerned that when we shrink the head we may lose a lot of it. And we won't know whether that works for a couple of days or so.

ZOMBIE TYPE 1: PRODBLOG #8

Putting The Pieces Together

Day 8: Friday, May 29, 2009
T-minus thirteen days left. A little stressed, given that this isn't the only thing we're working on and more stuff (that we can't talk about) came up this past week to push this project further into spare-time-land. Which would be great if it were possible for a 7-day-week/18-hour-day situation allowed for spare time.

Anyway, Paul got the casts for the chest and thigh wounds done nicely, and he even squeezed off another couple of heads for me to experiment on with paint.

Can't really do anything serious with the heads until Paul can cast one in what's called "hydroshrink" resin. Recall that we made the head too big and it would need to be cast in this material, which shrinks 50% over two weeks. It'll probably be the perfect size in a couple of days and then Paul can make another mold at the correct proportion, and the resulting casts can be painted and assembled with the rest of the figure.

So, with thirteen days left, here's what remains to be done:

• Cast the head in hydroshrink resin, allow a few days for reduction
• Adhere the wound appliances and new hands to the body
• Paint the wounds and hands
• Cut and sew scrubs
• Dress the figure in scrubs, shoes and lab coat
• Cast properly sized head, with MEGO neck plugs
• Paint the head
• Attach the head to the body
• Paint in all surface detail such as blood and gore splatter
• Design the card art
• Print the card
• Insert card and figure in EMCE clamshell

• Do it all over about a dozen times.

Okee dokee. See you next time.

ZOMBIE TYPE 1: PRODBLOG #7

Finishing the head sculpt

Day 6: Monday, May 25, 2009

It's gorgeous outside and I'm stuck in the studio finishing the sculpt because the kids (as usual) just remembered they had homework due the next day, so we're keeping them in.  Happy Memorial Day.

Anyway, all the details are in, and here's how he looks:

Not used to seeing a MEGO with so much detail, I decided to compare it to other MEGO heads.  Below, you'll see the sculpt compared to (LEFT) the Bill Hinzman Night of the Living Dead head, which we all thought was a bit bigger than most MEGOs, then (RIGHT) a vintage MEGO superhero head.

Yep, I sculpted the zombie head too big.  At this size, it would look way too cartoony, so I'll have to consult my good friend and EMCE Toys partner Paul "Dr. Mego" Clarke about this when I see him tomorrow.

BUT TRAGEDY STRIKES!  That's right, just as I finally finished the damn thing, I dropped it on the floor.  Flat on its face.  Nose, lips, eyebrows all smooshed.  Grateful as I am that I never did this with any of my kids, I'm still pissed, and in about 20 minutes I've gotten it pretty close to where it was before.

Pretty close; if you look really carefully you'll note that the nose is different; actually, I like it better this way.

Time to fire it now so the Sculpey can harden and we can get a mold off it tomorrow at Paul's.  I'm lazy, so instead of setting it up in an oven and firing it over a long, steady period of time, I put it in a boiling pot of water for 15 minutes.  Worked before on other minor pieces I've tinkered with.

BUT TRAGEDY STRIKES!  During the heating process, a long crack opens up in the back of the head.  Right through detail lines.  That's gonna be a pain, but I'll revisit it tomorrow when I go to Paul's.

At Dr. Mego's Horrible House of Handcasting

Day 7: Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Paul recommends that I fill in the crack with some more Sculpey and let him cast over it.  So, I do what I think is a good job of hiding the imperfection:

Then Paul sets about putting together the mold for the head, when suddenly...

This head cast is making me nervous.  I just wanna get it cast now before something else breaks off it.  Neck seemingly repaired, Paul finishes molds for it, as well as the thigh and abdomen wounds, disassembling the body in order to do so.

Some SECRET PROCESS later, the thigh and abdominal wounds come out amazing.  Just like makeup prosthetics, they contour right onto the body part.  Good enough to check this part off and let Paul go on producing final resin appliques.

However, the head continues with its bad luck streak, and a large blob of uncured mold material results in a too-unattractive-to-fake-as-deliberate-zombie-goo spot on the first resin pull:

It's getting late, so I keep the resin to do some paint tests later in the week, and I leave Paul with the task of getting a better mold made.

As I leave the project in other hands, I check the calendar to see how much time we have left to finish this whole thing: fifteen days.  No pressure.

We interrupt this blog for some blatant pimpage...

We do sell stuff too, y'know...

Some of the most popular stuff on FearWerx.com is our military style zombie apocalypse survival gear.  We're getting these guys back in stock next Wednesday:

And if you order yours between now and June 5, you can save 10%.  Better get 'em before we send 'em out to conventions and they get sucked up like all our Winchester stuff. Click on the bag above to order...

Back to the trials and tribulations of action-figure making in just a few...

ZOMBIE TYPE 1: PRODBLOG #6

Digging Into The Details

Day 5: Monday, May 18, 2009
With the body taken care of, it was now time to get into the details of the head so we could finish it off for casting. Time to work on the hair, a process I always wondered about. So, using one of the finer sculpting tools, I created hair flow by tracing lines outward from the "part" on the left side of the head. The drawing shows the zombie with messy hair (after a few tussles, that's expected), but I assumed the most logical place to start would have been from where the hair was initially combed.

Okay, that took a long freakin' time.  In order to get the look I wanted, it felt like I had drawn every strand of hair. Maybe that's just how it's done, but it was a real pain in the ass. 

 

Next zombie I do is gonna be bald, I swear.

That was about all I could manage that evening, so I closed up shop until the next day.

Day 6, Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Now comes the fun part, the details.  Went back into the hair to mess it up, which almost felt wrong given how much time I spent the day prior just getting it done neatly.  But, it had to be done and frankly, it seemed easier than the work I did the day prior.

Once I was satisfied with the hair, I went into the face and started playing with texture.  Getting there, but will wait until next time to finish it up.

Gonna need the whole day for that, because the convention's only a few weeks away and I need to cure the sculpt, cast it paint it, assemble it, costume it, package it...and then do it about a dozen more times.

And now we've pretty much caught up with the project, so the next entry will be in real time.  And hopefully soon, as time is running a bit short.

Happy Memorial Day weekend, everyone!

ZOMBIE TYPE 1: PRODBLOG #5

The body

Day 4: Friday, May 15, 2009

End of the work week (to everyone else...just means less phone calls and emails for me), so it was back to my favorite undead subject.  Before finishing the head, I wanted to attack the problem of putting the wounds on the body.

Since Mego closed up shop in the '80s, the action figure world was pretty much dominated by hard-sculpted toys with limited articulation.  More poseable statue than action figure, it started with Kenner's 3-inch Star Wars abominations and continued into the larger formats established by the brilliant artisans at Sideshow Collectibles and McFarlane Toys.  Hyper-detailed, amazing works of art, they could be sculpted into anything, tools made directly from the sculpts, and articulation cut directly into the plastic.

Not so Mego.  Megos were, let's face it guys, dolls for boys.  They shared a common body form, with heads, footwear and accessories to differentiate them. 

My partner on the EMCE Toys business, Paul "Dr. Mego" Clarke, recreated and improved upon the original Mego body years ago.  A sturdy, poseable body:

Unlike the head sculpt, I couldn't just dig into the body, and completely resculpting the torso and thigh would have meant getting an expensive steel tool and subsequent plastic runs made in China.  Not willing to spend the equivalent of a downpayment on a small house, I had to think differently.

The solution was to approach this like a makeup appliance.  If this was a zombie film that required an actor to look the way we illustrated on 5/8, we couldn't very well cut into him (well, not if we liked him, anyway). So, we built up some Sculpey over the lower part of the ribcage and abdomen, laid in some rough ribs and guts and tore up the surrounding area.

After I smoothed out the ribs, plumped up the exposed organs and texturized the surrounding flesh, I applied some Sculpey to the thigh and sculpted in some tears, bites and pulped musculature.

Ultimately, these pieces would have to be cured and molded so the resulting casts could be glued smoothly onto the contours of the individual bodies in production.  I had no idea how to approach that, so at this point I put the bodies aside and figured that I'd leave it to Paul to come up with a way when the time came.

ZOMBIE TYPE 1: PRODBLOG #4

Getting the proportions right

Day 2: Monday, May 11, 2009
It was a busy day on other projects, but the itch to get my hands back on the clay was unstoppable, and I think it was because I wasn't happy leaving the piece with such a disproportionate skull structure.

Even though I got the expression, I left the guy with a prehistorically low forehead. It goes without saying that we all prefer zombies with generous foreheads -- makes it easier to shoot 'em in the head.  So with what little time I had that night, I built up the forehead, put some definition in the ears and laid in the first foundation of hair. I was satisfied with the overall shape of the head after that and closed up shop for the night.

Day 3: Tuesday, May 12, 2009
This sculpting thing is addictive. I spent the day moving faster than normal through regular business just so I could get my hands back on the head. I really wanted to get to the good stuff like wounds and textures, but I knew that I had to complete the structure, so that night I got to building up the neck.

In War of the Dead mythology, a "class 1" zombie is a recent post-mortal, but necrosis and other decay advances quickly, so the neck needed to exhibit pronounced musculature through the skin. The sternocleidomastoid muscles on either side of the neck and the turkey-like tendons hanging from the jaw would be all I needed to make that happen:

While I was at it, I snuck in some detail work by tearing a pronounced cut in the sneering upper lip that pointed to a similar cut in the lower eye lid under the empty eyesocket.  Satisfied, I then closed up the rest of the structure around the neck.

And, even though I didn't really need to do it yet, I couldn't help but rip this motherfucker's throat out. Really enjoyed it, too...as I tore back the flesh, shredded the tendons and gutted the windpipe, I pictured the throat of any of several unsavory business associates I've sparred with during the past year...

Um, maybe I should talk to someone about that.

ZOMBIE TYPE 1: PRODBLOG #3

Starting the head sculpt

Okay, I need to preface by saying: I'm not a sculptor.  My strengths are in illustration and 2-D kinda stuff, although I do all the paint masters and prototyping for the EMCE lines.  I've done enough manipulation of 3-D stuff that I figured this was a good project to experiment with.

Reason 1: It's not for a client, so it's not like we'll get in trouble if I fuck it up.

Reason 2: It's a zombie.  If I fuck it up, it'll just look like a really fucked up zombie.

Day One: Saturday, May 9, 2009

That said, it was time to grit my teeth and start pushing clay.  First, I started with the expression, figuring that this would be the place from which the rest of the head would spawn.  No idea why, it just seemed to feel right.  I have no idea what other sculptors use for an approach, and I wanted this to be one of the few times that I really let loose artistically.

Okay, that wasn't so bad.  But for the record, I prefer zombies that really look fucked up, and now that this was committed to clay, dead eyes and a sneer didn't really say "this guy got really chewed up and came back from the dead" enough to me.

Knowing that there was still more to do, I wanted to see if there was something I could do at this stage to at least start this guy on his way to looking a little more worse for wear...

Now that's better.  Nothing like plucking out an eye to give the impression that someone's been through something more vicious than a drunken brawl on a Saturday night.

That was enough for one day.  I gotta company to run, so as much as I wanted to keep going, I had to switch sides of my brain and do the math part of running a business.

ZOMBIE TYPE 1: PRODBLOG #2

Dawn of the "Type 1" Dead

Why did we decide to do a zombie "Mego"?  A few reasons.  There are no generic "zombie" action figures out there, especially not in the 8" scale.  Most of the zombie figures out there are either overly stylized or from a franchise.  We wanted to make a zombie that could fit in (or fight) with all the other Megos in a person's collection.

In addition, we wanted these zombies to come from our own intellectual property,War of the Dead.  WOTD spawned from the very first FearWerx product, a novelty item called theZombie Outbreak Survival Kit(over 25,000 sold and now out of print).  In the kit was a series of zombie

"classification cards", where we divided them up into seven classes, based on age, how they were ressurrected, what kind of damage they were capable of, etc.  (NOTE: click on the images to see super-enlarged versions in a separate window).

One of the reasons we retired the ZSK was because (I'm embarassed to admit) the art was outdated, rushed and goofy.  They were really just sketches I did in my spare time while I was trying to sell my last business, and if I had any idea the ZSK was gonna start a whole new business, I would have put more effort into them. So, when we picked which zombie "class" we'd make into a figure, we picked "Class 1", but it needed an updated approach.

Updating the "Class 1"

The sketch you see below still uses the basic elements of a "Class 1", a recently-revived zombie (or "post-mortal" as we call it in WOTD) that contracted the zombie "virus" by being wounded by another zombie.  The original sketch shows a zombie in hospital scrubs and bandages; the idea was that this was a hospital employee (doctor, nurse, orderly) who was attacked by someone who was brought in during an outbreak.

When designing the figure, we had to marry the original "Class 1" idea with the practicalities of doing a "Mego".  So, we were pretty much limited to what we could do with the head sculpt, hands and perhaps some appliques.  We went with a nasty throat wound (which has become a bit of a cliche in recent zombie films...almost like a nasty vampire bite...more on that later), and a hint of partial devouring in the abdomen and thigh.  We added a lab coat to hide bare arms that would have required more complex tooling.