Part Five of my Seven Part interview with ventriloquist figure builder Kenny Croes.
To learn more about Kenny’s work, visit: http://www.kennycroes.com/
Video Transcript:
also another guy of course I love Mike
Palma where he and I are good friends
and Larry fought to see I hope I’m
saying Larry’s name right he’s just he’s
just an amazing figure maker and I me I
all these guys Conrad Hartz all these
guys I I a strict attention to what they
do and and and marvel at it so this is a
lot of good people out there and and
it’s it’s fun to communicate with him
too um did you I you said when you
Working with Mike Brose
started you worked with Mike Brose and
his I guess his book for mechanics and
also the Fred project yeah yeah did you
did you work under anybody else or study
anybody else’s mechanics only if someone
showed up like on ebay and somebody took
a picture of the inside of the head you
know then I might look at it and try to
figure out what was going on in there
you know but sometimes it’s hard when
it’s so stuffed full of mechanics but
but mostly it was you know might you
know Mike and Al Stevens I mean I really
i use a lot of their methods now I mean
I just because of the 2t heads and some
of the you know I’ve kind of come up
with things on my own too but but really
they are there the Bible for me and so
text that’s really got me going well
just saw the video of your self
Kennys self centering eyes
centering eyes with the springs and I
thought that was pretty ingenious now I
don’t build so but I had never seen that
before was that yours or was that a i
think i read about that and Mike’s book
covers you know those kind of eyes i
think he mentioned springs and i thought
i would give that a try and i like i
like of all the methods that I’ve read
about
I thought that one might work the best
for me and so that’s that’s pretty much
the way I do it now buddy have always
done it this spring so well I thought I
Kennys printed eyes
was pretty ingenious I like the way you
did the eyes and because you had said
you had printed them out the irises yeah
I did that for a long time in fact I’ve
got one an old one here that I that I
bought back from a customer and and if
they had the printed eyes but I ice
about I don’t know maybe three years ago
or so I started buying the eyes from
from both micros for the for the one and
a half inch eyes and and then also from
the one and a quarter inch eyes have
died from from from Braylu and you
know with the plastic iris Susan they
just look so much nicer and so much
better than the printed ones but
although I was surprised I hadn’t seen
one in a long time well what’s better I
thought they looked and then I
remembered but still I like to
classifies better and actually the
printed ice like that idea came from
Mike as well he covered that in his book
and and I thought that was a pretty
ingenious way to do it so I tried it the
long time how many hours does it take
Kennys figs
you to make a figs and I’ll never
counted it i get asked that all the time
you think I I’d sit down a log my time
but but I never have if I really if I
really work hard at it you know I can do
maybe 45 a month really yeah if but I
generally don’t you know i don’t i’m
lazy enough or I don’t do that many
unless I get a lot of orders and I’m
pressed you know to do it and then I get
my butt in gear but but you know I can
do one in a week a lot of what holds you
up is you guys stuff stuff has to dry
you know the magic sculpt the pain I
mean there’s a lot of stuff it has to
dry so even if you were to do something
every single day
just waiting for things to dry and
actually they say that acrylic paint
really doesn’t drive for seven days even
though it’s dry to the touch with in a
little half an hour or an hour and
really is pretty pretty reasonable after
a day you know they say it doesn’t
really dry completely for you know a
week so
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