Steve's Demon Baby Sculpture

Demon Baby was our heartwarming, late 90's attempt to cash in on the bad girl phenomenon; with color, better writing and more costume changes, it might have done just well enough to spawn a regular series, which would've destroyed everyone involved, most especially our long-suffering publishers. It's probably just as well we wrapped the story up in 92 desultory b&w pages. Steve's sculpture recreates a scene wherein the inexperienced girl magician Talian conjures and tries to control the cranky, pain-in-the-ass demon Sheg, as depicted in the first panel on the above page from the Hell on Heels TP. Here's Steve on the how and why of the project: Trick or Treat! Here's a new commemorative from the Franklin Mint. I've always had a hankerin' to do a Ray Harryhausen/Will Vinton type of monster movie. But that takes way more time than I'm willing to invest. Besides, CGI effects have pretty much pushed stop motion animation and Claymation out of the special effects film market, with a few exceptions. But I got a digital camera a year ago, and I occasionally mess around with plasticine clay, so I decided to recreate the classic Demon Baby Meets Humongous Demon scene from our Hell on Heels book. I sculpted Sheg out of white plasticine... ...and Talian from grey plasticine. (The sword is a cocktail onion spearer.) I photographed them separately, with appropriate mood lighting... ...then combined them in Photoshop. Some details and imperfections were painted over with the brush and cloning tools: Presto! The finished result has all the majesty and spooky awe of one of those porcelain Elvis decanters. Scary, kids!