Recently, I had a chance to interview Michael Swisstack AKA “Cthulhugizzard" of Cthulhugizzard Customs located in New Jersey. Cthulhugizzard attended The School of Visual Arts in New York, where he graduated in 1995. He's been into monsters and robots for many, many years.
Mike's interest in figures and models began at the age of ten, then moving on from there to painting Dungeons and Dragons and Warhammer miniatures -- eventually moving onto resin garage kits. He also had a love for action figures as a child, G.I Joe 12 inch and 3 ¾ inch figures, Star Wars, Micronaughts, and Megos. Eventually he moved onto 12 inch military style figures, before he gravitated back to resin kits and has never looked back.
"If it came out in the late 70’s or early 80’s I had them. As I got older I started collecting resin model kits, but got back into figures when I saw that 12” military figures were coming back. For example, when 21st Century Toys and Dragon started doing the WWII 12” figures. Then I became super addicted to Ashley Woods Three A toys for about 5 years, but I finally broke myself of that habit to get back into resin kits."
At 15 years old Mike began to use Sculpey, continuing to hone this craft throughout high school and college. Sculpting and painting (besides his wife Jenn) are some of the only things that calm Mike down after a long workday.
"Most of my early sculpting was modifying existing resin kits, but I didn’t get serious with sculpting until about 2 ½ years ago. Basically when my wife, Jenn, convinced me to get on Facebook to show my art. Once I started to see that people liked my art, it caused me to go into overdrive."
Mike's creations come from a very vivid imagination. Having nightmares as a child, he suffered for years from night terrors until hitting the age of 15, when he decided to embrace the monsters, creatures, and ghosts crawling around in his head. Since this revelation Mike has had a bunch of best friends which also he gets inspiration from.
"I’ve always had a very vivid imagination, and kind of had night terrors and terrible visions as a child. My parents always said I watched too many monster movies but whenever I went to sleep, it was always an endless stream of monsters, creatures and ghosts. Finally at about 15 years old, I finally decided to stop being scared of the things in my head, and try to make friends with them, ever since I’ve had a constant stream of beasties."
The advice Mike would give people interested in trying out sculpting would be not to be too hard on yourself, practice, and have fun."It’s all about aving fun and enjoying practicing. In the past if I started a new sculpt, and wasn’t happy with it after an hour, then I would give up on it, and never really followed through on any sculpts. Now the joy of sculpting is enough for me not worrying about the finished product. Since I’ve had this mindset I’m now much happier with my sculpting."
When asked what is his favorite creation, Mike had a hard to picking just one. "My favorite one of of my creations… that’s a tough one. I’m very happy with all of my recent sculpts, but probably my favorite would be my Vein bust. It is my first resin kit that I produced, and that has been something that I’ve wanted to do for 30 years. I am also very happy with my Metamorphosis mask sculpt that I did for Creature Revenge Studios."
Mike has been starting to expand out of his comfort zone and has wanted to improve on his skills in sculpting portraits and likenesses. He does love sculpting his monster friends in his own head and will continue to do so for the time being. "I love sculpting monsters from my own head, nobody can tell me they aren’t correct, but I definitely want to get better at realistic likenesses."
I want to give a giant Cthulhu thanks for Mike having given me this chance to talk with him and share his creatures from his head. Head over to Mike's Facebook and give his creature creations a look. Check him out here.
This is Canadian Chris saying Happy Haunting, EH!! Oh, and Like us on Facebook!