Monday, March 03, 2008

Birth of the Dokuro Brain!!!!

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I was checking out Guyx1 new avatar on Skullbrain and noticed it was a Secret Base Walder Skullbrain with a King Walder helmet. Dokuro King is one of my all-time favorite characters so dropped Guy a message asking him about it and if he would make me one. After learning that he just finished this one for himself, I asked if I could document a bit about the process.

Here is the birth of the Dokuro Brain from Guy Redwing:

"covered in hope and Vaseline
still cannot fix this broken machine" - NIN
"Your construction Smells of corruption
I manipulate to recreate" - Lo-Fidelity All-stars


It all started with this Secret Base T-Shirt from 2004...

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While I loved the T-Shirt, I was always dismayed to find that no such toy existed.

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Secret Base Tributes have always been a little underwhelming to me. Same figure, different colors. No new accessories. While I loved the Header card for the KW tribute, I can't say the toy inspired me. I had seen people place BBs, tinsel and all sorts of things inside their vinyl toys, but I wanted to take it to the next level. I wanted Accessories.

Resin casting has never been my medium. I need re-sculpted, repainted vinyl parts. I didn't know a lot about Skullbrain and Skull Bee, but I knew that if a Dokuro tribute toy could be made, I was the person crazy enough to perform such a blasphemous toy surgery.

As an Artist, I find the best inspiration comes from extreme stress and utter lack of funds. Such circumstances are what undoubtedly what drove me to my recent toy cannibalism. Thanks to the Support of Masato Shono, Brian Flynn, Parka, Moriachi, Tiloraby, Monstens, Muton, Ramos, Yellow Spiral and all the crew at Visible Innards, they have helped me through this rough period of my life. We all exchanged a lot of SB vinyl head photos were sent back and forth showing heads next to a ruler as I bounced Ideas off people, working up the courage to do this..

Years earlier I had made a DokuroQueen figure, so I figured this would be quite similar.


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Knowing the various SB head sizes, I lined up the entire range of Dokuroking toys next to the SB characters and picked out my Dokuro victims. (I would not recommend this technique for everyone) I settled upon THREE Dokuroking toys to sacrifice for this project. All three versions cut, modified, stretched and repainted.

Walder Skullbrain begins looking like this...

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Initially the back gap in the helmet would really spread out wide. The Helmet itself has to be altered so it can become a functional helmet and not a mask with a slit in back. It has to have the slit in back sealed otherwise it will cracked like an egg when removed. Once it was finally sealed to my satisfaction (somewhere around attempt # 12) the helmet was STILL too small for the skullbrain character (!!!!!) whose eye sockets were looking strangely squeezed together. It had to be stretched and pulled by hand in back to accommodate the Skullbrain head.

Even the gizzard guts!!!

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Wow, looks amazing Guy!! Note to Secret Base: Make a Dokuro King, Plant and Satan King Brain with Helmet and Armor. We would all buy it!!!!

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