Monday, January 08, 2007

Cloak, no longer in four pieces!

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Time: 1hrs & 40mins Total Time : 30hrs & 48mins
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Bit of a break over the weekend but some more work today. After the superglue set the pieces were more solidly joined than I expected but in order to hide the join and reinforce it I used more resin to cover the join quite liberally inside and out.





A bit of sanding and it’s starting to take a nice shape. Once it was smoothed over it really is looking nice!




I don’t like the shape of where it sits against the hip, I feel it’s too bulky and not flattering whatsoever. I’m unsure whether I can sand this back without losing that area completely, I will try and if I loose it I will sculpt more resin over it and go from there.

Friday, January 05, 2007

Shuichi - Cloak sanding and construction

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Time: 3hrs & 50mins
Total Time : 29hrs & 8mins

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Another long session today as it was my first day off work for a while (besides the public holidays). I did some sanding on the torso part of the cloak and reshaped a little bit but most of my time spent today was sanding the first part of the cloak that I adjusted.




This took a long time but I finally got it nice and smooth. I also rolled out some Magic Sculpt this morning and draped it over the 2nd piece of the cloak. It had pretty much set by late this afternoon so I pulled out the clay and snapped off the old piece of the cloak, I’ll add some Magic Sculpt inside it tomorrow when it’s fully set. It’s a little thin and delicate compared to the 1st piece so it may need some more resin to strengthen it up.

Lastly, I superglued the 1st cloak piece to the torso piece of the cloak, once it sets overnight I’ll use some more resin to join the pieces so it looks like it should, so far though so good!

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Shuichi - More Cloak and Dismemberment :(

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Time: 3hrs & 20mins
Total Time : 25hrs & 18mins

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As I expected the Klean Klay peeled away from the Magic Sculpt nicely. I cut away the excess old layer with a pair of strong scissors, rough sanded the edges and added some new Magic Sculpt to hide the seam and add a bit of strength to the new layer.


I then covered the torso with Klean Klay, masked the arms ready & added the resin over the body. This is so firstly the cloak wont stick permanently to the torso and secondly so I can create a little bit of detail and the correct shape of the cloak.


I let this sit on the model overnight to cure, it’s very thin, I made it this way so it would pick up the detail and I knew it would be week in parts so I’ve added some extra thin layers of Magic Sculpt and have left it again to cure overnight.




I realised it was impossible to get off the cloak because of the arms and I purposely left a split down the middle of the back with the intention of keeping the cloak in two pieces. However this was still no good and I couldn’t get it off the arms. I’ve decided to separate the arms at the end of the skin tight shirt he’s wearing underneath. I took both arms off tonight and bore into the upper arm with a small round dremel attachment to help attach the arm back on.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Shuichi - Back into it!

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Time: 58mins
Total Time : 21hrs & 58mins

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Finally back into it, I won’t go into detail as to why I didn’t model for a few months although a lot of you already know the reason. Anyhow it’s back on and I’m determined to make some decent progress on this Shuichi so I can start other projects.





I finally started to work on make the rolls in the cloak less prominent. Firstly though I thought one or two sections of the cloak need to be a different shape. This was my intention from the start but after experimenting with different ways to create the shape I ended up giving in and using that wire. Now I finally have a better idea although being the first try it may not work. Basically I sculpt using Klean Klay, this product NEVER hardens, no matter what you do to it. It’s the main sort of clay used when making silicone moulds because it can be shaped poured over with silicone and reused over and over. Its oil based and a dream to work with.


I’ve made the basic shape of one end of the cloak and have rolled out some fresh Magic Sculpt and laid it over the Klean Klay. As mentioned previously Magic Sculpt will shop up the smallest details when it’s used like this, which is ideal for what I’m after but caused no end of suffering when I used it to mould over and make his shorts, even the masking tape would show up with it, it caused me to waste a lot of time sanding. This time however, that’s what I need it to do.


Hopefully once this cures overnight the Magic Sculpt will NOT stick to the Klean Klay. We’ll see, if it works then I’ll use this mode again because it allows me to sculpt over the model without having any of the clothes stuck permanently to the figure.