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. 

ZOMBIE TYPE 1: PRODBLOG #1

We've got a cool project coming up that we thought merited a production blog.  And, as many of our projects are subject to re-prioritization due to factors out of our control, we wanted to wait until we were pretty far along before we started.

So, we're gonna start showing our first work in progress: an 8" "Mego-style" Zombie action figure, being developed exclusively for the upcoming MonsterMania horror convention, June 12-14 in Hartford, Connecticut. 

First, a brief word about MonsterMania:

MonsterMania is the biggest horror convention on the East Coast.  Thousands of fans gather 2-3 times a year at their usual location in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, to meet big-name horror/cult personalities, see rare or upcoming films and buy great horror-themed merchandise (like ours!).

This year, promoter Dave Hagan is bringing MonsterMania to New England, with a huge event featuring Bruce (Evil Dead) Campbell and Freddy Krueger himself, Robert Englund and dozens of other guests coming to the Crowne Plaza in Hartford, CT.  It's gonna be a biggie, and we'll be there with our usual huge footprint, managed by crackerjack FearWerx Brand Manager Scott Lefebvre.  We've been to every one since early 2006, and it's our flagship show.

About our action figures

Our sister brand, EMCE Toys, specializes in producing 8" figures in the classic MEGO style.  We produced Star Trek and Planet of the Apes figures with our partners Diamond Select Toys and launched our own Night of the Living Dead figures over the last 2 years.  You can visit the EMCE site at the link on the right side of this page, and you can pick up the NOTLD figures at the FearWerx store.

The figures are typically produced in China, and feature rugged ABS bodies and PVS rotocast heads like the old MEGO figures (only better!).

However, the figures we're producing for Monster Mania are going to be limited to a few at that show, and since you can only do rotocast PVC in large quantities, we're doing the head in solid resin, the first in our new series of EMCE "Hardhedz".