Boss Voodoo is here

I finished the Boss Voodoo this afternoon and I have a ton of pics.  It’s actually a tough ring to photograph because its so big.

All in all I’m real happy with how this came out.  I wanted a giant ring.  Something massive- almost overboard.  This fits the bill.  The guys at Atlanta Diamond Design did a great job putting on that last gold tooth.  I set the turquoise eyes and put a nice custom finish on it.  Despite it’s size, it is very comfortable to wear.

The better news?  I’m going these as extremely custom luxury pieces for select clients.  They run at $1000 each.  No template frame, baby.  You order the ring, I carve it out of a block of wax and it goes on your finger.  Each one is totally different, has no duplicates, and is custom created based on the client.   These f’ers are big, I’ll remind you. About 1 and 3/4 inches tall.  They’re available with gold or silver teeth and with or without gemstone eyes.

Torturing @ibogost

To make things more complicated for Ian, I went off on a tangent on a totally new take on his Cow Clicker ring.

Which cow would you click?

As great as the other ring is going, I felt like MAYBE I was getting too far from the actual cow clicker design.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  The trick has always been to get this f’er to look like  a skull AND a cowclicker cow.

You can see that the new design is much flatter, more subtle, and has significantly less of a profile.  It doesn’t have ears yet, but I’d definitely add those too.  I’ve asked Ian which direction he prefers.   I know this is torture.

Also, although we decided on skull eyes earlier, there’s something about the Xs on the new design that just work.

I also like the longer teeth.

So what’s it gonna be?  Eh?  One or the other?  Or maybe try to merge these two together?

 

Game On….and a Boss Voodoo gets his grill

I’ve made a lot of progress on the Game Design ring.

I was conflicted about this for a while.   I wanted to keep it real small and light, but the design kept growing.  The D-20 isn’t a small shape and to keep it small, I would only be able to use the very top of it.  It just didn’t look right.

But using the entire d-20 and then setting it in this ocular shape (the purple ring) made it look completely badass.   The ring will read S C A D – A T L – I T G M and basically serves as a visual anchor for the inconsistent shape of the D-20.  These guys are always thinking about loops.  Positive feedback loops, negative feedback loops….yeah.  So the ring being a perfect circle sort of stands for that loop feedback system.  The D-20 itself has 2011 on the top.

The dimensional skulls on either side are going to turn out great.  The eyes punch completely through the shank.  The skulls – again – are all about intellect and reason, which is a huge part of what these guys do.  Plus, they look awesome.

The result is perfect.  The ring looks like some kind of medieval artifact.  It makes DeNiro’s ring from Angel Heart look like a Happy Meal toy.  The size?  Yeah, its big.  But I’m guessing these guys approached me for a reason.  If they wanted something small and dainty, they probably would’ve gone somewhere else.  This isn’t unreasonably big…most college rings are big anyway.  It isn’t even as big as my skull ring and I wear that every day.  I’m going to try to include as many hollows as possible to keep this bad boy light-weight.

Speaking of big….

This fist-sized bad-boy is my Boss Voodoo.  You might remember seeing the wax.  I finally attached the gold teeth – at least 7 of the 8 teeth.  For those of you who don’t know anything about metals, I have a huge problem here.  I have a massive block of sterling silver and then tiny little slivers of gold and I need them to stick to each other.  The silver is going to be insanely slow to conduct heat and the gold is going to suck up as much heat as possible until it either melts and balls up or…with a little luck, fuses to the solder and the rest of the ring.  This took me 6 goddamn hours.  The result was epic success followed by epic failure and then more less-than-epic success.  I got the 7 teeth in, but he 8th tooth is a bastard.  He just wont cooperate.  The solder I’m using will NOT run and the tooth is just on the brink of completely liquifying.  This wouldn’t have been a problem if the ring were smaller, but I’ve created the perfect storm on this one.

After a while, I finally gave up and contacted my pals over at Atlanta Diamond Design.  Why? Easy: they have a laser-solder.  That’s right.  Fuck you, 8th tooth, I’m using LASERS on your ass.  Chuck, the laser master over there, is going to finish that 8th tooth for me and then get it back to me next week.  Eat one.

 

Black Death

Pretty much speaks for itself.

I’ve been doing more custom finishes recently.  This wont stay black, obviously.  Over time, it will wear until its a hi-polish finish.

Are you game?

This one is cool.  The graduating class of 2011 from the Atlanta campus of the Savannah College of Art and Design’s ITGM department wants a class ring.

We’ve all seen college rings before.  They’re fairly distinct in an old-school kind of way.  They work for some people but I’ve always thought they look like you’re wearing a gold easter basket on your finger.   They also look the same.  All of them.  You can be  a doctor, a lawyer, an architect, an artist, or a general studies major (aka I have no idea what I want to do for a living) and your rings will look identical.

So Daniel, my liaison to these graduates, wants something specific to ITGM, which basically translates to Interactive Design and Game Development.  Yeah, that’s game design.  Before you get excited, its not as fun as it sounds.  Well, actually it is, but its a hell of a lot harder than you think.  These cats are hard-core intellectuals about game design.  That means everything from cards to dice to video games to social media apps.  They study the game, the math behind the game, and the complex systems of play that yadda yadda blagity blar so let’s make a ring.

What you’re looking at here ^^^ is basically the ring.  Yeah it sucks right now, but its going to be great when I’m done.  That blue thing is a D-20, which is game-speak for  20 sided dice.  That D-20 is solid wax, which means I can work it into a ring design for casting.  Pretty appropriate since a good chunk of their work deals with dice and for most of them, the D-20 is kind of the workhorse of game design and prototyping.  Any asshole knows what a pair of dice looks like and most of them have them laying around somewhere.

see?

But only hard-core gamers and designers know what a D-20 is.  For that reason, it will serve as kind of the gemstone of the ring.  The shank is going to be carved from that block of green wax.  A skull – also appropriate for intellectuals (if you don’t understand why, visit my website at www.mtmaloney.com and read through.)

So stay tuned for updates on this.  This one is going to take  some time, but it’ll be worth it.   I’m a big-time arcade rat, so I’m also going to find a way to incorporate something Donkey Kong, Digdug, or Pacman into this.

Land of the Gods is finished

Mike’s Japanese LVD is finished.

Obviously this little gem turned out great.  The green jade looks dark and mossy in the eyes.  In many ways, this is like the sugar treatment, but taken in a different direction.

Great thing about the jade is that it brightens up in the sun.  Indoors, it almost looks like black onyx.  I’m going to put a few more touches on the finish and then ship this baby out this week.  Mike, shoot me your address if you haven’t already done so.

Nathan Morgan’s Blue’s Power and a few out of the fire.

Nathan Morgan’s ring is finally finished.  Blues Power, jack.

I made the teeth a little crooked just to give it some gas.  Going to ship this sucker this week.  NMT, let me know when you’re playing in town again.  Maybe I’ll swing it by in person.

I’m also ready to finish up Mike’s Japanese ring as well as my new Boss Voodoo with the gold teeth.  The casts came out great.

To avoid keeping all kinds of precious metal at home, I do all my metal work at a shop right outside of the city.  I’ve done the odd gold tooth now and again, but his will be my first time doing an entire grill full of gold teeth.  I’ll try to post photos of the entire process so you cyber-space f’ers can laugh your asses off if I screw it up.

Japanese ring is next, though.  It’s going into the tumbler this afternoon and then I’m setting the gemstones.  Pics soon.

Ian’s Eyes and Shawn’s Big Voodoo

More progress on Ian’s wax.

Ian, let me know what you think of the eye placement.   I can go small and beady like the image or I can make them larger and more skull-like.   Once we get those settled I’ll know how big I can make the ears.

Meanwhile, Shawn – an artist for Marvel and Oni – is getting two pieces made.  I can’t show one of them, because its kind of a surprise gift for a friend of his.  The other piece is a Big Voodoo with three concentric circles on the forehead.

This piece just needs more.  Maybe Shawn’s a minimalist, but I’m wondering if the rings should be dimensional instead of simply carved into the forehead.  I could take a cylinder of was like this:

…and cut it like a loaf of cookie dough to get a nice bullseye shape to set like a gemstone in the forehead of the skull.  I suppose it depends on how sleek Shawn wants this bad boy to be.  Shawn, let me know what you think.  Also, what kind of attitude should this skull have?

Now I obviously can’t shoot the surprise gift he’s commissioned,  but I can tell you its going to get made from this pendant wax that I never finished.  I started making this for a client who changed his mind halfway through and went in a different direction with a ring.

It would have been fun to finish, but it’s almost the exact width and shape for what I’m going to do next.  I’ll post images of the finished piece once I hear from Shawn that he’s given it to the lucky sonofabitch.  Shawn, I also forgot to ask you if you wanted any gemstones involved.

Finally going to be getting away from just a bunch of pictures of waxes and start posting some METAL next week.  I’m expecting to finish Mike’s Japanese ring, the massive Boss Voodoo as well as that Blues Power Ring for the Nathan Morgan Trio.  Stay tuned.

 

 

Cow Clicker waxing or waxing Cow Clicker

I’ve got a good base constructed for Ian’s Cow Clicker ring.  It doesn’t look like much yet, but getting the basic frame finished like this is a big step.  The entire structure of a ring rests on this thing being solid.  The rest is just shape and detail work.

I’m leaving the shank nice and thick so I can carve “CLICK” on the back.

Cow Clicker

Here….

You see that?  Yeah?  I’m going to make that into a skull.

 

This ring is for Ian, who’s  a game designer and all around brilliant dude with a great palate for cocktails and parts of animals you can’t buy in a Kroger.   He’s got this game called “Cow Clicker” and he’s let me know in no uncertain terms that its skull-ring time.  Ian’s actually in Atlanta, so we were able to have a face-to-face consultation over a few sazeracs.

This is a tough one because first I have to translate the 3/4 view into a front-facing ring.  Then we have to make sure the thing still looks like a cow.  Next, we have to make it a skull without loosing the cowness.    I’ve started the wax.  Pics to follow in the coming weeks.