doctorwhotoys.net

Exclusive Interview with Edmund Barnett-Ward, Director of Sculpting at Designworks Windsor, the company that sculpts Character Options
Doctor Who Action Figures

This interview took place in Windsor, England on the 27th February 2008 and is Strictly
Copyright © doctorwhotoys.net, All Rights Reserved; may not be reproduced in full or part.
All images are for the exclusive use of doctorwhotoys.net approved by and copyright © Designworks Windsor, Character Group plc and the BBC

Part 1 Behind the Scenes at Designworks
Part 2 All About Ed
Part 3 A Little History
Part 4 The Making of Doctor Who Action Figures
Part 5 Traditional Sculpting
Part 6 Sculpting Materials
Part 7 Approval
Part 8 Digital Sculpting
Part 9 The Sculptors
Part 10 The Story So Far

Welcome to Part 9 of a multi-part 10,000 word series describing in detail the making of Doctor Who Action Figures and including 63 exclusive new images of the figures in various stages of production.

          "The sculptors here," says Ed "come from completely different backgrounds."

Ood 12 Inch Approval Deco - All images exclusively approved for use only on doctorwhotoys.net by Designworks, Character Options and the BBC.

"I come from a background where I did a degree in drama and theatre studies, other people did design courses. The guy that did cyberman and Constantine has a degree in design from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, in Holborn London. Other people do courses in model making

There are courses around the country in various universities and polytechnics that concentrate on model making as a vocation, a profession. They are primarily geared towards the film industry, sculpturally for special effects, and model-making wise for product model making for making kettles and whatever else. I take people from that arena as well. I have connections with some of the colleges too and we do work placements here for undergraduates and I'm happy to take people on to gain some experience of doing it."

"The more people I get familiar with and I know are potentially going to finish their courses in a couple of years time and come and work here, that's great because we are always expanding. But there are one or two sculptors here that have no formal training whatsoever. It's obviously very difficult to find them."

"It's a small industry. Anybody that comes in contact with this industry will probably find a route to us somehow because there'll be people working at other places that have worked here or know people who work here, and that's how people contact me. A lot of the time people are interested in the kinds of products we make. Prospective sculptors and model makers can always contact us through the Designworks website."

"In terms of being a sculptor you've either got it or you haven't. Form, function and finish are the three important things."

• "Form - How it looks; does it look like the thing its meant to look like? If a new sculptor came to see me, I could give them a job based on them having a brilliant Daffy Duck in their portfolio and nothing else, simply because I know it's really difficult to translate Daffy Duck from its two dimensional origins in a cartoon into a 3D thing that still looks like Daffy Duck. If they can do that then they can make the Reaper, say, or they can make any creature because I know that they can translate a photograph into a sculpt."



• "Function - People have to be able to understand what the thing is going to do. The fact that it's an action figure, that it needs to move and that it needs to articulate. If you cut a human being in half around the waist they wouldn't be round, and thats a constant thing that we have to fight against because when you make a hip joint on an action figure - for it to work, it essentially has to be round. Therefore you have to find a way to make it work, to make sure the action figure looks incredibly natural, but functions. All these things have to be accounted for at the sculpting stage."



• "Finish - Other studios, particularly American studios, have a stage more in their sculpting process. They will sculpt an object and take it to a certain level , then they'll make a mould of it, then they'll cast it out in resin and that resin model will be finished off, or sometimes they cast again in another form of wax and that sculpt will be finished off and then it'll be taken to mould.
  
  So there's a two moulding process, or what we call an inter-moulding process, which we don't do because for one thing my clients wouldn't pay for it (the market here is not the same as the one in the States, I can't charge $15,000 a figure, whereas the American studios can) and for another, the lead time wouldn't permit it.
  
  In order to get these figures out in three months, six months or nine months I can't be having an extra four or five day period where its moulded and cast out, so the finish has to be really good. That's the thing that probably new sculptors to Designworks struggle with most because they are not used to working at the level of finish that we require. I want all the models to be production ready; they've got to be spot on, and that's what people struggle with."

So that's what makes a good sculptor those three things - form, function and finish - an appreciation of those things," says Ed. "That's what makes a good sculptor."

Werewolf & Doctor Original Sculpts - All images exclusively approved for use only on doctorwhotoys.net by Designworks, Character Options and the BBC.

Thanks Ed

Now Read Part 10: The Story So Far

Don't miss Part 10 in which Ed talks exclusively to doctorwhotoys.net about Designworks involvement with Character Options in the creation of Doctor Who Action Figures.

Part 1 Behind the Scenes at Designworks
Part 2 All About Ed
Part 3 A Little History
Part 4 The Making of Doctor Who Action Figures
Part 5 Traditional Sculpting
Part 6 Sculpting Materials
Part 7 Approval
Part 8 Digital Sculpting
Part 9 The Sculptors
Part 10 The Story So Far

This interview is Strictly Copyright © doctorwhotoys.net, All Rights Reserved; may not be reproduced in full or part. All images are for the exclusive use of doctorwhotoys.net approved by and copyright © Designworks Windsor, Character Group plc and the BBC