Garciraptor

In 2023 my friend Steph sent me a Garfield Pez Dispenser.

Steph is an online friend who has BEEN THERE for some madness: scammers, TarField, a rewatch of Pretty in Pink and more.

I like her enough that I was willing to hunt down THESE Gachapon figures and send the whole set to her from Japan.

*Yeah, those are skunks farting other animals.*

Someday we’ll meet in person.

Now it was March 2024 and I decided it was time to do something with Garfield.

Inspiration struck at a Salvation Army Thrift Shop.

Now, I’m not a huge fan of the Salvation Army, they are bigots…but I’ll always check out a thrift shop. This one just opened up near an art store I was buying Pan Pastels at so I looked.

It had a few things of note:

A Precious Memories doll, a baggy of two dinosaurs, and contempt for customers and children.

Last things first: The Contempt

I’m shortish, 5’4” /162cm. I’m still taller than the average child. Most of the loose dolls and kids toys were located above clothing racks I had to tip-toe to see things.

Because the store is new someone was helping the employee set it all up. The advisor was explaining how things needed to be better displayed and the worker was all “I hate rearranging displays. Customers always move things around”

I stifled a laugh when the advisor was all “Well, that’s the job. That’s a huge part of the job, displaying and putting things back”

It made total sense, all the toys, EXCEPT those that had been grouped together in sealed plastic bags, were displayed at a “fuck kids fucking up my shit” height.

What came home with me:

The Precious Moments doll got a make-over.

Then it was time to use the dinosaurs.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime .

I could rely on individual Pez Dispensers for my heads, one dispenser per project, or I could finally learn to make silicone molds and have unlimited heads per dispenser.

I removed the Pez dispenser head and started filling the cavity with tin foil

I then smoothed over the opening with Apoxie Sculpt and let it dry. This allows me to make both a mold of the full head and a partial mold of just the face.

Box full of MoldStar30 and one beheaded dinosaur

What'S In The Box! GIFfrom Seven GIFs

I have since made videos of this process and will be creating videos of how I make these hybrids

Smooth-Cast 300 head. We have unlimited Garfield Heads Yo!

It was time to join the head to our dino-body.

At this point I realized that I’d be better off with a partial cast of his head, as I had to slice a section off the back of his skull to join him to his new body.

Spoiler Alert: The next Garfield Project will involve a partial mold.

Once more my trusty friend Apoxie Sculpt was the medium of choice.

Because the Garciraptor has a lot of dino-skin texture I didn’t have to smooth the Apoxie Sculpt-to-Plastic transition as much as I would for a Barbie Dream Horse.

Then I started priming and painting it.