DS3 - ANM 375: WEEK 4

First Progress

Got a good start I think. Tried to get as much of the main mass on as possible. I've never used this material before; it's growing on me, but I definitely got a rough start with my first block that I believe was defective. (More on that in the other discussion topic.)

Meant to take more 'in-progress' shots, but I got swept up in the modeling and time flew by! A few in-process shots:

Where I'm at now -- just started the hat and filling in the bust masses. I have NO idea how to best deal with the eyes. I'll have to do some research this week on sculpted cartoon eyes and come back to these placeholder ones later.

Process Notes

This is my first experience with sculpey, so I didn't know exactly what to expect when I opened the box. At first touch it seemed pretty cold, hard and more chalky than I anticipated. In fact it was VERY chalky and crumbly. I spent some time trying to knead it and then went and bought one of those cheap pasta machines at the craft store in an effort to "condition" it. No good, and I think I may have damaged the machine trying to run the stuff through it. If I had unpacked my other boxes of clay, I would have immediately known there was an anomaly here. But eventually I gave up on this first box of clay and chucked it in the trash:

I do think that the pasta machine is helpful though -- I've been running my clay through this about 8-10 times before use and it definitely makes it more malleable overall.

I was wondering how the ear armature pieces would work out. So far so good, but there's definitely not a lot of wiggle room thickness-wise before hitting the wire. One area I discovered would need additional support is the hat. I started modeling the hat free-form, but it was just too 'mushy' for any meaningful control. So I made a little armature "ring" to support the shape, which worked well, but ultimately turned out to be too bulky for his relatively flat hat. So I had to start over with a smaller one: