 |
| COOKIEEESS!! |
Sculpted from Super Sculpey (the pink one)
THE PROCESS
Blocking the shape with clay - also called the form-less crap blob phase.
I jump around adding detail without rhyme or reason, I build up whatever feels best at the time...
Tin foil under the foot to stop the clay sticking to the base when it's baked...
Some more details are added here but it is still quite rough...
Some fine gauge aluminum wire was added for the extra detail...
A bit of texture is added...
Here i've changed the posture because I didn't like it - much much much too late to be altering things like that but I guess you live and learn...
THE HEAD
You'll have seen this technique elsewhere - but a good way to make sure the profiles are correct are to cut a silhouette from your reference and sculpt to that - it's very easy to see where anatomical things such as mouths, eyes and so forth should be. It's good to have a good front, side and top view to get an accurate idea of the shape.
As the shape is bulked out, small refinements are made...
After the blocking stage more details are added.
THE DOME
The alien in the first film has a translucent dome over its head - I wanted to try and replicate this..
The first thing was to make a master of the dome. I laid cling-film over the baked head sculpt and formed the dome master from Milliput. The cling-film is there to stop the Milliput binding to the head sculpt.
As the master is sculpted it is smoothed out with water (Milliput smooths really well with water) and left to harden.
If I had a vacuform machine - I'd have just made a form from my master - but I don't have one and so needed to find a different way. A mould was taken of the master and a few experiemnts with materials was made to find the best thing to use. Clear resin was out as I don't have access to vacuum or pressure casting tools so I needed something more basic.
The 1st attempt (to the right of the green master) was 5 minute clear epoxy adhesive. This was ok, very solid but had very clear bubbles. Its thickness made it difficult to spread into the mould and made it so it was hard to get an even thickness across the form.
The 2nd attempt (2nd right from green master) was hot glue.... It was worth a shot right?
And the final attempt which worked 80% ok was Deluxe Materials Making Waves. Railway and scenic peeps use it for modeling water together with some other bits. It's kind of like PVA but without the sticky.
Multiple layers were painted with a brush (note the texture) into the mold over a period of days (DAYS!, making waves takes a good few hours to dry depending on thickness)
A quick blast of dark grey around the edge was added afterwards. It's a mostly successful attempt and is sort of translucent enough - but of course better results would be gotten from clear pressure casted resins or vacuform pulls... maybe next time!
THE ALIEN
 |
| The base? It's a cooking tin and some drinking straws... |
Thanks for looking...
