Monday, November 25, 2013

"After The Fact" and mold experimentation

We kept it short and simple this month!  The unicorn puppet from Sassy's Perfect Pet was really really fun for me to make and animate, so this story was written around his character.

The tree was made from bush clippings held together with hot glue.
The apples and worms were made from plasticine clay.

I wanted to try shifting the focus from the unicorn to the apple by turning the lens in small increments between frames.  I normally try my darndest to avoid touching or bumping my camera or tripod when animating.  A little nudge comes across as a huge earthquake.  So this felt weird to do, but I was pleased with the results!  I was quite close to the tree.
The worms are pretty sloppy, and the bouncing apple could've been cleaner.  But considering the shorter amount of time I invested, I am happy with this little animation!

Moving on...

Following a YouTube tutorial, I tried creating a plaster mold to use with my liquid latex.  It sort of worked.  I sculpted the character's head in plasticine clay, did some smoothing with rubbing alcohol, and covered it in petroleum jelly as a mold release.
Sculptors won't be impressed, but for my limited skill in this department, it's pretty good.

I made the walls and base out of foam core scrap, and placed the clay in upside-down.
 After the plaster dried, I heated the clay with a hair dryer and pulled it out.  Right away, I saw many many small air bubbles in my cast.  I had followed the package instructions, and added it in quarters, tapping it over and over to get rid of air bubbles.  The google tells me I probably mixed it too dry?  Grrrrr!

Since the clay sculpt was obviously destroyed anyway, I tried painting three coats of latex into the mold.

And  later, out came a little pimply rubber face!
Minus the air bubbles, it's pretty accurate to my original sculpt!  There's nothing supporting the inside, so it looks a little saggy in this photo.  Needless to say, I want to try this process again!

That's all for now, thank you for reading along!

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