Buzz Lightyear #263 – The Claw Clock

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I’ve been wanting to make a Buzz Lightyear clock for years. I bought the wood and clock movement 3+ years ago and just never got to it. Finally the stars aligned and I pulled out the materials and got to work. My original plan for years was to mimic the swinging leg type of clock like the Elvis clock I had back in the day.

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Unfortunately (and fortunately) I found a swinging leg Buzz Lightyear clock on Ebay and didn’t want to do my clock the same way…

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So I had to get creative. My first idea was to do a traffic cone with his legs swinging underneeth. You’ll recall that in Toy Story 2 they had to cross the street to Al’s Toy Barn hidden inside traffic cones. This was a good idea… but I didn’t like that it would be mostly cone and almost no Buzz. I figured if I had to settle for a little Buzz there had to be a better way. So I started thinking about situations in the movies where Buzz Lightyear would be swinging… then it hit me. The CLAW!

So I sketched this up:

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I originally figured the rocket to be nearly 16″ tall! I eventually scaled it down and widened it a bit to get it down to 12 inches.

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I sketched it out on the wood. This was before I changed the rocket to be wider. I had to make the change when I realized that his feet would swing out of the sides! That’s no good.img_1672

The clock got deeper when I realized I’d need a back board. Here I clamped it all together and added the clock movement to make sure it would all work before gluing and paint.img_1675

To transfer my art from the paper to the wood I used my inkjet printer and printed on wax paper, wet the wood a bit and pressed them together. I don’t think I needed the water. As you can see the ink ran quite a bit. Not that it mattered. If you use this technique remember to reverse the image before you print. It’ll change back once you apply it to the wood.

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Here Buzz is with a bit of paint applied. Unlike my Buzz Lightyear Nutcracker, I decided to paint black outlines as if it were a comic character.

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Here is the finished character. It’s about 5″ tall in total.

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The backboard was painted light blue. I glued wooden blocks on to create the spacing that the clock movement needed.

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The claw rocket is a darker red. I found a color at Hobby Lobby that nailed it.

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The finished clock face. I added a second light blue color to further simulate the glass. Light and dark reds helped add a metallic sheen to the rocket. The console and is a duplicate of the one in the movie.

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I had forgotten about the Little Green Men! I sketched them out on a scrap of wood, cut them out and painted them.

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And here it is! Ready for some clear coat.

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Thanks for reading!

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