And Now The Back! I Tell You What, This First Mold Is Kicking My Butt. Which Is Coincidentally What We

And now the back! I tell you what, this first mold is kicking my butt. Which is coincidentally what we can see in this picture: the generic boy body from the rear. This is the second half of the mold (in progress in this photo, but finished as of tonight), and tomorrow I'm going back to see if the last week's worth of effort actually left me with a usable mold. If so, I finally get to pour the latex! If I'm really lucky, I'll even have a fully finished, painted, jointed, and dressed little boy to show for myself by the end of the day.

If not, there will probably a lot of tears. Maybe I'll even make it an audio post. 

Another big day. This time, I recruited my good friend Sean to perform slave labor help me out around the studio and keep me from going stir-crazy. Thanks, Sean!

Today, we made latex casts of two boys and one girl, leaving just one boy, three girls, and a monster to do tomorrow. It sounds like a lot, but I'm getting exponentially faster every day. It took me two weeks to make my first mold, and now I can do one or two a day. So I still have high hopes that I can finish all the baking tomorrow.

I also finished sculpting Monster #2 and made the first side of the mold, so I'll finish that up tomorrow, too. Sean measured out fourteen little balls of Sculpey for the heads I sculpt during the week, and I trimmed and patched the first little boy and Monster #1. I'm still terrified that something is going to crack, explode, deflate, dissolve, or otherwise break, but I think I'll be able to put those fears to rest tomorrow when I completely finish the first puppet. If I can do it once, I'll trust myself to do it eight more times, so fingers crossed.

Thanks for all the encouragement as I stumble through this. I know the final film is going to be just gorgeous.

For some reason, New Friend Rob was under the impression that I know what I'm doing and wanted to watch me sculpt today, so I subjected him to the ritual: Jurassic Park III in the background, running commentary under my breath, and eventually some kind of recognizable shape out of polymer clay. He made a couple of cute little figures (pictures forthcoming) and kindly refrained from commenting on my lobster.

Oh, and credit where credit's due: it was totally his idea to use dish soap to make it look like the water is boiling. My friends are so clever.

Super Sculpey, ~90 min.

Remember the frog prince from this post? I decided to clean him up and give him as a gift to the boy who inspired him, so I popped him in the oven a la Rhonda's R2D2. Unfortunately, unlike Artoo, he came out a little burnt:

So I painted him. But rather than go to the store for some new acrylic paint, I used some hand-me-down tubes of paint from my grandmother, who bought them for an art class maybe 40 years ago. I can't find a date on the box anywhere, but it looks like it's from the 70s at the absolute latest. When I tried to twist the cap off the tube of white paint, the tube itself split down the side.

This is my way of explaining that the paint came out a little...funny.

But after the first, somewhat chunky coat, I started thinning the paint with water (I was also using those rainbow-colored dollar-store brushes with the black nylon bristles; classy) and the texture improved. Anyway, here he is in all his whitewashed glory. Enjoy!

Woo! Lots done yesterday. I made the very last of the puppets (Monster #2, above) and started the epic trim/patch/paint process for the remaining eight puppets. I took the night off tonight to see my friend Colin who was visiting from out of town, but rest assured that I have no plans to see the sunlight tomorrow at all.

Yikes, that was a long hiatus. Hopefully the fact that I forced myself back on track excuses today's poor showing. This little flamingo wasn't exactly inspired (or stable...hence the precarious angle), but he is color-appropriate. Maybe that counts for something?

Super Sculpey, ~30 min.