Who does your taxes?

Finished it. The motivation behind me wanting to learn to sculpt was to have something to send to the "Hey You Guys" art auction. Now that it is done, however, I decided not to send it. This sculpt was a huge learning process and I would like to have a bit more practice before sending these things off into the wild. I learned a lot of good techniques from a lot of helpful people and I learned a lot of what works and doesn't work from this experience so I will apply that to the next sculpt. Here are some final shots.

I used to have a roomate, but my mom moved to florida...

Haven't touched this for over a month, but I need to get this done. I went through and added some more detail to the hand, the face and I began to smooth out the pack. Had some good tips from some people. The biggest things that have helped have been:

• keeping the clay cold to make it easier to get corners. The fridge works, or if you are pressed for time, I recommend using dust buster for keyboards
• the exact-o knife has become my favorite sculpting tool

I also remembered that we had a "Lazy Susan" that was going to the Goodwill, but instead I ripped it apart and created a little turn-table to work on.

Latest progress on the sculpt....

It is going much better. I tore off most of the clay and thinned down the armature a lot. The sculpt is less bulky now and that is more in line with what I had originally designed. Sculpey is very pliable and my sweaty hands make it even more so. That makes it difficult to work on the non-organic parts like the proton pack. Any time I make a hard edge I end up mushing it up. I was told that throwing it in the fridge for 10 mins. or so it will harden up enough to work on the details without smooshing the rest of it.

Learning as I go....

Oh, trial and error: You teach me so much. I was not satisfied with how bulky the maquette got one I added the clay so I ripped most of it off and slimmed down the foil thickness underneath. There are some important things I will not forget the next time I try one of these.

* Don't go for the complete silhouette in the armature. Get the pose down and some slight foil thickness so that the clay has something to grab, but definitely leave plenty of room for the clay.
* Make sure to keep the wire away from the surface. It is easy to compress the foil down when you need more room to work with but if wire is hitting the surface then there is a problem getting around that without adding a lot of clay. As you can see above, I tried to remedy by cutting pieces of the wire that stuck out. It mostly worked with the exception of the piece I cut out of the torso that was holding the leg on. Whoops.
* Mind the anatomy that you will have to build. Elbows and Knees have to be higher on the limbs than I would expect. I think my eye forms the implied contour of the design when I am just looking at the wire and that throws off the proportions. What I mean is, I bent the wire of the elbow to be about where I would expect the elbow bone to be protruding. Once I added the clay it made the upper arm about 1/4 inch longer than I wanted it to be. I did a similar thing with where the legs connect with the pelvis. I didn't leave any room to sculpt up the muscle of the glutes and how the pants hangs around them.

I will try to fix as much of these as possible as I go, but boy it will be nice to start fresh on the next one.

Progress....

I've got the basic shape all blocked out. It's not quite going how I drew it up, but there is a lot I would do differently if I were to start over. Tomorrow I'll start refining some of the shapes. The hardest part so far was foreseeing how much the design was going to change from armature to clay blocking. In the current state the sculpt is a lot bulkier than I had drew it up. I built up the armature too much. I was so bent on getting the pose and silhouette right in the armature phase that I didn't leave much room to layer the sculpey. Oh well, now I know.

Learning process...

Taking up a new hoby...

Trying out sculpting. I've never done it before and I now wish that I had taken the Character Design class back in college so that I had more knowledge of how to do this.