I often struggle with precision. I can be very neurotic about detail, but exact, razorblade precision tends to stress me out. This is why I’m not an architect, or an accountant. It’s also, I think, a major reason why kaiju sculpting appeals to me. These are exaggerated, unreal creatures. You don’t have to worry too much about Godzilla’s left forearm being a quarter inch longer than his right, so long as the overall piece still looks balanced and dynamic. Precision has its place with these things, especially when it comes to detail work, but nonetheless I find it usually takes a backseat to intuition.

That is, of course, unless the kaiju in question is a robot. Robots are a pain in the ass. They’re all edges and geometry. I put off sculpting anything inorganic for a while but eventually I decided to face the challenge with Moguera, the extraterrestrial robo-mole from The Mysterians (1957). He’s a bit of an afterthought in the film (a whiz-bang, technicolor alien invasion flick) but has a wonderfully chunky retro design and a unique color scheme. Tsuburaya and Co. could have easily given us a Robby the Robot knockoff and instead we were graced with this gold-faced, drill-nosed, balloon-legged whatsit. Many decades later Moguera was given a toyetic re-design and plopped into the Godzilla franchise, aiding the King of the Monsters in the smackdown against SpaceGodzilla (who is a Godzilla from space).

Anyway. Moguera proved by far to be the most difficult sculpt I’ve yet encountered, in no small part due to all the treads and ridges that comprise his torso. Getting those spaced out properly while also accommodating the curvature of the ovular upper body took more hours than I care to report. I also made things very difficult for myself by deciding to have the three segments of his body facing different directions, which meant dealing with three distinct lines of symmetry that have nothing to do with each other. For a while I wasn’t sure what to do about the antennae but I ended up using guitar strings - they bounce a bit when you poke them!

Credit, as always, to the original designers: sculptor Teizo Toshimitsu and suit designers Yasuei & Kanju Yagi.