The Curse of the Gloamglozer!

For anyone who doesn't know what that entails, for shame! You mustn't have read The Edge Chronicles!

The Edge Chronicles are a series of fantasy books; granted, aimed at children, but I first read them when I was 11 and now nearly thirteen years later (bloody hell, I didn't realise it was that long, LOL) at 23 I love them just as much, if not more than I did then. The best part about them, aside from the stories themselves which are interestingly unique in a children's series to not have 'good' and 'evil' characters but a range of those with a decidedly grey morality.
Anyway, straying from the subject somewhat - the other big plus is Chris Riddell's beautiful illustrations which have inspired and influenced my own art style and never fail to amaze me. I mean just look at them!

http://lynkhart.tumblr.com/post/55554079466/frood-chris-riddell-the-last-of-the-sky

http://lynkhart.tumblr.com/post/55555989415/bloody-their-noses-he-said-once-black-their

With an unexpected 11th book being announced this week, (the authors said they were ending it at 10!) my love for the series has been reignited and I couldn't resist making one of my favourite characters from it in 3D: The Gloamglozer!

More photos and a step-by-step guide under the cut!


 

A malevolent, shapeshifting, trickster demon who lures people to their death and feeds off their fear, isn't exactly cuddly but I love the idea and design nonetheless.

To begin with I found the best pictures of him from the books and photographed them so I could refer to them on my phone without endangering the books themselves.

I knew it was going to be really difficult to match such a distinctive drawing style but I thought I'd give it a go anyway.

The first stage involved making a basic foil ball, wrapping it in masking tape and sticking some wire in for the neck before adding the first layer of sculpey. I normally use beads for eyes but I didn't have any the right size so I cobbled a pair together from sculpey and baked them with a wire in the back so I could simply stick it into the unbaked clay. I painted them so I'd have a better idea of how the face would look but I had to redo them later on.

Doing the skin texture was the best part - I used the splintery end of a broken wooden paintbrush handle to scratch away at the clay, then, using a medium to hard brush, softened the edges with a little vaseline. The teeth are the ends of toothpicks and were originally just placeholders! I intended to make the teeth out of styrene but by the time I came to bake the head I'd forgotten to take them out. XD

Because I'm lazy I use a heatgun to bake all my sculptures nowadays which does often end up with a few burnt and charred patches but as I would be painting this anyway it didn't really matter.

I hate sculpting ears SO much and I'm still not 100% happy with these ones. (especially when the left one decided to fall off later on. >.<)  You can see where the varnish I'd put on the eyes beforehand had bubbled up under the heat. :(

The horns were a lot more fun. I'd done ones similar to this before on Jarvis the Quarry Dragon but these ones were a lot tricker as they are so wonky! Texturing them was pretty good though.
I started off with plain wire then wrapped them with masking tape so the clay had something to stick to.

 The hands were another challenge. I hate sculpting them just as much as ears and I only like the left one. XD
I used cocktail sticks bent to shape and secured with superglue and bicarb. of soda to get the basic armature right, then sculpted on top of them. Once everything was sculpted and baked, I laid on a first coat of paint.

I didn't have all the colours I wanted to use as my paint selection is running out so I improvised and shaved some pastel dust into a blob of similarly coloured acrylic which worked wonders!



The eyes had to be repainted and whilst hunting for some yellow paint, I stumbled across an old bottle of glow in the dark nail varnish I'd bought for 50p after Halloween one year. It had all dried out but was somehow water soluble so I was able to paint it onto the eyes. It would have to be exposed to light for ages for you to really notice but his eyes WILL glow in the dark! :P

Although one of the hardback covers shows the Gloamglozer being a pinkish colour I've always imagined him to be a greyish green and I can get away with it too as it's a shapeshifter so who's to say he doesn't change colour depending on the mood? :P

All that remained was to seal the paint with some matte varnish, add his mane and beard (faux fur fabric) and make a robe out of black cheesecloth material...

So here he is! He's ended up looking a lot more derpy and significantly less creepy but oh well, I love him regardless. :P





His robes should be longer but I ran out of fabric. :(

You can see the hook I built into him at the back here. I'd originally intended to hang him up somewhere so he could hover like in the books but his head makes him really top heavy and tips him forward so I'll need to rethink it. As it is, for now he's sitting on top of a PVA bottle. XD

 

He's not all bad though... :P