The eyesockets obviously need work. I'll tidy things up a bit and then turn this over to T'.



The upper cheek surface will need some sanding as well, and the tusk tube will need to be evened out a little. But here's a closeup of the cheek lines and surfaces. How's it look?

The Ugly Sisters are... strangly... starting to look beautiful....

THEN and NOW



It's almost ready to be shipped back to T-VIRUS. What do you guys think?

I for one think its pretty fantastic! Then when you see how these two masks began life the results are even more impressive. Not only will this greatly improve the look of ugly...these lessons will aid me in future projects as well.

Dude...you should really start your day off with breakfast first...then aquamend dust....you'll feel better...trust me.

Impressive transition from ugly duckling to... err... a nice face!

Couldn't help myself. Had to do the bridge of the nose just right. Okay, that's the last mod before sending him back to T-VIRUS!

Darth Uglier goes home....

Well at least old ugly got to visit California...still snowing here.

ITS FREAKING APRIL.....AND ITS SNOWING!

Thanks alot Mac for your help...can't wait to see it.

Hey guys,

I know my activity has been low. Work got the better of me this year, but hopefully things will change in 2012, so don't give up on me. Sculpting, for me, is something I have to be "in the zone" to do, and sometimes months can go by and I don't have it within me to do it. Working evenings and weekends took most of my energy and time, so when I finally do get home, it's basically eat something and then sleep.

I thought I'd post something new even though, for me, it was done back in January 2011. I didn't post these at the time because I didn't want the project to detract from Goldie and Quasi.

My Darth Ugly finally got thrown away. I took it down a direction that was totally unrealistic and that made it unsalvageable. But while I was on a roll with Goldie and Quasi, while talking to T-VIRUS on the phone, we were discussing how far things had come since our Darth Ugly days -- this, after all, was the helmet that brought us together as friends; both ripped off by ArmorMask, and both trying to make a difference with it.

Part of me wanted to cut my losses, but part of me felt that it would be a sad story to give up and throw it in the trash. T-VIRUS still had his. So since I was on a roll, I told him to mail it back to me and I'd work on it.

I've misplaced my progress shots, as I had since changed cameras, and I doubt anyone wants to see blurry pics taken on my cell phone.

So here are how it looks today. Just scroll back up to see how butt ugly ArmorMask had made it originally.

Opening up the cardboard box and looking at it brought back memories. Since I was still very much in a Vader sculpting mode, I looked at it and could instantly identify modifications I could do - and achieve quickly. Things that would have taken me a year or so, I could do in a few days. And I set off to do this.



The first thing that absolutely had to go was the mounting system. I don't know what Armormask made it out of. It looked like an ashtray. Anyway, I cut that whole area up. As you may recall, this is very poor recast of a Don Post Classic Action, which had a "T" shaped mounting system. But with the T-mount removed and filled in, the head shape would still not look right, and you can see harsh interruptions of flow of the surface. So after cutting the scalp away, I sculpted a new one, as you can see, making sure everything blended nicely.

I also took note of other things such as the neck. Boy, we really didn't know what we were doing back then. Although the idea was for the neck to be flared enough to stand on armor, this made the neck look wrong. The solution wasn't to make the mask less accurate but to simply get more accurate armor than what vendors at the time were pushing on us folks.

The polyurethane material, as I had recalled, was very susceptible to heat, and heating meant a bunch of the old bondo and Aquamend would break off. Not a problem. The face looked a bit thin, so I bloated it back out until it felt right.

The rest was straight forward. Modify and accurize the eye sockets, brows, frown bump, nose bridge, the 3 notches, tear ducts, whiskers, mouth triangle, nose, nose arch, etc. I don't remember if I did any rework of the tubes or not, which is possible, but it was a year ago, so my memory fails me.



Anyways, it turned out really nice, so I thought I'd share. Not perfect but in some ways on par with Goldie but a bit more ESB/ROTJ looking.

I'm happy how this turned out, and was able to save an investment for a friend - particularly the helmet through which we met each other. I think it'll pair very nicely with my Goldie dome....

I was going through my hard drive today and found some progress shots of T-VIRUS' Darth Ugly mask, and thought I'd do a little Work in Progress writeup.

Each of these masks has been a story, and I feel an obligation to the community to complete the story arcs. And for those of you who recall, all these stories began when, at the time, there were various recasters on eBay who sold shoddy merchandise, and I didn't know any better. I began modifying these because (1) they wouldn't refund my money, and (2) I had to turn a situation of being cheated into a victory -- not just for me, but for fellow fans.

There is a moral drive here. Were it not for this horrible kit, I would not have met T-VIRUS who is now one of my best friends in the community.

With sculpts like Goldie and Quasimodo now arriving at the end of their journey, I could easily write off Darth Ugly. In fact, my own Darth Ugly was discarded entirely. But at the height of feeling in my game with work on Goldie and Quasi, I asked T-VIRUS about his Ugly. "Why don't you send it over to me?"



So it had been a long time since I had seen Tugly. (T-Ugly).

One of the things that struck me was how primitive my work looked, now that I looked at it. I had spent a long time accurizing both Goldie and Quasi that Tugly looked like it really needed a boost.

One thing that was apparent was much of my work was just plain wrong. At the time, I hadn't quite mastered a lot of the subtleties that make up Vader. So how hard was it to port the knowledge gained from Goldie and Quasi over to Tugly

First, I realized that the face was pushed in, so after some treatment with heat (this isn't fiberglass resin, which - and depending on the brand or blend - can cause air bubbles so I don't recommend this method) I manage to push the face out a bit so make it look fuller.



The neck is is quite flared. This was using some kind of polyurethane resin (no fiberglass) so it was a bit more manipulable with heat, though it could easily get too soft and start collapsing on itself if exposed to too much heat.

And here is a quick paint test using non-toxic black acrylic paint. Thank goodness for acrylics. They've saved my lungs from harmful paint fumes.

The next step was to add material back where I had originally sanded it down. Back in the day, when we had very few accurate Vader prop references, people could sand away to sharpen lines, and nobody would have known the difference. Here was my opportunity to add some substance back into the face.

The brows had to be build up, as well as the forehead. The nose bridge was too narrow. The eyes had been sanded down and now needed to be a touch higher. The right (as you look at it) cheek was so sanded down that the whisker didn't look right. And so forth. I was very proud of the nose and the mouth triangle.



Oh, I also took the neck in. Then re-contoured it. Hopefully it looks a lot more elegant now than it did previously. This was all rough work. The careful wet sanding hadn't happened yet.

Here's a paint test:

So now to the kitchen sink... and this is where I wet sand and refined the work, and doing an occasional black paint test to see if my surfaces flowed properly.



I'm pretty proud of that picture because instead of taking months or years, this was all within a very tight timeframe. As I said, I was in my game, so figuring these mods took me just a few minutes, and I had to wait half a day for the epoxy clay to cure before I could sand it.

So Round 1 was done and here's how it looked after refinements:



And a quick before-and-after:



The next you saw: carved away the stupid ashtray mounting system and gave him a smooth cueball head.

I was particularly proud of this work.



Then a paint test after all that wetsanding.



The rest you saw:

And here is where "Tugly" stands today.









Enjoy!