LOTR - THE MOUTH (BUST)

It's been a while since the last post - not because of a lack of figures! There are a good number of cool things in the pipeline...

I post progress pictures on my facebook page sometimes - If it's something more current your after then why not take a look? facebook.com/handmadebyradish

Until some of the bigger things start showing their faces - here is a quick run down of a bust sculpt I did of The Mouth from Lord of the Rings. I don't think he was in the film? Or maybe an extended cut or something - but I thought he looked cool and I'd like to give it a shot.

The figure was sculpted in Super Sculpey (the regular one). In retrospect sculpting in something harder would have been easier - hard flat shapes on the mask were hard to achieve with such a soft clay. I've been using Monster Clay for some projects I haven't shown yet - that may have allowed me to lay down those shapes quicker.

Because the geometry of the mask was so tricky I didn't want to accidentally ruin my work when I started sculpting the fabric part which runs up either side of the mask - so I baked it to save it from my clumsy fingers and then sculpted the fabric part on top of it.

I was curious about baking Super Sculpey more than once - I thought this stuff was a one bake deal - but I've seen forums of people saying it can be done. I've baked sculptures twice on a few occasions now with no ill effects. I've read though that you can't re-bake indefinitely, there is a limit but I cannot say for certain what that is - I think it depends right?

For the spikes of the mask I left grooves into which I lay some cut styrene sheet into and then blended the seams with milliput.

The paint job was something I wanted to experiment with - I wanted to mimic a stone sculpture. To do this I painted a mixture of greys and grey-greens of varying shades and then set to applying a clear cote. I purposefully over-applied this in areas so that it would crack and I could chip it away - you can see this particularly on the shoulders. It felt quite strange to mess up a paint job like this but it seemed to have the desired effect.

I used a range of dark washes, browns, greens for the grooves and sprinkled some plaster powder into some areas to give a rougher finish. Some final detail work was done by lightly splashing some white acrylic into some areas for a more mottled appearance.

The paint job on this figure gave me an insight on when to call it a day. I'll admit that I find myself almost over-painting some things - just adding a little bit more and more. Weathering is all about subtlety and so to is any kind of paint application where you're trying to mimic real life or semi-realistic creatures, it is easy to over do the detailing. I'm still learning this trait, but this particular piece is a good example of where I've seen the time to stop painting and put the brush down.

As I do more complex pieces I hope I'll see this more and more often - and that will be all for the better.

ORI AND THE BLIND FOREST

 

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.

Sanded and rubbed for 5000 years with steel wool of various grades

Legs joined and seams filled with milliput

Rod added to base for support

Tree sculpted in DAS air-dry clay.

LED lights added to the base.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

MASS EFFECT 2 - COLLECTOR CAPTAIN

Sculpting the body

Sculpted with super sculpey - here was some pictures to show you how this thing built up over time...

I'd been sculpting him without a head because he'd have been too tall for my small halogen oven to take. A change of plans and a borrowed oven later meant that I could attach the head before baking.

It actually helped to not have a head there for the most part so that I could get to all those pesky nooks under the shoulders and around the clavicle.

The head was sculpted seperatley and then attached and blended with the rest of the piece.

 Ta da! A head.

The Gun

 

I didn't have any spare styrene lying around at the time, so had to root around in my plastic bucket of 'maybe-babies' to pull out this little gem that was just the right size.

I needed an armature which I could later sculpt around and keep everything in scale.

Aluminium wire was wrapped around the guide for strength and to give something for my sculpting medium to stick too - plastic is too smooth yo.

I sculpted the gun with Milliput - the regular green one. The other plastic bits are offcuts from what was left over and the center tube piece was just the inner from a ballpoint pen.

Afterwards the gun was painted in acrylics and then given a few washes of colour for depth followed by light drybrushing with a metallic paint - I used Citadel Ironbreaker for that.

I didn't bake the main body until the gun was made so that I could re-position the arms if I needed too - he has to hold this thing in his hands! If i'd have baked it this process would have been near impossible.

It's the same reason I sculpted the hands last also so that I could form them around the gun rather than the other way round.

To make sure doing these things seperatly doesn't result in unintentional seam-lines I pick an area of the figure I can hide it in - there was a designed join area in the character at the base of the wrist I could use as a join point without altering the design.

Look it's the flop it around in his arms and see if it fits test!

When everything was ready to go it was time to paint. I used vallejo acrylic and sealed with a satin varnish. The more fleshy areas were given a touch of gloss - Citadel Ardcoat.

The base is 20mm acrylic with some grass scenary on there. The rock he's standing on is made from car body filler - no particular brand. The filler was spread across the hole surface of the acrylic to make it less flat.

Finished!

I didn't have an orange light for the shoot, so this is lit by shining a light through some dark rum...

Thanks for looking