Big Business : For Bernardo Munoz and Karl West, less is not more. These guys turn out statues of mythical proportions for theme parks, films, hotels.

Bernardo Munoz and Karl West think “excess” is one of the loveliest words in the language. Right up there with “colossal” and “supercolossal.”

They are artisans of the new stone age, turning out sculptures of mythical figures in monumental proportions for theme parks, films and the garish hotels along the Las Vegas strip.

A pair of 6-foot Atlases sit on the floor of their studio at the Brewery complex, where Main Street meets the I-5. Soon, the statues will be trucked to Caesar’s Palace, to hold up an entry arch at the new Magical Empire restaurant / showroom. In truth, that would be a magical feat for these Atlases, because although they look for all the world like marble, they are fiberglass--lightweight and earthquake friendly.

But then, nothing is what it seems at Art Sculpture and Production.

A 12-foot Neptune, commissioned by Atlantic City, is taking shape out of a huge blob of gray polyurethane foam. Neptune, too, will be cast in fiberglass.

“This is where the magic begins,” says Munoz, leading the way through the 6,000-square-foot space, past a horse and rider made for “Jumanji.”

We climb to a loft, where foam rip-offs of “The Discus Thrower” and other ancient works of art stand in a circle. “We copied most of these from books,” Munoz says. They were commissioned for a Hanes underwear commercial.

Munoz, 39, whose background is in art direction, handles client relations, though in a pinch “I go down there and put my hands in it.” West, 44, a UC Santa Barbara fine arts graduate and former Disney sculptor, is the hands-on artist. They were competitors before joining forces in June.

In their hands, the only limitations are the client’s imagination and pocketbook. “We do anywhere 6 inches to 60 feet or more,” West says. Depending on the workload, there may be 40 people chipping and painting or just two--Munoz and West.

If you’ve ever shopped at Caesar’s Palace, you’re not likely to have overlooked the sculpted “marble” Greco-Roman figures--Diana, Pegasus, Venus and the others. Foam and fiberglass, straight from ASAP’s studio.

“Vegas is a joy, with its bigger and better one-upmanship attitude,” West says. Once, films were the major market for mega-sculptures, but computers now create most special effects. Now, lasers and other new technology have made it feasible for the wildest flights of fancy to become public art.

Want Betty Boop? Michelangelo’s David? A giant gargoyle? Munoz and West have done them. For a Las Vegas casino, they turned out a Frederic Remington in faux bronze. Other clients: Donald Trump’s Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, the Forum, the Luxor and the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Universal CityWalk, Disneyland.

Perhaps you’re pondering a little artwork for your patio. A one-of-a-kind statue, life-size, will set you back about $8,500. Monumental pieces--which Munoz and West define as anything over 12 feet--range from $20,000 to $50,000. “Over 20 feet is considered colossal,” West says. Then come supercolossal and gigantic, with appropriate leaps in price.

Whether it’s a 30-foot dinosaur or a 60-foot figure with fingers 4 feet long, a figure begins with a drawing, from which a resin miniature is molded to scale--an inch to a foot. An artist then draws the figure onto a block of foam, using a grid, or works from a slide of the miniature projected onto the foam. Then the sculptor goes to work.

If the piece is one-of-a-kind, a plaster mold is made from the sculpture, fiberglass is shot in and the mold then broken away. The piece is then ready to be stained to look like marble, stone or metal. For multiple copies, the process is similar, but a permanent silicone mold is made.

The bottom line: A monumental work that costs $20,000 in foam and fiberglass would soar to $150,000 if done in bronze. If the client is a filmmaker, and the piece will be used and tossed, the texture may simply be painted on the foam--no mold, no fiberglass.

Done up in fiberglass, Neptune and the rest have a life expectancy that boggles the mind. Outdoors, Munoz says, “If you treat it right, it will last 80 to 100 years.” That means tending to scratches so the sun can’t penetrate the paint and burn the fiberglass. Indoors? Nobody knows.

To date, vandalism has not been a big problem, though at the Hollywood Gateway Project somebody spray-painted the buttocks of Mae West. But people do like to thump public statues, so Munoz and West now fill theirs with sand so there’s no telltale hollow sound when the curious give them the touch test.

Munoz and West pride themselves on having a freelance stable of real artists, although, West acknowledges, there are fine artists “who consider themselves a little too haughty.”

To Munoz, “Kitsch is only a point of view.” Not surprisingly, West mentions that “L.A. is the hotbed” of this art form. “Themed environments have never been hotter.”

“Every casino owner feels himself being like Caesar,” Munoz says. “And we all say, ‘Gosh, I wish I could go there, see that.’ This is your chance, in the plastic sense.”

“A lot of people say we’re prostitutes,” says West, with a “who cares?” shrug. To him, the only question is, “When do you stop? How big is big?”

Here’s a Guy Who Can’t Afford to Lose His Marbles

Eliot Pincus plucks a large blue glass orb from a case, cupping it lovingly in his palm as though it were the Hope Diamond.

It is, in fact, a marble. Not just any marble, but a $6,000 marble, probably German from the 19th century. A collector would know it’s a submarine, a marble with decoration both on the surface and beneath.

We’re in the world of onionskins and peppermint swirls, blue clambroths and Lutzes--an international gathering of marble makers, collectors and dealers held recently at an airport hotel.

Pincus, 41, a former car dealer from Philadelphia, deals only in top-of-the-line, $100 and up. “If I had to deal with $2 marbles, I’d have stuck with the lousy job I had.” That changed in 1981 when his brother read a magazine article about marbles and asked him to help look for some nice ones.

Does anyone still play with marbles? “Not these marbles,” says Pincus, although all were made for that purpose. But about 10,000 Americans collect them. (And marble shooting is alive and well, with national championships each June in New Jersey.)

Pincus is a purist, interested only in handmade marbles up to World War I and machine-made marbles up to the 1930s. Marbles that were made as marbles. He dismisses contemporary marbles, made for displaying, as “art glass spheres,” which places him squarely among those modern artisans label “antique bigots.”

His Informal Society of Marble Enthusiasts International is, he admits, “so informal it doesn’t exist.” But three national organizations for marble enthusiasts thrive.

Tired of hearing the same joke--”I’ve lost my marbles, heh, heh”--Pincus now beats jokesters to the punch with a T-shirt that says, “Don’t lose your marbles. I’ll buy them.” He grins. “It works.”