I’m fortunate that I have been able to see the process of creating an action figure, so I can look at it differently than someone who walks into a Toys “R” Us and sees a Batman figure on the shelf. Some people don’t assume that a figure started out as a wax sculpture made by hand. Once you understand the process, it becomes more of an art piece and not a manufactured item. I spoke with Jonathan Matthews, an accomplished sculptor, about his method and approach.
Bio:
Contract Sculptor
for DC Comics
Age:
38
Location:
St. Matthews
Explain a little bit about your artistic background. Where did you get your start and how did you end up where you are today?
So basically I started out at a pretty young age enjoying doing art. My mom is an artist and my dad is what you would call an artisan – really good with his hands. He makes almost anything: woodcarving, a little bit of blacksmithing. Kind of a creative family. I guess I was encouraged.
The earliest memory I have of being encouraged outside the family was in second grade. My second grade teacher was Sister Marie, a nun of course. The principal was a good old-fashioned knuckle cracker. She asked me to copy from a book this picture of the holy family around Christmastime – so Mary, Joe, and Baby Jesus – which I blew up to larger proportions on a poster board. She just raved about it. In fact, there is a photograph of me as a second grader holding this up and grinning. From there on, I was always the art kid in elementary school – pretty much through high school. In fact, I illustrated a book in second grade. I’ve got a mimeographed copy of this thing somewhere. There were a couple of projects with kids here and there, but a lot of it I was developing on my own and watching what my parents were doing. Like most kids, I started drawing monsters and dudes with swords, that kind of stuff. Drawing on notebooks and folders, every page of notes covered in doodles. And the whole time this is going on, I am developing as a 2-D artist.
In my free time, I was spending hours playing with plasticine clay, making action figures. I had some colored plasticine and I had some gray stuff, so I made this Frankenstein monster. I had an emptied-out stomach compartment that I built and made the organs out of colored plasticine. And I used toothpicks for bones and stuff. So I was making little creatures and stuff, kind of riffing on the action figures I collected.
I also had a side business in high school doing airbrushing on T-shirts for people and worked at a kiosk in Elizabethtown mall, spent a summer doing that.
Where did you move to at that point, professionally?
I was actually working professionally out of art school, high school, painting and drawing and stuff. I didn’t take any sculptural classes in art school, but I was working at an advertising agency out of college maybe my first or second year out of school. This was in Columbus, Ohio. Some buddies of mine that I had gone to school with contacted me out of the blue and were wondering if I wanted to do some sculptural stuff since throughout my education in college I had done a few three-dimensional illustration projects. And this is why they called me. They were at a toy company in Columbus where several of my classmates had gotten jobs. A couple were toy designers and sculptors.
They wanted to try me out and pretty much gave me a project out of the gate. I brought in some pieces I had done on my own. Looking back, it was a pretty low-brow portfolio. The company was ReSaurus. So they saw my stuff and gave me a project – pretty much make or break. It was a character called Lastic from a comic book called “The Tenth” by artist Tony Daniel.
So, anyways, I started working for ReSaurus, moonlighting after work from the ad agency. I was using a new medium, Castilene, which I still use to this day. When I brought the project in finished, they liked it and offered me a full-time job. I worked there for a little over a year before they went out of business and then started freelance work. My main client was Graphitti Designs, doing a series of figures from Kevin Smith’s movies. I also did some work for Palisades Toys doing “Resident Evil,” some G.I. Joe mini busts, and a few statues.
Then one of my buddies I had worked with at ReSaurus called me about a job where he was working as an art director at DC Direct. I had been freelancing for two or three years. And he contacted me about signing an exclusive deal with DC, which included benefits and so forth. At the time, I wasn’t interested since I had several freelance gigs that kept me busy. And once I accepted the job with DC, I had to stop working for other companies. There were some hard feelings here and there, but it was alright. So at DC they started me on some action figures for the “Teen Titans” series. After a brief trial period, they knew that they wanted me to be a contract guy. So, six months later, I signed on exclusively with them, partly due to the encouragement from Tim Bruckner, another sculptor that was there. Ultimately, I did. And now I’ve been with them for eight years.
If you had to think back, do you feel like you have a benchmark piece in terms of the work you’ve done?
I definitely have one. And I don’t necessarily consider it my personal benchmark, but the main one that really stands out and that I am known for was a Batman black and white statue based on a Mike Mignola design. It was an early piece in the series, but from that point on I continued to sculpt statues for the series, especially since I was involved in the development of the line.
So if the Mignola piece is your benchmark according to public perception, what is one of your personal favorites?
Some of the quarter-scale stuff I’ve done: a Joker, a Harlequin, and a Batman. They are mixed media with cloth clothing, etc. They are challenging to produce since you have to consider more variables. They are challenging to produce because you have to think about all those things as you are sculpting. And, in terms of scope, I like these more than some of the others.
There was a Batman black and white based on a Steve Rude design. After I did a few of those black and white statues, I quickly became the dude that best translates 2-D to 3-D. I’ve done Jack Kirby, Sam Kieth, both of the Kuberts. I’m kind of their go-to guy for that kind of stuff, particularly highly stylized 2-D art. And, for me, to be honest, I have more trouble sometimes with the stuff that isn’t stylized, especially if it is based on more generic-styled comic art.
What do you think makes the stylized stuff easier? Are there more liberties you can take in sculpting something that is more stylized?
You’re cheating realism for one thing. It’s hard to describe why it’s less confining. So much stuff has been done in the comic style. It’s harder to stand out with stuff that isn’t stylized. It’s easier to catch a signature of the artist when they have a trademark style. I have a tendency to put in stuff that I know goes on anatomically. It’s easier for me to subtract myself, my own knowledge, and my own sculpting ability – things that I know to be true in real life. It’s easier for me to forget that stuff if the artist has in their rendering.
Let’s take a minute and discuss the process of sculpting a figure.
I start with Castilene wax. It’s pretty hard at room temperature. Heat it up and it becomes soft. I keep a 75-watt bulb over a plate of this stuff for 20 mins or so and then it becomes soft like Play-Doh. I typically get a packet from DC with reference in the form of comic art and sometimes turnarounds from the artist. Also, I will get scale and basic size info. So I get started blocking the figure out.
The wax I use is additive and subtractive, so I can add to the sculpture as needed or take wax away, as opposed to working with something like marble which is purely subtractive – once it’s gone it’s gone. The wax is very forgiving. It’s especially good for art directors because inevitably there are changes to be made. And it’s easy to tweak a pose or change the musculature without having to redo the pieces from scratch. If it’s an action figure, I will also sculpt and cut in joints if required. The engineering needs to work once it leaves my shop.
I then break the final sculpt into pieces for the mold-making process, using natural breaks in the sculpt. I have a prototyping shop in my basement. I will take the pieces and, using silicone rubber and a vacuum chamber, I will make the molds and then cast the parts in polyurethane resin. The resin is put into a pressure chamber to decrease the occurrence of bubbles on the surface of the piece. Then I clean all the pieces up and reassemble them to make sure everything fits. I usually provide DC with three finished prototypes, two fully painted and one unpainted, which is sent off to China for the factory tooling pattern.
Once it gets to China, they basically do the same thing I am doing, only on a much larger scale. For something like an action figure, they will use the tooling parts I give them for a steel mold, which is then injected with plastic for a production piece. After I send in my plastic pieces to my art director, my work on the project is done. I will usually paint the pieces myself, but sometimes I will send them to a prototype painter. I put as nice a coat of paint as possible to make it so all the paint lines are crisp. We are setting the tone for how the production piece will look. And they will try to duplicate that at the factory as best they can, as close as possible.
Typically, how long do you think it is before you see the finished piece on the shelves of a comic book or toy store?
Typically around nine months. I’ve seen them go faster than that. And it probably depends on the process they are using to reproduce them. Then you see them on the shelves, packaged and boxed. A lot of the time they will send me production samples to see the horrible disparity between prototype and production piece – which, luckily, most people don’t get to see – because obviously you’re not going to paint 500 of these things to look as good as one I spent 12 hours painting. They don’t have that time to make them look that good.
There is a lot of talk these days about rendering software in your profession. What are your thoughts on that process and are you thinking of utilizing that technology?
Yes, in fact I have been meaning to get the program and train up on it. Basically, what’s going on now in the industry is that people are using software in place of the wax and dental tools that I use to make sculpture. They are clicking a mouse to make a 3-D rendering in polygon and wireframe, that kind of stuff. And then the piece will be prototyped using a rapid type prototyper, output printed three-dimensionally.
The industry is going that way so I would be foolish not to. At some point I will have to evolve with the industry and, honestly, these programs do make the job easier. It’s daunting to see your industry take a turn like that. It’s hard not to feel like you’re being made obsolete. And, also, there’s an element to some of these programs being used that, artistically, I take a little offense at, but these are the very things that make the job easier. For example, one of the things these programs do is you can sculpt one side of the figure and the computer will mirror image what you’re doing and create a full figure. So, that said, technically you can halve your time of sculpting.
I fully intend to get the program, but I don’t intend to stop working traditionally, whether it’s professionally or if it’s just in my free time for some of the side projects I’ve had rolling around in my head for 15 years. It’s inevitable, so I may as well embrace it.
By utilizing the rendering software and such, you might actually open up more of your free time to take on these pet projects, be it something I bring up to you or something you want to do for a friend – something that doesn’t pay what the work pays, but by cutting your time in half maybe it will help you justify them.
It will make those projects more feasible to me. If it’s taking me less time to fulfill my obligations to DC, then I would have more time to do those.
Even if you do these side projects with the rendering software, it’s still going to make those projects happen a lot quicker than if you’re sitting there with wax.
One hope I have with getting this program is that it will energize me to approach some of these side projects/personal projects. Because, the way it is right now, I’m working anywhere from six to 12 hours a day on doing this. What it requires me to do in the evening in my free time is to do the exact same thing for another block of time. It takes the fun out of it. That’s one thing that I am hopeful will come out of going digital – more time for projects. Some of my colleagues have embraced it fully, while others have sworn to never use it. It becomes less art and more industry.
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