Skull Kid and Tael

I am very pleased to finally present the Skull Kid to you guys. This is my first professionally processed figurine, so I am very excited and proud of myself. I put countless hours into this one, that's for sure. There was a very wide learning curve to overcome, so I got a lot of my growing pains out of the way thanks to this guy. My future figurines definitely will thank him. 

Skull Kid is the mischeivous imp from the Legend of Zelda series of games who is possessed by the malevolent Majora's Mask. This is my favorite game in the series, and one of my favorite games of all time. He is also my favorite character of all time. This character is actually what inspired me to start sculpting. One day I came across Goran Sadojevich's Skull Kid for First 4 Figures on the internet and I was awe-stricken. I, of course was like "MUST HAVE!" Much to my dismay, however, I also saw his price tag on ebay... over $800! "Wow" I thought, "I wish I could just make my own..." This thought then started to float around in my brain until I started researching, and then playing around with polymer clay. About a year after I started sculpting, I decided I might be ready to pay homage to my favorite character who inspired my sculpting career. I started him...but a figure of this caliber was still beyond my level so he sat on my shelf until early this year when my studio was finally set-up to finish the process. 

Months worth of blood, sweat and tears were well worth it as he is finally done, and sitting proudly on my display case (and FINALLY off my desk!). He actually would've been finished a month ago, but I ran into some serious problems with the ring details that form his belt and hat-belt thing. Apparently molds really hate rings because they lock into place, and with so many rings, it became a really ugly chore to deal with. It's actually because of the rings, that my Skull Kid, unfortunately, will not be reproduce-able. Maybe sometime in the future when I figure out a better way to deal with the rings, he could be. I would have to re-sculpt the torso and hat though. Also just his mask took me a whole day to paint, so I don't want to do that again >_> The whole thing is hand-painted, and painting isn't really my thing. One of my goals for the year is to improve my painting process with the use of airbrush, so that may be something that would ease his re-production in the future. 

As far as his design, he doesn't differ much from the same figure that inspired me. I thought about it for a while, and decided this is really his quintessential pose; any other for a Skull Kid statue would've done him a disservice I think. This way I also had a great constant point of reference. The only real differences are the addition of his fairy sidekick Tael, and the little chalk drawing on the side of the stump. This little drawing represents his innocence; he drew it before he was possessed and depicts him with his two fairy friends.

He stands between 8 and 9 inches tall I believe, I haven't measured him yet. 
Materials used: super sculpey, armature wire, homemade scultping wax, RTV silicone rubber, polyurethane casting resin, cel-vinyl paint

I can't wait to see what you guys think; I welcome any critiques and/or questions. 

There will be much more to come this year