False Omen Project by Eagon

If you cast your mind back to March earlier this year to the Designer Toy Summit in Memphis, you may recall seeing pictures of an over-sized Coarse Omen, like the one below being hugged by Playful Gorilla. Folks, including ourselves, wondered if this was a new release by Coarse but it turns out this was a fan-made project by Eagon. False Omen Project. *Update* It should be noted that Coarse gave permission for this project. Eagon spoke with Coarse at the Rotofugi Exhibition, and as long as he didn’t sell it, they were cool. They were even interested in purchasing False Omen themselves.

[quote cite=”Eagon” url=”https://www.instagram.com/eagon/”]I love Coarse’s work and I really like a lot of their pieces. I am a fan of one of their most popular figure, the Omen. I really liked how they had larger pieces for sale and sales past, but I decided I wanted an Omen Totem too late and could only find large resale prices. I thought maybe I could make one at the 14″ Totem size and then I figured if I could make one at 14″ I could make it bigger! [/quote]

So that’s what Eagon did. He went and made a FIVE FOOT Coarse Omen and he wanted to tell you his story of how he went about it…

False Omen Project

I went to school for Prototype and Design because I wanted to make prototypes for products as well as just about anything. I started working at Acme Design Inc. right after college. They/we make everything! Another trade I could throw into my skill bag was large exhibit pieces and this is how the idea of the 5′ Omen was born.

I started by ordering a cheaper Omen Blink off eBay. I did not want to paint any of my collection Omens, but I knew I had to paint it fully white. I did this and then scanned it into the computer with a desktop 3d Scanner

I then cleaned up and manipulated the file so it was symmetrical in a few programs including Magics 21.1 and Zbrush 4R6. I then had to decide how large I wanted to make it. I was looking at printing it large but thought that was a lot of material to go through and had to see how it would be structural too. I do a lot of large foam machining at work so I figured about a 3′ diameter was the best to work with because the CNC machine can turn out 48″ in rotational and scale it out, 36″ was about 5 feet overall. I cut the file apart so that you could machine everything from the vertical direction while It was spinning on a rotisserie style axis. I cut it out of 1lb foam.

I had to cut the bottom of the wings and bottoms of the tail feathers off and machine them separately.

I put the table of the mill on and machined the head/face and back of the head so I did not have to flip the piece to machine both sides and I glued them together. I drilled a hole in the centre of the head used a piece of conduit to hold the head in place so it could be movable.

I then used our large filament printer and printed the feet and edited holes on the top to mount conduit in to put in the bottom of the body to make removable feet. That slid into place with PVC tubes just a bit bigger than the conduit mounted in the bottom of the body. I poured two part resin in to make it more solid and then injected foam in to fill it solid.

I sanded everything and applied a thin coat of joint compound to make it smooth. I used the shop’s hardcoater to cover everything with 1/16″ to 1/8″ thick hard coat. Hard coat is like truck bed liner and creates a more solid “skin” on anything it is applied to.

I did another sanding on most of it and filled in gaps with rubber caulk and hard coated over. I did a texture on most of it except the eyes. I then had to decide my colour scheme. I did a lot of test paint on a small 3.5″ blink omen until I got the perfect scheme. I painted the large omen in comparison to the small sample version. I rushed it to this year’s Designer Toy Summit in Memphis, Tennessee unfinished and showed it off in Acme’s Booth.

I was able to bring it back, touch up the paint and clear coat everything to make it perfect! I made sure I put on a matte clear coat on everything and a glossy clear coat for the eyes. It turned out great! This project was a fan project and not affiliated with Coarse at all. It is also not for sale, it currently resides in my now tinier apartment in a suburb of Chicago. Thanks to The Toy Chronicle for letting me post my article on my False Omen Project. There are more pictures of it finished on my Instagram!

Thanks for sharing this interesting personal project, Eagon. You can check out Eagon and his work on Instagram HERE.