After seeing the initial steps Monster5 took in sculpting King Katch, the Muttpop team asked Fabien (the character designer of King Katch) to illustrate his critiques of the sculpt. When working with a sculptor, it is super helpful to use illustration over the original sculpt photos to convey any potential problems. What can be described in a few lines of drawing would take an entire paragraph of words.

Below you will find a few of Fabien M and Muttpop's concerns. The placement of King Katch's right fist appears to be assymetrical to the rest of the sculpt. His right pectoral muscle appears to be out of line when compared to the left. There is too much detail/relief in the tricep muscle and too much of a separation between the tricep and bicep. Fists should be reduced in size. The torso needs to be widened. The legs and feet need to be made bigger.

Occasionally, the problems are more minor than what can be seen in the photo. When looking at a photo, you lose a sense of scale... so a minor problem on a small figure looks like a major problem in the photo. We had more of a problem of that with the mini figures we have produced.

Here are some more pictures of Monster5's King Katch sculpt. These pictures give a good idea of how the figure will look with his fists in place. Face details have not been sculpted at this stage of development. Once the turnaround was translated to 3 dimensions a couple of issues came up that Fabien had to address. I'm planning to share some of Fabien's notes so you can see the back and forth that occurs between us and the sculptor sometime tomorrow. Fortunately, when you work with a talented sculptor like Monster5, most of the sculpt is accurate. There are just some slight tweaks and corrections to the original turnaround design that needed to be made to make the King Katch figure just right!

I've been lagging on the King Katch sculpt updates. I'm going to have to change that.

To get the ball rolling on the King Katch coverage, I think it's worthwhile to share the full turnaround that Fabien M. did.

This is what was given to master sculptor Monster5 as a blueprint to sculpt the King Katch figure. As you can see, Fabien's professional animation experience helped him develop an excellent sense of 3D form in a 2D illustration. The King Katch turnaround illustration has a strong consistency in proportion and form from angle to angle (which is really hard to do when drawing 2D illustrations without a 3D reference).

Here are some sketches of Orville Hendershot, a new villain in the Tequila comics by Gobi. I guess you can call this Gobi and Jerry's attempt at making a Redneck Transformer. Nope, we are not even going to try to make a transforming toy! :-)

I'm really loving this new Eminem video, "We Made You". The song is mediocre when compared to Eminem's best stuff. But the video showcases Pop Culture mockery at its best.

Spoofs include bits on Jessica Simpson's weight, Kim Kardashian's butt, Lindsay Lohan's lesbianism, Sarah Palin's milf-ery, and Bret Michael's 'Rock of Love'. It's like they took 20 of the best skits from SNL/Mad TV and whittled them down into a 4 minute video.

Musical production is standard Dr. Dre/Eminem fare. Eminem's flow has become so refined that's its a sonic chainsaw (vrrmm, vrrm, vrrrrrrmmm!). The ideas are all there lyrically, but I wish Eminem would get back to what made his earlier stuff worked. With the speed and preciseness Eminem is now rapping at, you lose the time and space to let any genuine emotion breath. This is the stylistic approach he's been refining since his 3rd album... but it takes away from the deep resonance of anger that you can feel on his first two albums.

Maybe, Eminem has nothing to be angry about? He's embraced by the Mainstream. But there's gotta be SOMETHING that'll work him up. Em's best when he's got something to prove. I was hoping that he'd start going off on the political culture that existed during 2000-2008. But I guess he's not a political dude.

Can somebody please get Eminem angry? Asher Roth maybe? I feel there's still more greatness in Eminem. But to get to it, he needs something to hate. He needs to be so pissed off that he HAS to unleash it in his music. You can FEEL that. I just haven't really felt much of that since the MARSHALL MATHERS LP.

At the end of the day, mediocre Eminem is better than most Hip-Hop. It's just tough to embrace when you know there's more in the guy. Imagine 2pac without his passion, intelligence, and insecurity. Imagine Biggie without his swagger. That's what we've been getting from Eminem... and it's bums me out a bit.

Tequila 2.0. In stores super, super soon!