Cutting it close for Halloween

For as long as I can remember there have always been 4 classic horror monsters, Frankenstein, Dracula, the Mummy and the Wolf Man (I wonder if I should have said Ware Wolf?). So far I have built busts and of Frankenstein and Dracula. I have also included masks of each as well. I plan to design both the Mummy and the Wolf Man, one this year and one next year. I believe that the die hard modelers want busts of both as soon as possible. But the busts take longer to design and test. Production is very slow and time consuming. The masks on the other hand, are quicker to prototype and that means that I can find the flaws faster. Which means I can make adjustments to the software version sooner and then build a new prototype sooner. And so the process continues until you have a new model to print. The masks are easier to build than the busts and so they are more popular with my fans who are less dedicated to modeling full time.

As I have said in a previous post, I have switched from Imagine to SketchUp just this year, so I have quite a learning curve to beat in order to produce a new model in time for Halloween. SketchUp has one great advantage over Imagine. (OK, it has LOTS of advantages but that is off topic.) In Imagine if I needed to make any change to the shape of the model, no mater how small, I had to do every step of the design over again. That means converting the model to .obj format, wrapping the texture map, and tweaking the texture map to fit the new model, before taking it to Pepakura, first to see if the texture fits correctly, then to unfold it. Now with SketchUp I adjust the model with the texture already attached, tweak in real time, then take it straight to Pepakura for unfolding.

My life in the real world is extremely busy this year but, I am still going to try my best to have a new model out in time for Halloween. Although it pains me to say it, I expect that I will only try for mask and not a full bust. But you will have to wait to see weather it will be a Ware wolf or the Mummy.