Giant Paper Mache Lord Farquaad Head

Wow, so, this is by far the biggest thing I have ever made out of paper mache.  My wife and I were in a show around Halloween of 2012 down with Payson Community Theater, and in the show I made a walrus mask for one of the numbers.  

Then, in summer of 2013 I got a call from the prop guy, saying that he needed my help on some props for their upcoming show - Shrek the musical.  I agreed, not really knowing what I was getting myself into.  Turns out in the show there is a guard at the castle who is wearing a giant head of the Lord Farquaad character.  Anyway, they needed a way to make a huge, light, and sturdy head...and I was the only paper mache "expert" they knew...so...2 months, 2 bags of white flour, and several giant cardboard boxes later.  Voila!

I heard that the head was then used by the Scerra theater in Orem, and now I have no idea where it went.  

In order to keep the cardboard together while applying the paper mache, I had to sew it into the right shape.  I started by punching 2 parallel rows of holes with a nail along the edges, and then sewing them together with a yarn needle.  Later I found that knitting needles worked well enough for a hole punch, and the work went faster.  The knitting needle left larger holes, but it didn't really compromise the structure since thething was just so dense.  

The hair and the nose were challenging.  The hair just because I wanted to make sure it would be durable, and the only way to get the shape I wanted was with really flimsy cardboard.  The hat because there were so many pieces, and I had to do a lot of calculations in order to get it right the first time.

I spent 3 entire days covering this with paper mache.  The thing was so big that by the time I would make it around the head, the first stuff would already be dry!  The mouth got a little to much moisture, and warped a little, and the hat ended up being a little crooked, but everyone loved it.

The End

Thanks Dad, Sarah, and David for your help...you kept me sane during the process :)

These are my final images from the intro to 3D graphics class I just took at BYU...Yeah, pretty much just transferring my Blender modeling skills into Maya.

This is a test...for a top secret project...but this happens to be the only way I can view it on this computer...more coming soon on this matter...

Update: This was a test that I did for a game idea that I had. This is actually turning out to be a very very complicated concept. I have been struggling with this for YEARS now. I have this ideal game idea in my head, and every time I write it out it seems to get harder.

The hardest thing about this idea is the way that this blob of goop is supposed to move around. I am almost going to have to draw every single frame for every single possible scenario for this blob. I know that is super vague.. just imaging that he can move in about 16 different directions, and every direction has a set of actions. Most characters in games really only move in 2 directions. Forward, or Up. Then they have transition actions to fill in those gaps, like turning, or walking backward. This guy is just too complicated for now.

So, I have been working on other game ideas, and trying to teach myself some code to get a game out there on the app store.. we will see how that goes. And there is another thing that I can write about on this blog thing :)

Cowgirl Portrait

Ok, I am revamping this blog, and trying to get some actual written content on here. In this quest to fix my blog, I am going to go through and write about the pictures that I have posted, and if there is nothing to write about, then I guess I will just delete that post.

This is an interesting one though. This is actually a girl that I started dating back in 2011. She was fun, and pretty, but in the end I just felt like I was on a path that I didn't want to pursue. I had a strange habit at the time of drawing a portrait of the girls that I liked, so I drew this one, and gave it to her as a gift.

I actually met her at a party of a mutual friend who was interested in her at the time. I ended up spending most of the night around her, and asking her out a few days later. If she ever reads this, then I guess she will learn that my friend who was throwing the party was pretty torn between this girl and another girl, and when he saw that I showed interest in her, he was almost relieved in a way because he felt like his choice was easier to make.

The best memory that I have with her was on that first night we were switching off jumping on a trampoline while the other one threw gummy bears at them from a balcony/deck at this big house we were at. We were surprisingly good at it, which made it all the more fun...to see how many we could get in a row sort of thing.

Anyway, that is the story of this picture. She is one of the girls that I was interested in that really liked horses. It seemed like every time I liked a girl who had a thing for horses, it ended up ending kind of strangely. And living in central Utah, there were a lot of girls who had spent lots of time around horses. I mean, I had spent quite a bit of time around horses at my grandpa's farm.. it's just that none of them were broken and ride-able.

So, there you have it. I might share some insights later on about dating and mushy stuff like that.. still trying to figure out what this blog should be.

Big Blue Bully