Caritrease - Facts & Figures - Tumblr Blog

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!

This little droid is a Christmas present for my friend Rhonda, AKA Rhonda2D2. Ever since Star Wars: Uncut, Artoo has made me think of her, so I hope she gets a kick out of it.

It's funny how the different colors mold differently. The white clay was much softer and more pliable--to the point where it was impossible to get my fingerprints out of it--than, say, the black, which crumbled in my hands no matter how much I kneaded it first.

This is the first sculpture I've baked since the puppet heads from the film shoot, so I was a little worried it would crack, but it came out beautifully. Working in color is much more time consuming, but the finished product looks so much nicer, wouldn't you say?

Sculpey III (white, black, and denim), ~3 hours

I admit, these posts are getting fewer and farther between. But I haven't abandoned you entirely!

Here's a frog prince (or is he a baron?), modeled after this statue in Philadelphia. I'm quite a fan of his jaunty crown, personally.

Here is in in profile:

Super Sculpey, ~60 min.

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. 

There were three things John Watson loved in this world: a good pipe, Sherlock Holmes, and their bull-pup Gladstone.

Super Sculpey, ~30 min.

And that's a wrap! I can't even believe it. I mean...we're done? Seriously?

It's amazing how much better we got as we went along. By the time we were done, I was almost tempted to go back and reshoot the first scenes.

Almost.

The film has a completion deadline of December 1, which means the final product will be done in the next couple of weeks. I can't wait to see it! I also can't wait to finally get some sleep, which would be a nice change of pace at this point.

Here's Mina, waiting in the clovers for her big scene.

Thanks for all the moral support, everyone. And thanks especially to Dayna and Sean, who actually got their hands dirty with me on a couple of occasions. It made a huge difference!

Super Sculpey, Laguna clay, GM foam latex, armature wire, PAX paint, and Hydrocal, ~100 hours

We started filming today. :)

Eyeless Mina and about 5% of my tools.

Sara and Jim, setting up the shot.

Little Mina could use some friends.

World, meet Mina.

Or some semblance of Mina, anyway. Those aren't her glasses (hers will have eyes on them). And she needs a haircut. But still--!

As of 3:03am, I am officially considering myself done with these puppets. Am I actually done? Technically, no. But the remaining work is all non-essential touch-ups and about ten minutes of construction that I couldn't do tonight. So, for all intents and purposes, done.

Phew.

Zzzzzzzzz...

It's 2am and I'm still not done for the night. But that's ok, just a few more days and all this will be over. Shooting starts on Saturday morning, bright and early, which means it would be nice if...oh, I don't know...my puppets actually had heads by then.

Because they don't.

So I spent 6:30-1:30 at the studio, patching and painting the puppets. I finished three of the nine completely, two more just need heads (a minor detail), and the other four need one more coat of paint before they catch up to their headless brethren. Which means that now, I'm going to sit here and catch up on House while I sculpt a half-dozen heads as fast as my little hands can go.

Oh, and here's Marion and Monster #1 for my mom, because I promised a picture days ago but didn't finish until now:

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.

This weekend was ROUGH, you guys. Dayna (my new PA) and I were at the studio until one in the morning last night, so you have my apologies for not posting anything until today. I'm about to head over there again right now, but here are a few highlights from yesterday.

We managed to finish making all the latex bodies (yay!!!), so now it's just a matter of trimming off all the excess, patching the holes, painting the bodies, and sculpting the heads. It's a lot of work, but fortunately most of it can be done in my living room.

Thanks to Dayna for all these pictures!

The anatomy of a puppet.

Mixing the foam latex.

Pouring the latex into the mold.

Trimming the excess latex.

Lots o' puppets, in various states of completion.

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.

Phew, what a day.

I finished painting Marion (she's fully sighted now, thank you very much) and actually managed to make one latex puppet today. YES. I KNOW. I was thrilled, too. It's far from finished--there's all the patching and trimming and fur-gluing and skin-painting to do--but at least I've proven that my molds can actually create puppets. So there's that.

To illustrate how time-consuming this process is (3.5 hours, just to do the part shown below), I've made a little photoseries:

After the figure is sculpted, the mold made and dusted with mold release, and the latex mixed (according to the particular warmth and humidity of your studio), you can finally pour the mix.

When both sides are full and the armature is in place, take a deep breath and squish the two sides together before it hardens/spills out the side.

Let it bake for 2.5 hours, then pry it apart with a crowbar or a screwdriver. Or, if you're hardcore like me, your bare hands. Before waiting for it to cool. (Ouch.)

Gently peel the latex off the mold. Swatting your friend's hands away when she tries to help is optional.

Trim off the excess latex with a pair of mustache scissors. Yes, that's really what those are. Yes, the latex fumes made that a lot funnier than it should have been.

And then you're done! Haha, just kidding. You're never done. But you do have something resembling the photo up at the top. Voila!

Can I just tell you how good it feels to finally have something in color? I swear, the last few weeks have just been shades of gray: gray clay, white latex, beige Sculpey, and so on and so forth. SO WHAT if she only has one eye and it's lazy. WHO CARES if I haven't finished painting anything but her skin and some eyelashes. There's some green in her eye! Highlights in her hair! It makes a big difference.

Because Mina (the main character)'s eyes will be painted on to her glasses, this lucky prototype is going to play one of Mina's classmates. I named her Marion, after my grandmother.*

Tomorrow: With any luck, finally pouring the latex into the finished Monster #1 and Boy Body molds. I'll also start the molds for Monster #2 and the Girl Body, which would finally wrap up all the mold-making. Oh man I hope so. A girl can dream.

*I thought about naming her after my great-grandmother, who actually did only have one eye, but seeing as her little depth-perception problem is a temporary state I thought I'd go with something a little less flippant.

Today was excellent day, thanks mostly to my personal assistant (and best friend), Dayna. She was a huge help, not just for making my armatures and cutting up burlap, but for keeping me company and generally being awesome. Thanks!

And then Merci stopped by! It was a regular film-making party up in there today. Here's Dayna (right) and Merci measuring a tiny doorway for the set:

While they slaved away on that, I tried to figure out how to make the characters' heads. Cast them in latex? Stick with the Super Sculpey? I finally decided to go with the latter, so I hollowed out this head to prepare it for baking:

Once that was done, I hollowed out the eye sockets so we could pop in the eyeballs (harvested, like the clothes and wigs, from a bunch of dolls I bought at Target):

And then we popped in the eyeballs for the creepiest moment of the day (see above).

Not bad for a day's work.

Catastrophe! I came in this morning to pry apart the little boy mold, and it crumbled in my hands. Well, half of it crumbled. So I rebuilt that half, and while I was waiting for it to dry, I started on the Monster #1 mold. That's this little guy!

He's going to be covered in fur, remember, so he'll actually look really different than this. But this is what he'd look like if he was naked, shaved, and blanched. So helpful.

In other news, the second attempt at the boy mold was successful, so I built a wire armature for the puppet and tomorrow I'll pour and bake the latex on top of it. I'd show you a picture, but I'm frankly so sick of looking at the dude that I couldn't bear it. So just use your imaginations.

Merci started bringing in set pieces and monster fur today, and I'm starting to see the whole thing coming together in my head. It's really exciting. :)

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. 

Hooray, we're in the studio! I spent the better part of my Sunday listening to the Beatles and coating a headless, eight-year-old boy in Vaseline. See?

Because of all the time I spent unpacking the 8,000 boxes of puppet-making supplies we ordered from Burman, I didn't get as much done today as I would have liked. But I did make the first half of the boy body mold (this week I'll finish the mold and hopefully pour some latex before the weekend), and that's a start.

Here he is after a layer of hydrocal:

And after the first half of the mold is complete:

The west side of the studio, just for kicks:

Still plugging away at the first models for the film project. Here, you can see rough versions of the "young boy" body (to be used for some schoolkids in the background), a couple of heads (we'll see what works after we cast them in latex, starting tomorrow), and "sketches" of the monsters. The pear-shaped one on the right is really growing on me, but the cat/walrus/Reptar hybrid on the left has got to go. I'll keep fussing until something sticks. It's hard to know exactly what's going to work, since the bodies will be clothed (real fabric) and the monsters will have fur. It's like trying to sculpt the skinned version of something you can't quite picture in the first place.

Thanks for sticking with me while I do the boring parts. After tomorrow, there's going to be a lot of cool stuff to see. :)

Just FYI, she does have a head.

I've been up late sculpting every night, so forgive the lazy photo. I'm halfway through a couple of monsters, some other heads, and assorted other puppets, but they're not cool, "wow, the process is so interesting" works-in-progress...more like "wow, someone should teach Cari how to sculpt." So I'll refine a little more before I post those.

And now...a nap.

Tumblr, meet Mina. Or, what will eventually become Mina. Maybe.

I've been sculpting, sketching, plotting, and measuring, and today I made what will probably become the body shape for Mina (the main character) and probably some of her female classmates, too. She's headless because we're animating the faces by making a series of different heads which we'll pop on and off between shots. She's got a little baby fat to help make her look young, and slightly exaggerated hands so we can slip armature wire in there to animate her fingers once she's cast in latex. Here's the back view:

I actually sculpted her muscles first, and when she looked too old, I draped a layer of skin and fat over the top to make her less defined. Keep in mind that she's, uh, not going to be naked in the film; she'll be dressed in real fabric, so her body is just to give the fabric the right drape.

(Oh, and here's some explanation if you have no idea what all this is about.) More to follow!

In which I describe why there will suddenly be a lot more posts and why all of them will seem so similar.

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.

I call this one "Second Attempt at a Human Head: This Time (Please, Lord) Let My Friends Make Less Fun of Me."

Skulls are hard, you guys! I'm trying to get the fundamentals down so I can sculpt more realistic figures (you gotta know what's underneath first, right?), but people just got too many bones. I'll keep at it, though. Eventually I will be a skeleton-sculpting pro, which I guess will come in handy in my future career as either a medical supply stockist or a Hot Topic employee.

Super Sculpey, ~60 min.