WIP: Ahsoka Tano as Fulcrum
Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2016 7:06 am
Okay! I have finally got all the images into BBCode (I love flickr but the inability to create multiple links is a drawback!
I began with my headcast and some clay and tinfoil. Pretty standard if really hard to visualise beginnings
After that I added rough clay of two shades (my various batches of clay have now been homogenised but here theere is a light and dark grey). I built the montral up and out as well as the lekku ends.
From there I started trimming back and repositioning the clay.
Voila! A reasonable facimile!
But this all melted off my stand as I left the workroom too warm over that summer!
So I fixed the ends and tested the angles
I had made the sculpt a shade smaller than I wanted as I was going to take a positive copy of this in resinned cloth and then backfill with expanding foam to make a very light support to do the detail clay work on.
I started with the back. I used a stretch rayon so as to hold as much resin as I could (epoxy) and maintain a nice close fit.
I learnt about this technique by perusing car modding forums! It's a great way of getting a good impression, but as it is not spun glass it is very fragile. So really only useful if you are able to support under and/or over with real fibreglass So it's ideal for car modding as you will be working with reasonable number sof laminating layers.
I also used my experience with fabric being fragile once resinned (or glued!) to decide to leave this as a single layer so that I could easily remove it from the mold- I knew I'd need to make an ultracal mold and a rigid master is always going to be hard to remove!
And then I clipped the fabric and started the front. The pins are to hold the fabric and resin in place
Tapped to test size
I then transferred the fabric shell onto a foam wig form- I knew again I'd be destroying the sculpt so it is easier to get foam remnants out!
By this stage I had been warned to stop using epoxy by two medical professionals who basically warned I could not just lose the use of my fingers but lose my fingers full stop. slightly sobering.
But I had already invested so much time!
So I used polyester resin hoping to avoid the allergy. And I did! But ugh, never using it again as it is so horrible to work with. The smell, the poor curing, the brittleness... I got so used to quality epoxy!
Stinky.
But then it was back to the clay! I found that the expanding foam did not form well so there were pockets of air so unsupported surfaces. I also found that it distorted the shape somewhat so I had to do a lot of corrective work with the clay.
And finally in this last month I got the courage to try some more advanced skin texture techniques. I knew the basics, but watched a few SFX pros and decided to just go for it! I made a few tools to do this:
Tiny loop and heavy bristle raker
It's not perfect but I managed to then build up some support to start molding. I decided I wanted the seams to follow the very side so added clay and foam support to hold the back in place. I ran out of clay so had to purchase some more.
I used ultracal and made some fairly thick walls!
Then I had to do the otherside obviously, I took the clay and foam supports and repeated for the back.
I took the slow cure to trim all the flashings and rips and after managing to bump a bump on my arm with a tiny excess bump on the mold I took a lot of care to remove as many as I could.
I have hurt myself on the edges of molds before as well as found they can cause a point of weakness.
And boom! It actually came apart really easily! But as I expected the rigid resin support was difficult to remove. So I put the molds in the sun to soften the resin and tore the front out, then the foam, then finally the back!
I am now drying the molds at that spot as it gets high sun until about 11am And I'll get my spare toothbrush and isopro out to clean the rest.
And of course I had started patterning the leg armour. This I'm hesitant to work on. I had thought I would wetform some leather, then reports can out is was supposed to be more rigid, then the realistic style showed actually they probably are leather due to the wrinkling at the ankles. SO I think I will use the russet I have after all Possibly over my very thin fibreglass impressions I made for Shae initially.
I began with my headcast and some clay and tinfoil. Pretty standard if really hard to visualise beginnings
After that I added rough clay of two shades (my various batches of clay have now been homogenised but here theere is a light and dark grey). I built the montral up and out as well as the lekku ends.
From there I started trimming back and repositioning the clay.
Voila! A reasonable facimile!
But this all melted off my stand as I left the workroom too warm over that summer!
So I fixed the ends and tested the angles
I had made the sculpt a shade smaller than I wanted as I was going to take a positive copy of this in resinned cloth and then backfill with expanding foam to make a very light support to do the detail clay work on.
I started with the back. I used a stretch rayon so as to hold as much resin as I could (epoxy) and maintain a nice close fit.
I learnt about this technique by perusing car modding forums! It's a great way of getting a good impression, but as it is not spun glass it is very fragile. So really only useful if you are able to support under and/or over with real fibreglass So it's ideal for car modding as you will be working with reasonable number sof laminating layers.
I also used my experience with fabric being fragile once resinned (or glued!) to decide to leave this as a single layer so that I could easily remove it from the mold- I knew I'd need to make an ultracal mold and a rigid master is always going to be hard to remove!
And then I clipped the fabric and started the front. The pins are to hold the fabric and resin in place
Tapped to test size
I then transferred the fabric shell onto a foam wig form- I knew again I'd be destroying the sculpt so it is easier to get foam remnants out!
By this stage I had been warned to stop using epoxy by two medical professionals who basically warned I could not just lose the use of my fingers but lose my fingers full stop. slightly sobering.
But I had already invested so much time!
So I used polyester resin hoping to avoid the allergy. And I did! But ugh, never using it again as it is so horrible to work with. The smell, the poor curing, the brittleness... I got so used to quality epoxy!
Stinky.
But then it was back to the clay! I found that the expanding foam did not form well so there were pockets of air so unsupported surfaces. I also found that it distorted the shape somewhat so I had to do a lot of corrective work with the clay.
And finally in this last month I got the courage to try some more advanced skin texture techniques. I knew the basics, but watched a few SFX pros and decided to just go for it! I made a few tools to do this:
Tiny loop and heavy bristle raker
It's not perfect but I managed to then build up some support to start molding. I decided I wanted the seams to follow the very side so added clay and foam support to hold the back in place. I ran out of clay so had to purchase some more.
I used ultracal and made some fairly thick walls!
Then I had to do the otherside obviously, I took the clay and foam supports and repeated for the back.
I took the slow cure to trim all the flashings and rips and after managing to bump a bump on my arm with a tiny excess bump on the mold I took a lot of care to remove as many as I could.
I have hurt myself on the edges of molds before as well as found they can cause a point of weakness.
And boom! It actually came apart really easily! But as I expected the rigid resin support was difficult to remove. So I put the molds in the sun to soften the resin and tore the front out, then the foam, then finally the back!
I am now drying the molds at that spot as it gets high sun until about 11am And I'll get my spare toothbrush and isopro out to clean the rest.
And of course I had started patterning the leg armour. This I'm hesitant to work on. I had thought I would wetform some leather, then reports can out is was supposed to be more rigid, then the realistic style showed actually they probably are leather due to the wrinkling at the ankles. SO I think I will use the russet I have after all Possibly over my very thin fibreglass impressions I made for Shae initially.