Still MORE silliness

We recieved word today that the first ride, the Yardarm Twist, is now finished and ready for shipping from Italy. It's going to be a real beauty and I can hardly wait to take it for a test ride. Around the top of the ride are sixteen decorative panels that feature a different Gruffle character in each space. We did up the artwork here in the studio and sent it off to th ride manufacturer for mounting on the sufaces as digital prints. They look great!

Here's a couple of them to tease...

The first is of Marvin - the mechanic, designed by Peter. I love this guy!

The second is Bucky, a pirate Gruffle version of his distant cousin Bucky who lives up at Cultus Lake Adventure Park by the bumper boat pool.

Bucky is also featured on one of the holes of the mini golf as a tiki carving. The back of the piece is kinda neat as well and should be fun for the golfers to interact with as they play their rounds of golf. We finished painting that piece today...

There's two more, very cool gruffle tikis to come. Stay tuned...

-grampa dan

Small sculptures are fun too!

The small pieces we do in our shop are often as much fun as the larger features. Today we worked on a number of smaller projects and made good progress. The treasure Quest sign recieved two coats of paint. While the paint dried Phill sculpted a parrot on the Treasure Quest sign. He allowed me to art direct him just enough to blend his unique style with ours. The parrot (named Folly) looks GREAT! The sign is now ready for final paint.

Since the weather was so great we did our sculpted concrete work out in the driveway. The ship trim got done plus two more tiki's for the kids to climb on. These were a great deal of fun to sculpt.

There's still two more tiki's to look forward to. Stay tuned...

-grampa dan

Back to work!

As soon as the crew arrived this morning it was time to turn the classroom into a working studio once more. Table and chairs were put away, paint was put back on the shelf and tools were returned to the cabinet. The shop was swept out from wall to wall and then a bunch of features were pushed back in for paint.

The first piece to be finished was the Gruffle Tiki DUG which we sculpted as a demonstration piece at the first workshop. It's hard to believe this tiki is sculpted from concrete.

Out in the parking lot the ship poop deck was lifted into place for the start of the sculpted concrete work. The bottom portion of the mast tops were also put in place. These pieces will get a little concrete to match up to the feature below and then be lifted off for finishing. Phil kindly posed for me to put some scale into the feature. This ship is a good size! Phil looks ready to set sail for Trinidad.

It was a great first day back at work. 

-grampa dan