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Sam the Snowman


Roktman

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I just finished up Sam the Snowman from 1964's stop motion animation Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Sam was voiced and closely resembled by the Folk singer, Burl Ives.

Sam was in my "To Do" pile for so long I no longer remember where I picked him up. An inscription of "Raven" is carved into the back of the sculpt.

He was done with Vallejo and Army Painter paints. The toughest part of the research for him was what color was the back of his vest. I knew that most times the back of the vest is a different color than the front, so I knew I shouldn't paint it green. Finally I found a shot of the "puppet" from a 3/4 angle which showed a hint of a teal colored back.

All I have left to do is get him on a base. Thanks for looking.

 

burl_snowman.jpg

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Love it! Especially the jacket

 

Dave

 

 

Thanks. I was really afraid of doing the plaid, until I really looked at the puppet (?) and it wasn't plaid at all. Whew. ;)

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Hi, Kevin,

 

That is one nifty figure. At first glance I thought the vest was plaid, but it isn't. Was there a film cell reference for Sam's colors? Animating a true plaid back 50 years ago would have been very challenging, so this rather effective compromise was used instead. The eye sees what it wants to see, and if it looks like plaid, then it must be so. Shading white is also difficult, and your snow details show nicely. Well done!

 

Ed

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Hi, Kevin,

 

That is one nifty figure. At first glance I thought the vest was plaid, but it isn't. Was there a film cell reference for Sam's colors? Animating a true plaid back 50 years ago would have been very challenging, so this rather effective compromise was used instead. The eye sees what it wants to see, and if it looks like plaid, then it must be so. Shading white is also difficult, and your snow details show nicely. Well done!

 

Ed

Hi Ed,

 

Thanks! I'm sure animating true plaid back then must have been a night mare. But I don't remember if this was true animation or stop motion.

The snowman must have been one of the favorites. There was quite a few "screen grabs" of him on the Net. This is one of the few grabs that shows the color of the back of the vest. I guess what I could have done was paint the stitches a light green and only use the white for the intersections. Also I just noticed that there was more black lines. But the sculptor just "engraved" the ones I painted into the clay. -

 

snowman2.jpg

Edited by Roktman
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