This Little Droid Is A Christmas Present For My Friend Rhonda, AKA Rhonda2D2. Ever SinceStar Wars: Uncut,

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

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

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.

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!

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!

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