I was the little kid with his face pressed against the display case of a model ship at the Nautical Museum, trying to peer into the windows of the captain's cabin to see if there was anything inside. I was the kid at the model railroad show straining to see what was inside the little buildings and what lay around the bend of the large hills of the layouts. They ignited my imagination like nothing else.
From ages 6 to 8 my step dad would bring home a model from time to time and I'd watch as he built it, but it wasn't until I
was about 9 or 10 that I began to build my own. At that time I didn't care what it was. I just loved to build models. I built aircraft, ships, cars, armor, whatever. They were poorly built and sparsely painted, but I'd built them myself.
Within a few years, my interest in all things military had spun me towards armor. I also built aircraft, but most of the models I was buying at that point were armor. Then, when I was 11 or 12, something at the book store changed my life. I found
a copy of Shepard Paine's How To Build Dioramas, along with a copy of his book Modeling Tanks and Military Vehicles. I wouldn't leave the store without both books, and since it was a used book store, it wouldn't break the bank for my mom. I brought those books home and scoured them from cover to cover, anxious to put everything in those worn pages to work. Armed with a new wealth of knowledge, I began building dioramas. My early efforts weren't much to look at, but they were 100% imagination and
I had so much fun building them.
As the years rolled by, I got better. By age 18 I was to a point where I was scratch building interiors and even starting to attempt to scratch build whole vehicles. By 21 I had perfected painting cammoflage on 1/35th scale figures, though I hadn't
yet perfected painting flesh tones. Still, I was always working on something. I had boxes and boxes of parts to draw from, plus a big collection of styrene to scratch build with. I had also started to buy Verlinden's books featuring his dioramas and how he made them and had begun to experiment with artists' oils for painting figures.
When I was about 23, I bought my first large scale figure kit. Up to that point, I had only done figures to support my vehicles in dioramas, but I had been eyeing some of the 120mm Verlinden figures on display at the hoby shop for the better part of a year. I had my oil skills to a point where I could paint a decent face and so I took the plunge with a Verlinden German Infantryman armed with a Panzerschreck and a Kar98. It was one of the best figures Verlinden had out at the time and it wasn't a bad effort on my part, for a first attempt. I was hooked.
Over the next year or so, I picked up one figure after another, all Verlinden 120mm kits, and began to develop an edge. Then, one day my creative juices started flowing and I got it in my head that I could sculpt a figure. I took the head from that first German figure, which had a particularly well sculpted and expressive face, and began to sculpt a head of my own, side by side with that Verlinden head, as reference for scale and anatomy. My very first face came out perfect (The bill for his hat is broken now, as can be seen in the pic). Even by the standards of my work today, it's still a head I could use on a figure. The figure I sculpted beneeth it, however, was just okay. It was a German Infantryman in cammo winter coat and armed with a Russian PPSh41. It wasn't terrible, especially considering it was my first effort, but it wasn't great either. This also marked my first attempt to scratch build a weapon. That turned out to be a decent first effort as well.
With one successful figure scratch built, I immediately began another, a British Colour Sergeant in the Anglo/Zulu war. The anatomy was a little off in the arms and legs, but still, not a bad second effort. I'd seen kits for sale that weren't much
better. The Martini-Henry came out pretty good as well.
As the years progressed, so did my abilities. I was stuck in a Sherman rut with armor. I still enjoyed armor, but I was only interested in Shermans, and eventually I lost active interest in armor altogether. I was now a figure sculptor.
In 1996, I applied for a job that would take my modeling skills to the bank. A prototype model making company had just opened a site in my area and was looking for people with modeling skills. I applied and waited, not sure exactly what this place was about or whether I could do what they did. About four months after I applied, about the time I had writen them off, they called me for an interview. I went down and met with them and was blown away by the operation. I never noticed the modeling department because I was so blown away with the technology employed there. It was my first encounter withStereolithography (SLA) and Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), two similar processes witch make use of CAD data to "grow" a model from liquid or powdered plastic by use of a laser. I'd never even heard of such a thing.
So they called me back and offered me the job. I had screwed around with mold making and resin casting and had, at that point, began using resin castings of torso and pelvis blanks for my figures from molds I had made from silicone. That is what sealed the deal for them and I became the first person hired off the street with no prior professional experience to be hired straight into the mold making/eurethane department, which at that company, were considered to be elite. I started off learning the basic finishing practices and methods used by the finishers, the basic skills needed by all employees, then learned how to pattern finish. Then I finished a pattern which I was then to learn to make a mold from. Thus began the best, happiest two years of employment in my adult life.
Unfortunately, that company had bitten off more than it could chew in expanding, and began to bleed money. Dozens of poorly thought out business plans and equipment purchases had sapped funds until they were 18 million in debt. They shut their doors in
late 1998, leaving me unemployed.
About six months later, a former colleague of mine from that company started his own model shop. He was the industrial design model maker at that company, the true elite of the model making department, incorporating all of the skill of all of Finishing, Mold Making/Urethane, plus fine finishing and painting skills. The top of the heap. He needed someone with mold making and resin casting skills and since I was also an acomplished model maker, through my hobby, he decided to bring me on to handle the casting department and to learn the ID modeling trade.
For the next year, I underwent a hyper-excellerated apprenticeship, of sorts, and by 2000, I was making high level, high finish design presentation models for companys such as Nike, S3/Diamond Multi-Media, Hewlet-Packard and Infocus.
Towards the end of 2000, my boss got an offer to sell to the only large prototype outfit left in the area. They were, in fact, the largest prototype model company in the world, and they wanted to buy our business and bring the two of us on to get a full production facility started up again in the building of our former employer. My boss was doing okay, but he was strugling a bit, so the offer was tantilising. In July, he took the offer and we became employees of ARRK Product Development Group.
He became Production Manager and I headed up the ID modeling Department, known as Special Projects. Special Projects was a combonation of Casting/Mold Making, Painting and ID modeling. The focus was ID modeling, with the casting and painting serving as part of the modeling process, but we also took jobs that were specifically casting projects or production painting projects as well.
We worked hard, long hours, tirelessly churning out life like models of all manner of consumer products, electronic and mechanical. We did toys, shoes, computers, car parts, stereos. Everything imaginable. The hours were beginning to burn me out however.
About eight months into that, I got an opportunity to train in Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), as we had just purchased a brand new DTM Sinterstation 2500+ and had also just fired our only SLS trained employee. I was also learning how to set up and run our Stereolithogaphy (SLA) machines. While I was excited to start in this new direction, I still had my other duties to perform as well. When I was then tasked to head the SLS department, along side the Special Projects group, I was in over my head. Both jobs were full time jobs with a fair amount of overtime involved in both, and I found myself in a position where I couldn't easily give up one or the other without just quiting my job altogether. Eventually they realized this, though I had been telling them as much for months, and they relieved me of my SLS duties, after I had trained my replacement, and I went back to focusing on models.
I really wanted, at that point, to move on to SLS and SLA, so I was dissappointed, but relieved at the same time, to be back to one job. The problem was that it was easier and faster for me to train someone on the machines then it was to get someone up to my skill level with models. SLS does one thing and, if you know the software and the steps, it does that one thing the same way every time, plus it's easy to teach to others with little prior experience. The modeling requires years of experience in skills that aren't so easy to teach and learn and which require at least a tiny amount of natural artistic ability. Not something that could be emparted to just anybody, and certainly not with the idea that they would then take over a department.
Not long after that, the experiment came to an end. Eagar to get out of the lease on the building, and with the economy beginning to spiral out of control, In March of 2001, ARRK announced that our facility would be shutting down. As much as I loved the work, I had grown to despise my job and I hated getting out of bed. I was miserable and was glad to be laid off.
I won't go into the hardships of what turned into two years of joblessness, but instead turn to two years of time to devote to perfecting my sculpting. Over my years as a professional modeler, I was still sculpting away and improving with each piece. In that time also, armor modeling had almost completely been supplanted by an interest in old beater pickup and car models, and law enforcement vehicles. The skills I had learned on the job had also kicked my scale modeling skills up a few notches, beefing up my skills at mold making, casting, finishing and painting to that of expert.
I have also continued to work as a prototype model maker on a contract basis and have made dozens of models for various companies on my own since 2001. I am once again employed, in a simple job that pays the bills and allows me to focus on my modeling, and I continue to improve my abilities as a sculptor. It has been a wild ride, but it has been a rewarding one, and there's much yet to experience.
In Febraury of 05 I turned 35. I've now been building models for 25 years. I've sculpted more figures and busts than I can count. I still build model kits, but focus mainly on the figures. I still buy a figure kit or two, but spend most of my time on my own work. I feel blessed to have the skills and talents that I have and treasure the time I've enjoyed building models.
