Hello, my Lovlies!
Recently {not actually “Recently” so much, as this post was original written/created on Nov. 5th, 2012 and I never published it[until now, quite unfortunately, clearly -.-], as there’s was always “something more/else” that I wanted to include, etcetera. Anyhoo, now continue and don’t be shocked when you notice edits, should I make any. I feel nearly more concerned with “dusting things off” honestly, whilst feeling faced the the decision of “Action/Inertia(Stagnancy/Procrastination)” and doing nothing more…of course, I’ll…well, I just shut up and let “you” read ^.^}, I got commissioned for a “from-the-bottom-up” custom creation and since I am frequently asked about my process and/or how do I go about making Guin, I thought that I would take this opportunity and share a bit of that with all of you :) This will also give you all a bit of an idea about how easy it can be to work with me and bring your custom creation to life! The following is an excerpt from the message that my client sent me, requesting a special custom piece:
My dad is going to be celebrating 25 years in law this coming April, and after showing him my figurines, he’s considering ordering 2. He’d want Guin to be bigger though (about 50% bigger than the current Guins) and he’d want Guin to look like a lawyer, with the scale or a briefcase, etc. We don’t have a lot of ideas, but he’d like to know a price estimate for 2, along with an idea of how Guin would be. He’d also want his initials and 25 years, along with 2012 somehow on it, either on a briefcase that Guin would carry or on Guin’s stomach. The Guins would be going to females, if that would help you with ideas in some way. My dad would want to receive them by the end of March. If you could let me know if it would be possible to do that, or if you could sketch a picture and show me, that would be great.
So that was what I was given as a starting point, which wasn’t actually that bad. I do prefer some pictures to get a better idea of what my clients really want, but we were all very pleased with the end result, so that just goes to show you, you don’t even always need a picture, just hopefully some general idea of what you want and/or don’t want.
Alrighty, so here we go! Below is a photo of the initial concept of Guin XL – Lawyer Edition, which was created using some Dollarama modelling clay. Working out concepts with modelling clay is something new to me, as I once used to sketch out my designs was how I used to work out all of my concepts, but recently I decided to give modelling clay a go and will never look back! This also saves me a lot of time, effort, and money (in the form of potentially wasted materials, should something not work out)! Also, it’s just fun ;)
I found once I got past the insane difficulty that I had, trying to convince my hands to make Guin (who I have been make the exact same size since 2008!) a significantly larger size, it was relatively smooth sailing after that. Though yes, I still sat there and stared at the clay with a furrowed brow for periods of time that were a little to long and frequent for my liking (I had trouble getting the size of things just right and was trying to make sure I had copies of the clay ball sizes that I would need for each piece), but all and all it wasn’t quite as bad as I had originally anticipated.
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Here is where I stood Gasping Pengahli beside Guin XL, to illustrate how much larger he really was, since I knew it didn’t translate well with Guin XL by himself. This was also the very first time that anyone (who doesn’t live in my house) had seen Gasping Pengahli!
Mompreneurial Musings 