Post #246162 by Bay Park Buzzy on Tue, Aug 1, 2006 5:16 PM

Close up of this grain/stain combo:

Whole thing:

side

I totally messed up the arms in the back, but i learned a ton about making better tiki bodies. No more of those fake simulated full body ones like my earlier efforts. This one really opened many new ways to correctly carve a body, and was somewhat of a launching point for the next several pieces that I would do.

Since I have been on Tiki Central this last 4 months, I have basically posted nearly every single step of every single project that I have ever done since i started carving. I have done this to share my experiences with tiki and how it has transformed my life quite rapidly, since I first started carving, 366 days ago. Every moment has been fun and enjoyable, and I'm glad that something in my head compelled me to take this up.
My goal from moment one was to become a master of the tasks of carving. Specifically, my quest is to be the best. Without believing that this is possible, it will never be obtainable. You do not accidently become the best at anything; you can be born with natural gifts that will help you acheive some level of success, but to excel at anything at the highest level, it takes desire, skills, and lots of practice and even more time.
It is with this desire to become the best, that I have embarked upon my carving development to this point. I have never been finished product minded-I have only been process minded. I look to each project as an opportunity to try something harder than I have done in the past, to better my skills. Each new piece, I set a specific challenge that I hope to conquer through my decision making process. Carving to me is an endless series of right and wrong decisions. Your success depends on the ratio of correct to incorrect choices that you make to physically manifest what your mind envisions.
I do not think I came prewired with tiki recognition upon birth. I had to see tikis before I knew what a tiki was. Likewise, when I started carving, my first attempt didn't turn out like Crazy Al's #120. I looked at tikis that were just above what I thought my ability could produce. To get better, I had to understand how the best works. At first, I had no hope of reproducing an exact replica of what I saw. My best effort at an exact copy usually turned out at best, an approximation of the original intent.
However, there came a couple of times where I made a couple of quick jumps in technique level through my discovery process, and I was capable of reproducing a very close copy of my original source. I never intended to make an exact copy of an original tiki, if one were to even exist at this point. The reason that I'm going through all this is because today, a tiki carver, one of my favorites at that, contacted me privately and basically said, hey dude I'm flattered you copied me-but it just looks a little too much like the original. He said he wasn't pissed, and he didn't want to point this out publically, saving me the embarrassment. Which I thought was totally cool of him, because he had every right to be pissed, but he was polite with his message despite his being justified in choosing a more angry approach, which is contrary to most people on this site. He had every right to be a dick to me, but was totally cool instead.
For this, I willingly admit that I used this picture for reference on that tiki I was finishing last night:

I wrote him a longer and more detailed explanation of my decision making process while making this one. But, I wanted to share each and every aspect of my carving experience and development with the world. I knew when I chose to try and do his piece, someone would recognize it. It's a small insular tiki world here, and everything gets around eventually. If I had thought that I was doing something wrong at the time for nefarious purposes, I would have not posted every single picture of every single tiki I ever made for the world to see. I'm proud of my progress, and that is why I share everything that I do, along with how and why I choose to do each challenge. Part of my learning process to become the carver I hope to be was to try to figure out how someone good at making tikis, makes a good tiki.
I told Tiki Diablo that I was sorry in a way that it looked like the original. I also honestly told him that I was kinda stoked too, that I did a good enough job that he recognized it. I never intended to go out and rip him off, copy his work, post it on a website and say, "Here's my new tiki design for sale.Buy it because I am such an original carver" I remember early on in my thread, I made a game out of finding my original reference source, and even offered up prizes for people who find it. I even gave hints as to where I found the original picture source.
This tiki was one of the last which I used a single source for reference. After seeing how close I could copy something, I didn't feel like i needed to work on that specific skill anymore, and started collaging different pieces of several sources into one.
Eventually, the goal will be to have enough skills through experience that I do not need to even draw out my plan before carving.
I'm not making any excuses for using his piece as reference, and I fully expect the world to come down on me for this. I chose to publically share this experience, because it is an issue that is common in the tiki world, now and forever. This can ultimately only be resolved through Tiki Diablo, and myself, and the resolution will be independent of any public outcry for this. But you are all more than welcome to comment on this. Controversy breeds conversation-we're in a forum, and to be honest, some of you guys are really funny when you are pissed.
Hope I didn't let any of you other guys down...
Buzzy
And I promise that I will not go back and edit any of this stuff out later. If you see an edited by, its only for puncuation...