Turtle (© Clayburn Moore)

Clayburn Moore: I would like to think so. There's a great amount of gratification that comes from the fan of a show looking at something and going, "Oh my God! That's it exactly!"

Teresa Patterson: After you've got the character and decided on a pose, how do you take it from your studio to becoming an actual finished product? I imagine that its different, depending on whether it is a bronze, a resin collectible, or an action figure.

Clayburn Moore: Bronze casting is separate, though it is kind of similar. There are two main processes between collectible statues and action figures. I didn't know how to do action figures when we started, so I just applied the same rules and processes of the statue business to action figures and said to the factory "Here, make it work. We're not going to give you a wax. We're going to give you a fully painted resin, and an unpainted resin." They had to solve the problem of how to take a resin piece and then build a steel mold, using that piece. And that's what they did. And they solved the problem in order to work with us. .

Of course it all begins with the sculpting process. When I sculpt, I don't use wax anymore. I don't use clay anymore. I use Super Sculpy®. Super Sculpy is just synthetic clay that you can buy anywhere. The advantage to it is that you can bake it, harden it, and add to it, so that you don't have to nick or scratch the rest of the piece to add on or correct something. If there's a part I've finished and I want to save it, I can bake it and I know I'm safe.

Then I go through the approval process. The sculpting phase can take anywhere from a week to several weeks. Once the piece is sculpted, we send pictures or a video of it to be approved. We don't typically send the piece itself anymore. In fact, I've fought that from the beginning. A lot of companies wanted us to do that. But to me that's so unsafe. And since I wasn't willing to sculpt in a hard wax, we had to do approval by photo or videotape. Fortunately, most people were agreeable to that.

The approval process might take four to six approval steps, to make sure the creators are happy with the piece. That way I don't waste time re-sculpting something. By the time the piece is finished, I bake it, making sure all parts are fully baked. Once the approval is done, and any changes are made, we take a silicon rubber mold off the piece. That is done here in Texas. Then we cast three pieces from the mold. One piece we have painted, and that is sent to the factory to use as a Master paint scheme. We will send that piece to the clients themselves, so that they can look the paint over and see if it's really true, because photography can vary. So they approve or they make some changes.

Then two unpainted production pieces and one fully painted piece are either hand-carried or sent over to the factory in China, depending on the schedule. They use the two production pieces to make the master molds from which true production will be done. From the original to the piece that's on retail shelves is two generations away. One generation is the casting we do in Texas, for the master prototype. The next generation occurs when those master prototypes are made into the production molds, and from the production molds, we cast the retail pieces.

Then we design the artwork for the boxes and we design the ads. We go through the approval process on the ads and boxes and any artwork as well as any press releases and things like that. After approval by the client, we send the film over to China and they manufacture the boxes for us. Throughout their production process, they send over pieces to us as well, for us to approve -- usually at the beginning and the end of the project. At sometime during any major project I go over to China -- either one or two times -- to check the progress to see how it's going. That way, if needed, I can check the quality of every single piece before its boxed and shipped. Then they ship the finished pieces over -- takes about three weeks --and we send it out to the distributors. By the time it arrives in the retail shops, it's about another two to three weeks.

Teresa Patterson: The process is the same for the collectibles and the action figures?

Witchblade

Clayburn Moore: The busts and the statues are the same process. I art direct on most things. Aaron Ethridge is the project manager. However, Aaron also does some art directing, but the final piece will always have my stamp on it. I will always look over any piece that we do that I don't sculpt, on any project that we do. I also look for comments and ideas from everyone in the company.

On action figures, the biggest difference is that they have to make a steel mold, and the steel mold takes about 60 days. But we do send over a paint master, and two unpainted masters for them to use. They only need one for the mold. That's the piece they cut in the joints and the articulation for the action figure. If something goes wrong, they have a back up. That's why we send two pieces for action figures. The steel mold is about a one-foot square block of steel, with the interior being copper plates. The copper plates are carved -- what's called "tooling" -- in order to match the figure. It's partly a casting process, and partly a retouching by hand process.

Once the mold is complete, rubber that's called PVC (Poly Vinyl Casting) is injected -- hot and liquid -- into the steel mold. The mold is popped open and hit with water. The raw piece is still attached to the framework of rubber, like an old model kit. The framework of unusable rubber is called vents, sprues and gates. They take the rubber out of the mold and trim off the excess and clean the edges. They then paint the pieces before assembling them into the action figure, though they usually partly assemble the pieces before painting them. It's all done on conveyor belts and things just like in the cartoons. They put the finished figures into blister packs, and then pack them into boxes.

Interestingly, in the factories in China all production begins at the bottom floor and the piece progresses up to the top floor. All packaging is done on the top floor of every factory I've ever seen over there. Then they just send it down chutes into the trucks. They use gravity, rather than manpower and heavy equipment, to just slide the boxes into the truck. It makes great sense once you think about it. It's surprising that we don't do it that way here.

Teresa Patterson: Where do you see yourself and your companies in the future? Where do you want to go?

Clayburn Moore: I never had it in mind to be a major corporation, or to become a Hasbro or something like that. That was never my goal. There is a danger of not being an artist any more, just a businessman. And I never want to quit sculpting. That's what I do. That's what I'm best at. And the one thing I do think you should do in life is to do what you're best at. If you can find a place in the world where you can do that, then you're lucky.

So, I never wanted to become huge, but we're starting to get to the point now that I can start to do some original pieces again. My goal has always been the same -- to do good work that makes me happy that makes other people happy. To create pieces that people want to own. It's a fairly simple goal in life, and I think that a lot of us have similar goals, don't we? To have a comfortable life. To make a bit of a difference while taking care of the people who are taking care of us -- to take care of our families and such.

I think those goals are consistent with most people's. Within my companies, my goal is to come around full circle by doing a combination of some licensed products -- with those people that I really want to work with -- while doing some original work as well.

I don't sculpt all of our work anymore. We work with several sculptors all over the world. I sculpt mostly commercial things now. But I have a couple of personal pieces in mind: possibly military history or fantasy based characters. I'm not going to be changing the world. I'm not trying to make a huge statement with my artwork. I don't know that that's necessary. It's certainly not necessary for me. I want to do those things that I like to look at -- those things that I think teach me about the human figure -- that make me better as a sculptor. I want to choose challenging subjects. That's the three to five year goal right now.

Clayburn Moore: I believe that if you can understand the human figure, there are certain things you can understand about life. People respond to the human figure, and you can learn a lot about people by how they respond, how they react to the figures.

Conan the Barbarian (Bronze. Based on the painting by Frank Frazetta)

Teresa Patterson: When people view your work, what do you want them to take away with them?

Clayburn Moore: I think I want my pieces to represent the spirit of what we can be. That's how I see the potential in people. Because I see a lot of art -- a lot of fine art -- that represents the way the world really is. And that's very depressing. I don't' think that art should be a photo mirror of life; I think art should represent the spirit of who we are. It can represent the negative, the demonic side of us if that's what the artist wants to do. But that's not me. I'm not saying they're wrong, but that's not what I would choose to do as art.

The fact is that we lead these brutish, sometimes sullen, difficult lives, punctuated by periods of positive beauty and pleasure. And if you can aspire to make those positive parts a larger part of the human condition, then that's what I try to do in my work -- to show what we are capable of. To show what we are when we are at our best. Art must be more than a mirror. It should be a mirror of the soul. Art should evoke emotion. It should evoke passion.

Teresa Patterson

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