Remembering Camden Toy

Last week, I learned that a friend of mine in Los Angeles has been secretly battling cancer since 2020. While I completely support anyone's decision with what they share and do not share, especially about health matters, this came as a shock. He was no longer able to comminicate, so the annocument was made on his behalf and to let people know that he was near the end. A few days ago, he passed and is no longer in pain. 

I met Camden Toy while living and working in special makeup effects. The first monsters I design for Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the Gnarl demon for season 7. The actor to play the roll was Camden, and he soon became a frequnt visitor to the shop. He was kind, gernous, feriendly, funny, and an all around amazing human. This, this is all just so horribly sad. He was truly a good person. I had the pelasure to design several of the monsters he portrayed. Near the end of my time in LA, I was lucky enough to apply his makeup for a movie, while in my own makeup for the same movie, and then we got to run around and play zombies in the movie together. I have some really nice memories of Camden, but for now, I need to hold them close.

The Gnarl demon - Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Makeup design by me/portrayed by Camden Toy

The Prince of Lies - Angel

Makeup design by me/portrayed by Camden Toy

The Bloated Choppers zombie (me) and unnamed zombie (Camden)

Makeup design for both by me/Camden's makeup application and paint work by me

That is all for today. See you back here tomorrow. Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability, head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com

Jaynestown Statue, there and back again - Firefly

Funny how things work out.

On Monday, I shared with you some images of the Jayne Cobb statue that I was in charge of constructing for the show, Firefly. Not only did that post BLOW UP on reddit (thanks for the traffic everybody!), but I was contacted by Mike Schotte, who it turns out, owns the remains of the Jayne Cobb statue!

Mike acquired the head from Adam Baldwin who played Jayne Cobb awhile back and ever since he has been looking high and low for information and details on the origins of the statue. He has talked to a lot of people over the years but somehow we never crossed paths till now... and I had all the information he was looking for. Yays, INTERNETS!

Mike was nice enough to share with me some more current images of the Jayne Cobb statue. Sadly, my hands are not in his collection. I had completely forgotten all about it, but thanks to these images I am reminded about the 'hero' statue head bust that we made as a gift to Adam Baldwin. You can see the details in the original statue that were lost when the statue was covered in mud on set.

Mike has a great twitter account dedicated to the head, @Jayne_Statue.

Jayne Cobb statue... now with 94% less body.

I wonder if I signed it if it would be worth more or less?

Probably... less........

Jayne Cobb statue bust made as a gift by us for Adam Baldwin.

The happy family now live with Mike Schotte.

We did not make the sign, pretty sure props took care of that.

...if my memory serves me.

All images courtesy Mike Schotte

That is all for another exciting week on the blog, see you back here on Monday! Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com

Taking a break: Jaynestown Statue - Firefly

Still taking a little break on the blog since I am a little overwhelmed elsewhere. In my absence, here is some stuff I have never shared from my days in the Makeup FX industry! Today... today I have something SHINY for you...

You remember that one time that I mentioned I worked on Firefly? Well here are some images to back that up! One of the biggest things that I worked on for the series was the statue of Jayne. I was "in charge" of putting this together, but I had a couple of great guys working with me on this and we all worked really hard on fabricating it. The head was from a life cast of the actor that was then modified by one of the sculptors... and the hands you ask? Why those lovely meat hooks on the statue or my hands. We needed some fists for the statue and mine were the right size.

For the record, I thought I had WAY more images of my work on FF, in addition to some process steps (like me when I was getting my hands cast)... and for the life of me I can not find them. I will have to look through my non-digital photo archives to see what I can find. If I find anything else I will be sure to share. Enough talk, here is a statue I worked on back in 2002...

Since the statue was mostly a bunch of pieces cobbled together and then coated in resin is was not a pretty site when completed. A coat of paint was needed to tie it all together and make it presentable for review by production. If you look at the base... that is was the whole thing kinda looked like.

We started with a generic body form that was the appropriate size and then started adding the additional parts... feet, hands, head, etc.

Once it was altogether we dressed the entire thing with clothes provided by wardrobe.

The statue is held up by metal rods in the legs that run trough the shoes and into the base. This caused ALL SORTS of problems on the day of filming when the statue had to be broken off and knocked down... OOPS! There were lots of outtakes of failed attempts. Eventually the metal was cut and the thing went right over. I *THINK* some of the those failed attempts were edited together with the successful break in the episode.

While mostly made out of resin and two part rigid foam it was a bit of a pain to move around.

While the plan all along was to make it look like the statue was made of foam it was decided in house to give it a nice paint job before going off to set...

SO...  one of the temp painters spent a bunch of time painting the Jayne statue up all nice and pretty with detail and texture...

So that is could go to set and be covered with mud by props and set teams. Now you know what the statue really looked like!

For this episode I also designed the burn makeup for the Stitch Hessian character. I went and looked at the design... it was SO bad that I am not ready to share it yet. ALSO... again, I can not find all the images I thought I had including some pics of the final makeup on the actor and some process images. Not sure where they are, but if I ever find them I will be sure to share them here on the blog.

That is all for another exciting Monday on the blog, see you back here on Wednesday! Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com