This figure required quite a lot of experimentation. I knew I wanted the figure itself to glow somehow - not apply a post-processing effect to photos or simply paint him white. I wanted Ori to kind of look how he looks in the game.
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| Sanded and rubbed for 5000 years with steel wool of various grades |
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| Legs joined and seams filled with milliput |
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| Rod added to base for support |
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| Tree sculpted in DAS air-dry clay. |
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| LED lights added to the base. |
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| Cotton wool glued over the how to create a wool cloud of whatever |
Standard materials were used, Super Sculpey, DAS Clay, Vinyl stickers for the eyes. What follows is my experimentation with all things Glowy...
There are a few things I tried to achieve the glowing and I came across a few limitations practically both on the part of the product and on my part.
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| Powder glowing blue and green - note the fine particle size! |
The first thing I tried were glow in the dark powders. These can be mixed into acrylic paint and, if they're fine enough, sprayed through an airbrush. The problems comes with the particle size of these powders. Applied to a surface you won't necessarily get a uniform glow - you'll get a starry sky speckled effect. The glow powders don't disperse in liquid, the glow particles remain solid.
To combat this I wondered if this powder, when mixed with an opaque white resin, would allow the light to appear more uniform - It kind of does too!
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| Glow powder mixed into the resin - mostly uniform glow - the speckling is from the white primer I sprayed onto it for some reason ( I thought I could further diffuse the light... nope) |
I tried two methods with applying the powder to the resin - the first was to mix the resin into one part of the two part mixture before pouring into the mold. This had good results however a lot of powder needed to be used for each piece and it was difficult to stop the powder sinking to the bottom of the mold - a problem alleviated somewhat by rotocasting.
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| Powder brushed into mold before pouring. Speckly because of the discernible particles! The light patch is where powder gathered in the toe of the mold and wouldn't let the resin soak through - pesky powder! |
Second I tried dusting the surface of the molds with the powder and then casting. This didn't stop the speckled appearance much, but the effect was slightly more uniform.
Mixing resin and powder before casting created the best results - however these parts would have to be pressure-cast. This was something I couldn't test as I have neither a vacuum chamber or a pressure pot. If there were ANY bubbles in the piece at all though you wouldn't be able to fill them - when it glowed you'd see an obvious gap!
Outside of powders I tried glow in the dark paints. These vary in quality and price - and are mostly limited in colour. If you want something to glow green you're in business - but to glow blue - that's a different kettle of fish.
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| Createx UV Glow white |
Perhaps it shouldn't glow I thought - but instead be reactive to light. I found a UV reactive paint from Createx and the result is what you see in the finished photos! There are some limitations of course - particle size is still an issue and painting with a UV light shining on the part is a must. A good few layers were needed to get a nearly even consistency across the piece.
It's still slightly speckled however if you get close up I must admit. From a reasonable distance the effect is pretty cool! The glow in photographs picks up well and is the right colour! The photographs were taken with a UV torch shining on the figure with a longer exposure time. A regular torch light was shined on the base and backdrop to not make everything UV coloured.
You could say my hap-dash 'experimentation' has hit a bit of a bum note. I got about 90% the desired effect - but don't get me wrong it was fun but maybe somebody out there has cracked it (hey - let me know!) - perhaps another project one day will call for an effect like this and that'll be the one...
We'll have to wait and see!
