This time I’m going to explain a technique I’m developing to create expressions on my polymer clay figurines. I got a lot of feedback that I need to make this media practical and easy for book illustration, which means that I’ll need to place the same figure in multiple positions and multiple expressions easily. The positions of the body is quite easy to do, and I’ve shown in the past how I work with armatures and fabrics to create a figure that could pose (or even move in a stop motion animation film). The expressions was a tough one to crack, but I’m feeling that I’m getting there – so here’s my current way of doing it.
I started with the original Lulu figure, I created this one for personal marketing materials which I presented in “Introducing Lulu”. I fell in love with her and decided to do some more work with the same character.
I used the original head, which was already detachable, to create a mold with Sculpey mold maker material. I needed to copy the original face in order to make a new more generic base, this one had to be only the frontal part and without the hair.
Here is the refinement of this first copy. I completed it and added ears. As you can see it’s flat on the back.
The following picture shows the architecture I decided to work with. I created the back of the head, separate from the front and serving as the base of the figure’s head. The front part with the relevant expression will be fitted on to the back part. I fitted the back with magnets so it could hold on to the frontal part. I also use the same screw as before for the head, but keep the screw with the back/base part. Obviously the front part with the expression will contain inside a metal part to work with the magnet. I use simples nuts to do the job.
Here I’m adding the hair to the base of the head (the back part). I covered the frontal part which is exchangeable with aluminum foil, sculpted the hair on both back and front, baked it and pulled out the front part. Later I discovered this part of the hair is too fragile and in the future I’ll have to change a bit the approach.
Now I have a good workpiece to create a more robust mold. I placed it in a frame and here I’m working with silicon based materials to create the mold. The material is smooth-on liquid rubber rebound 25. This might not be the ideal material from the smooth-on list, but it is what I had in house and it worked for me. A better fit would be a material that is a bit more liquid.
Testing the mold, you see the first results and the success of copying the neutral expression. The copy always needs a bit of work, but my purpose was just to get started with something close to the original, as in any case I’m changing the expression for each one.
And here are a few examples of the output. These are already colored as you can see. It took me about an hour each after everything is set.
I forgot to make the holes in the head for the pony tails, so I used a dremel tool.
If we are already talking about molds, I used the opportunity to create hand molds as the faces and hands need constantly to be updated.
Finaly I’m ready to take some shoots of a new Lulu expression. You can see my improvised photo studio with my beautiful new camera.
And some result in real work, expressions and hands.
Tags: 3d illustration, children book illustration, clay miniatures, how to, sculpey, Sculpture, tutorial