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Behind the Mask with Josh Chruch aka DarkArtist



Dark Artist's Custom Figure HorrorBid Store:
href="http://www.horrorbid.com/shop.php?user_id=100343

What can I say about Josh Church that hasn't already been said. His custom figure work may be the very best in the industry right now. The attention to detail on all of his figures is as accurate as posble down to the last stitch of clothing or the last drop of blood on one of his custom knives. I have spoken with a lot of people recently about various horror collectibles they have purchased off of HorrorBid and Josh's name just keeps popping up. Everyone just admires his minute detail work. If you haven't owned one of his figures you need to do yourself a favor and order one. He often runs specials and you can always find him on HorrorBid with a different assortment of figures and custom miniature masks at any given time. Now lets meet the man behind the masks.....Josh, tell us a little bit about yourself "Or a lot" lol, and what got you started in the hobby of figurine making?

Well, I’m 28 and married. I’m also an ex Navy Iraq war veteran who is attending college, thanks to Uncle Sam. My time in the military was really what got me going artistically. I was always artistic as a kid, but never could really find out what I wanted to focus that energy on. While I was stationed in Japan I went to a lot of hobby shops over there. I was instantly amazed at the level of detail they created with their model kits and dioramas. I was primarily into buying figures at that time, but to kill time in between work days I started building Gundam models. It was a curioty that faded once I got to know more people and started binge drinking. And shortly after, the war began and we were out at sea a lot of the time. My squadron moved to California after a few years and I separated shortly after. Once I was home I started delving into art once more. At first it was just drawing and writing, as my dreams at that time were to be in either the comic book industry or the film industry. I was in contact with several schools, but they were all way too high in cost for my GI Bill to suffice. So I just got a job and put off college for a while. What changed it was a search I did on Evilbay one day, looking for a Jason mask for Halloween. I came across the deshow Jason VII figure and bought it immediately. Once I got it in the mail I knew I had to have more. So I started buying up all of the Jason figures I could find, and eventually started ordering from deshow directly. Once I had a nice little collection I found a forum to discuss the hobby with, called deshow Freaks. At that te they had several artists who were repainting their figures to make them look better, so I started asking questions… and within a month or so I was taking chances on my own figures. My first repaint was deshow’s Evil Ash… from there, things only got better and better.

How old were you when you got started in this hobby?

I was 24 when I started, and it was a very humble beginning. At first, my only motivation was to have better looking figures. It then moved into wanting figures with more realistic weathering… and then eventually I was being paid and only started actually MAKING my own figures this past year. My first full custom was Myers, which I have done 2 verons of so far before coming to my current H1 prototype. So it’s only been very recent actually.

Josh, I have to be honest. By the looks of your figures, anyone would swear you've been doing this for many years! How many years have you been making these "Very Awesome" figures?

Thanks! I really feel lucky to be at the point I am now. This is a strange hobby to get into, and there is no manual for what we do. So I really owe my fast success to my fellow artists who shared their skills with me and helped me hone my craft. My friend Les Walker was an immense help, he has been doing this work for decades and has his own te as well (
href="http://figuremasterles.tripod.com/index.html">http://figuremasterles.tripod.com/index.html). He was very gracious and gave me the inspiration and friendship I needed to move forward with my art. To come as far as I have in only 4 years is pretty astounding. I only hope I can keep getting better during my next 4 years!

Just by looking around at the figures you offer just as well as the figures you've made in commison for other people, clearly you do more than just the Horror Genre. What other branch of topic would you say you share a love for just as much or pretty close in comparison to?

Good question! Horror is definitely my genre of choice, and a good outlet for my darker emotions and urges. But I am also a HUGE sci-fi fan, whether it be Star Wars, Star Trek, Alien, or Predator… I really love it all. Most of my original repaint work was Star Wars repaints, primarily Anakin and Obi Wan from Episode III. Another famous one I did was Corporal Hicks from Aliens. So I have had my hand in that genre quite a bit.

By looking at your work it looks like you've been doing this forever all over the amount of detail and quality as I had said earlier. It makes a person wonder about how long it takes to produce such an accurate and awesome figure. If you have all the parts necessary to build a figure, about how long would you say it takes from the beginning to the showcase piece?

It depends on the figure. For the figures that require a lot of weathering and minute detail, it can take a while. If I had nothing else going on, for the high weathering figures.. I could do one in a week, maybe 3 days if I was really pushing. For the mpler figures like Rorschach, I could make it in one day. What seems to elongate the process for me is my own self doubt. I have actually finished painting something only to repaint it again after looking at it extenvely. I can be my own worst enemy sometimes, I just want people to get every cent’s worth of the money they paid for the figure. I don’t want to let anyone down with a missed detail or sloppy work.

nce HorrorBid focuses on Just the Horror genre, this Interview gives you, just as well as the rest of us here, a chance to know a little more about you. Is there anything else bedes Figures and Horror, that you share a strong pason for?

I sometimes think I have too many pasons… I’m a huge fan of film, my friends and I used to make movies every weekend. Whether they were stop motion lego movies, or horror films… we did it all. The production values were horrible and the acting atrocious, but we just loved it so much we didn’t care. It still is a dream of mine, something I don’t think I will ever let go of, even though I will never get a chance to work on a movie. I also love comic books, and novels… so I read constantly. I’ve often found myself on the toilet with numb legs because I got too into reading a story and lost track of time. I’m a huge history buff too, especially Medieval European history… so I have many books on swordplay, the year 1066, and so on.

It almost seems as though there is no job for you that you can't handle when it comes down to getting all the things you need to produce a certain figure. This makes me wonder as I am sure others have wondered the same. Has there ever been that 1 time where you just lost your temper and gave up on a project because of any reason rather is was parts that just weren't there or???

OH YEAH… I’ve given up on many many projects just because they were too challenging. At one point I was going to make my own custom Batman figure, but I folded under the pressure… Another time I was going to paint all of the body tattoos on my Darth Maul figure but couldn’t hammer out the logistics and gave up. Thankfully, I’ve made some very fearless and skillful friends this past year… so I don’t find myself in those tuations often anymore. I just send a message to a buddy if I think I can’t do something, because their limitations are far different from my own. Teamwork can solve almost anything.

In the previous Interview that Patrick was so nice to do with you, you mentioned a little about the making of your figures. Could you tell us the full process of how it's made from the very beginning all the way to the very end? Feel free to make this a long write up as I myself find this to be very interesting lol...

No problem! The first part of any figure making process is the planning stage. The idea forms in your brain and you start breaking it down to see if it’s posble and what you would need. The first thing I think of is the sculpt. In the case of the Remake Jason or something like that, no existing sculpt will do. So you know one will have to be sculpted. There are sculptors that could be contacted, but at a high rate… So I just usually modify an existing sculpt ung Super Sculpey or Magic Sculpt. Once I have the head fully sculpted and up to my specs… I start thinking about what body to use, and what hands. This is always tricky. Hot Toys has a great figure body, but cost is high and there are not many options for hands. deshow has a nice tall body, but it is very thin, stiff and they don’t have many gloved hands available if needed. Dragon bodies are cheap, have many hands to choose from, are articulated well but they are kinda short. For Jason I went with deshow because of the height and the fact that I only needed human hands. Next step is the clothing. From the promo pics I knew he wore a ripped up zippered blue jacket that was long and had quilted arms. I also knew he wore a filthy white shirt and dark grey pants. So I went online and ordered from several different figure parts stores such as Monkey Depot. I got the shirt and the pants as well as the boots there. The jacket was another problem. No way I could find anything remotely close to what Jason wears in the film so I had to create it. I used a long trench coat, with a military coat over that… glued them together and cut the sleeves off of the military coat. I used a quilted fabric on the arms, glued that down, glued down some fabric on the shoulders and back and ripped it up…weathered the entire coat and voila… I had my jacket. The pants and coat were sanded heavily with a sanding block, and painted with my weathering solution (highly watered down brownish black paint). I also did the same to the shirt. On the body I used a sweater under his clothing, stuffed with various materials to bulk Jason up. He also is wearing two pairs of pants to give him thicker legs. Finally I construct the machete holster out of leather and attach it to his belt and Jason is almost done. I painted the head, and cast a mask from my mold, painted it and strapped it with leather straps. I glued hair to the head, ung hair from an old cheap Myers mask I had in the closet (I thought that would be fitting ). Finally I gave him a machete and Jason was done. That is usually how I go about making a figure, tackle each small challenge as it comes and refine the process for production.

I feel people appreciate collectibles a lot more when you can see how well the qualities of it really are. Obviously your figures have very well shown all of us here that there's no need to doubt your work as they speak for themselves. I was just wondering, Has there ever been a costumer that ordered an extenve amount of figures from you rather it be all at once or over a period of time?

I have a lot of repeat customers. Many of them have waited for loooong periods of time for their figures, but they keep coming back for more. At the beginning of my career doing this, I took a lot of small orders.. And now that I am moving over to full figures and attending college… my time is scarce. So I started to get a bit behind. Only now am I finally catching up, getting done with all of the backlog and attempting to devote my time fully to figures only. And with my Wife and I trying to have a kid, my time will be even more scarce. So I know I have to focus on figures only. The people who suffered with me during that overbooked period, I can’t thank them more. They really helped keep me afloat and doing this work. I’m just glad people pay me at all for this stuff. There are guys out there that have almost every figure I have done, which is pretty impresve. My good friend Chase has tons of my work, Steve also has a bunch of heads I have painted… Joseph, Marc, the list goes on and on. Even now I have guys who have 5 figures coming all at once. So it’s pretty cool to know that my work will take up such a large portion of someone’s collection. It’s funny to have a legacy at my age… I just hope I can keep doing this for decades to come.

From the time you started selling your figures up until now, looking at your profits can you ever see the day when you will be doing figures as a full time line of work?

It’s really starting to get there. At one point I was repainting heads for $15 a pop. Then I moved up to $25 and now to $35. But that money wasn’t enough to live off of, hell.. It was hardly enough to ship the stuff out to everyone. But with full figures it is much eaer for me. Though I can’t see myself raing my prices to the amounts my colleagues sell their work for, I think that the sheer quantity of my figures available have raised the chances of me being able to do this full time indefinitely. All I can do is keep making them, and if people keep buying them… it very well could end up that way. Who knows? One day I could be a legitimate company or get a job with deshow or some other figure maker. All I can do is hope….

Thanks for taking the time to t down with us Josh!

Here are just a few pics of Josh's past and present work....

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k203/DarkArtist81/Customs/DSCN3651.jpg" class="photoborder" />



























Horror Domain - Cursed Evil Overlord Monday 3/30/2009 at 10:06 PM | 41340
great read!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Johnny Bisco Tuesday 3/31/2009 at 01:48 AM | 41352
great intie! josh man you are a talented dude! congrats on that and thanks for serving the country bro thats awesome! -Evan
ny ghoul Tuesday 3/31/2009 at 02:39 AM | 41362
Yeah man you are talented...Keep up the good work!!!!
Klempo Wednesday 4/01/2009 at 10:51 PM | 41552
damn your uber talented, i am saving for a remake figure from you. keep up the kcik ass work josh.

pamelavoorheesRIP Friday 4/03/2009 at 08:18 PM | 41736
Thanks guys!

I had fun with this interview.. You guys rock, and big thanks to Justin and Joel as well for giving me the opportunity for the interview.
DarkArtist81 Friday 4/03/2009 at 09:26 PM | 41744
great read from a talented artist. cool read.
oldskool Friday 4/03/2009 at 09:27 PM | 41745