Darth Bear the origin story

On an August day, a bear was wondering about the woods when he heard two guys talking pretty loud for a hike in the woods. The bear heard them talk about superheroes and electric cars, and food. You see, this bear spent so much time around humans that he started to understand us MOFOS. He got hungry and decided to go after these guys; he managed to grab one of them. The other got lucky cause he followed the golden rule of hiking always bring a fat friend with you on a hike.

After he enjoyed eating the big fella, he started rummaging through his backpack, and he found a comic book, a bottle of water, a t-shirt and a pair of shorts. So the bear began to go through the comic book about a dude called Darth Vader. He kept reading about him, so he decided he wanted to go to this magical place called Comicon, where people get dressed in these crazy costumes.

To be continued...

I really hope you enjoyed the short story about Darth Bear. I have been a huge Star Wars fan since I was a kid, and it has always been a part of what makes me a designer. You might know the BOBO FATE super limited edition series that I have created, the latest one being the BOBOLORIAN and baby YO 

Now the idea behind Darth Vader is that I wanted to create an outstanding Darth Vader-inspired character. Still, I didn't just want to make a chibi version or a kid version or a fat version. Instead, I wanted to design a piece that could hold its own weight, no pun intended.

I love designing heavy toys. You might know the URSOS piece I created and sculpted last year. Being a chubby dude myself, or how my lovely daughter likes to call me "Big Fella". I wanted to design a toy with these characteristics Heavy, Bear, Star Wars and fantastic. 

Initially started with the helmet, cause I wanted to get that right first, capturing the Darth Vader helmet and making it work for a bear wasn't easy, when I did the first sculpt, I wanted it to be more like the helmet in Space Balls (fans of the movie will know what I mean)

Then I thought I'll make it as a removable mask with magnets but it was starting to have to many pieces that needed to work together and for production you always want to try to keep it as simple as possible, cause the moment you start adding elements it gets out of hand really fast, the hardest part about being a toy designer is to know when to stop. But with that said, I might release it as one off piece! below you can view the helmet in 3d.

Darth Bear Helmet progress by Oasim Karmieh on Sketchfab

Once the helmet was done, next was creating his body, I tried to keep it simple and clean, although you might know this about me is that I love making realistic clothing and folds but with this piece I wanted to try something a bit different, first of all I knew that the t-shirt had to be as clean as possible while still having some forms to make it easier for painting, and the same thing goes for the backpack, I had to think of those as canvases to be able to paint on them and create unique pieces especially when you want to create custom pieces.