Ripley & Power Loader, Part II: Tom Seiler
Originally published May 4, 2006, at GJSentinel.com.
This week’s subject is a big model kit, so it’s appropriate that it would require a little extra space. In the last Resin the Barbarian entry, I talked about the specifics of Forbidden Zone’s upcoming Power Loader garage kit and spoke with Gabriel Marquez, sculptor of the Ripley figure on the kit.
Tom Seiler is the man behind the machine on the Power Loader. Like Gabriel, Tom lives in the Houston area, about an hour away from Gabriel’s home.
“I don’t call what I do ‘sculpting,'” Tom wrote in an e-mail. “Don’t put me in the same category as someone like Gabriel, as I’m not worthy! I will answer to ‘fabricator’ or ‘scratchbuilder,’ though, as I assemble bits of sheet styrene, plastic tubing, plumber’s epoxy and lots of putty and primer into master parts.
“I break a project into subassemblies and then make a model of each bit. The closest I come to sculpting is creating a transition or fillet here and there. I like to break objects down to their basic shapes, like the Loader foot is a rectangular solid with a half-cylinder on top of it.”
Read on for more of Tom’s description of assembling the Loader.
TOM SEILER ON MAKING THE POWER LOADER
Resin the Barbarian: Would you like to say anything about creating the Power Loader? I know that project was quite some time from conception to completion, so I’m sure you spent many hours working on it and I can’t imagine how much you focused on details.
Tom: I did spend many an hour on it, many a month, many a year. We were really lucky to get some great help from folks with invaluable Loader reference photos. Frame grabs from the DVD were helpful, too.
I’m also very lucky to live in Houston because of the great scratchbuilding resource we have here. G&G Model Shop near Rice University keeps nearly the entire Plastruct and Evergreen plastic inventory in stock for the models built by students of engineering and architecture. There is nothing like being able to pop into their shop and pick up anything you need in sheet, strip, rod, domed, tube or textured plastic!
For my starting point, I used the Halcyon kit, since the folks that made it had good references, at least as far as the scaling and proportions. I took one of their parts, laid it in my scanner, blew it up 150 percent, and PC-drafted plans of that, adding details Halcyon omitted, and correcting much of it.
I made very detailed plans for each part initially, loosening up as I went, until toward the end of the project I spent my time making parts rather than drawing them.
Like I said, I made a model of the Loader foot, a model of the forearm, of the claw, etc. I made all of it posable, knowing full well the kit would not be. Having working joints and pistons allowed Mike, Gabriel, and myself the ability to meet and lock in the final pose before the Ripley was started.
Like I said, I’m no sculptor, and we needed a consensus between the three of us on what worked, both dramatically and mechanically.
Before anyone asks, if the kit had had all separate movable parts (and a Gumby-style flexible Ripley), no one could have afforded it!
Once the pose was final, Gabriel took over and sculpted a fantastic Ripley! In the meantime, Mike has created a great base featuring the grids and a bit of the airlock of the Sulacco deck and is making some great decals, again much more thorough than what the Halcyon kit had.
Our Loader has a dynamic fighting stance, unlike the Halcyon kit. And Gabriel’s Ripley likeness is spot on. It really makes it all work! I can’t wait to see the first castings!