2 Week Course with Dave Bonneywell

I want to dedicate my first blog post to a 2 week Intense course I did with a rather well credited artists named Dave Bonneywell. If you google him all sorts of weird creatures will come up. But his biggest movies include the likes of Clash of The Titans, Hell Boy 2, 28 Weeks Later and The Seed Of Chucky. He is also a regular artist on The Doctor Who Series.

He came to The University of Bolton on behalf of Neil Gorton's studio, Millennium FX. We did a 2 week intense 'Advanced 3D Physical Processes' course with him. This would involve us sketching out ideas, making our casts of our models, sculpting upon these, creating our negatives then whala! our Prosthetics.

The theme we were given was 'Mutation' which I liked because mutation can literally mean... anything really? I had a few ideas in mind such as a Zombie, Fish, Demonic Possession...but I went all weird and thought I'd give my model 3 eyes. I think I chose this project because it was small yet challenging. I wanted the opportunity to study human anatomy and trying out textures when it came to sculpting. I'd not had the opportunity to do many sculpts before. The biggest sculpt I did was my final project in my first year (The Leech Mouthed Alien Warrior). Other than that I'd only done small sculpts upon boards. So overall... I was Excited. Bare in mind I had just transferred from another University which was lets just say... not for me. So I was excited to begin a new experience in a huge studio filled with really talented people!

2 weeks went by. And we learnt two things:

1. Mr Bonneywell has one of the most 'colourful' vocabularies I have ever come across, which is either because he really loves the word 'Fuck' or it's just a really good way to keep our attention...either way he is an awesome guy!




2. We were now capable of making a mould and a prosthetic the professional way.

This was my finished sculpt of the Triclops Eye. I used a resin eye to keep the shape and I sculpted upon a Rencast facecast. One thing I really enjoyed about our course with Dave was how he taught us texturing! It literally brought all of our pieces to life.

I ran my mould a few times until I got a piece I happy with. Overall I was really happy with my Triclops eye. I thought it looked pretty realistic for my first attempt at anatomy if I must say so myself!

So this was my finished piece. I wasn't 100% happy with my edges but I managed to blend them in a bit more by dappling skin illustrator and using a brush to flick it on. I find this creates an even skin colour and helps adjust the tones.

Overall I found the two weeks with Dave super beneficial! It's worth giving him a google or a Facebook as his ZBrush and sculpting work is awesome!!

Thanks for reading!

Bethan