KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 18 — What started out as a hobby has turned into a business of customising toys, props, and sculptures.
Having been in the prop-making business since 2008, the SS Toys and Prop Maker by Wizart has come up with many of pop culture’s props and sculptures.
Among the latest of their creations is a life-sized baby dinosaur puppet
According to one of their sculpture artists, Saiful Zalini Baharuddin, they first started sculpting as a hobby as the whole team were fans of science fiction, pop culture movies and toys.
This inspired them to create their own props for their personal collection.
Saiful added that after sharing their work on social media, they received numerous requests internationally, which led them into the business.
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It takes weeks to come up with one product as time is taken for research, sourcing for material and putting it all together.
In the case of the baby dinosaur, they had received an order from a client who wanted a realistic baby velociraptor puppet.
The Jurassic puppet was made from scratch using local materials that are easy to obtain locally such as latex for the skin texture and cables for the mechanics.
Initially, the client requested the puppet to have moving eyes but as Saiful and his team wanted a more realistic approach, they added a few mechanics to the puppet which allowed it to move its head along with its mouth.
Saiful also said that although building the body did not pose any problem to them, the mechanical part of it was tedious as they needed to study how it worked besides researching about the baby velociraptor.
“The size of the puppet is about one-metre tall because we aimed to build it as close to a real baby Velociraptor.”
“We used many sources for our references. We took some from the internet, some from documentaries on dinosaurs and also movies such as Jurassic Park.”
“Because most of our clients would tend to refer to Jurassic Park when it comes to dinosaurs’ props,” Saiful told Malay Mail, adding that they had to go through a lot of trial and error in building the mechanical parts.
Saiful also said the reason why they chose latex for their main material was because it was the closest thing that resembled a dinosaur’s skin texture.
The puppet was handpainted by Saiful and his team using airbrush to make it more detailed and appealing.
The sculptures and props normally take not more than three to five working weeks to build and the starting price for their custom mechanical puppet is from RM4,500.
SS Toys and Prop Maker by Wizart has three members including Saiful along with another sculpture artist, Siti Aminah Yahya and their master sculpture, Mr.J.
Besides doing dinosaur props, they are also known for their Alien and Predator movies sculptures and props.
They are currently working on a special latex mask project where designs include characters from famous anime, Attack On Titan’s Eren Jaeger, Marvel’s Venom, Batman’s villain, Two-Face and Aliens.
Although they’ve been getting a lot of requests from overseas but due to the movement control order, they recently opened up orders for the local market.
“We are considered as a fan-art category.”
“We were established back in 2008 and 95 per cent of our customers are from overseas such as the United States, Europe, Canada and Russia.”
“We’ve received a lot of orders from overseas who requested props from the movie Alien and also Predator because we’re made something that can’t be found in other markets,” Saiful said.
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When asked about their favourite artwork, Saiful said that among them was a solid-resin sculpture of the former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad on his Arabian horse.
It was made by their master sculpture out of admiration for the former prime minister and they also gave a gold-painted edition of the sculpture to Dr Mahathir.
