Crick (Raksa) figure from Hinges

We love Meredith McClaren! Not only is she a great friend, but also an amazing artist and wonderful PhxCC booth buddy(AA28 for 2013). Last year we asked Meredith do a Wasp design that would be the base for Jackies costume. This year we wanted to do something more focused on Meredith's work, so we decided on making a figure from her comic Hinges. She has ton of interesting characters to chose from, but Crick (raksa) really caught my eye.
From a design standpoint, I liked the idea of taking an essentially 2D character and representing him in a 3D space.  Meredith had done such a great job of portraying that concept in the comic that I felt it would be a great first piece to do.






Lucky for us, Meredith had drawn him from several angles, so we had quite a bit to base our templates on

After Jackie came up with the templates I decided to use 1/4 inch plywood for the master copy. Raksa reminds me of those wooden dinosaurs that you built as a kid, plus the the grain of the wood and the way it chips would add an extra level of detail to the finished piece.

I used some fancy washers that I found at Ace hardware for his shoulder joints. I backfilled them with resin to add surface area for gluing. Jackie also used these to keep everything in proportion. Remember that when you use off the shelf parts in a build you need to scale everything else to that part.

To save on time, I decided to cast Crick in a simple open back box mold, which meant he would be assembled out of  seven  pieces. You might notice that after I traced all of the pieces on the board I drilled a ton of holes in it. Those are to make cutting it out easier. I tried to put a hole where ever there would be a tight turn with my coping saw. It helped save some time and avoid broken saw blades.

                                                                       Always label your "don't cut" areas! It will save you from hours self inflicted frustration.

 Cutting, sanding, filing and shaping. This took an entire sunday afternoon, but it was going to make or break the figure. I ended up using a blade shaped mini file to shape out the mouth area, stripes and to get it symmetrical. It was very slow going but necessary.

The plywood that I got split and chipped everywhere. There were a lot of splinters, too many if you ask me.

Once all the sanding was finished it was time to get the pieces primed and ready for molding.

When I do an open back mold, I like to glue styrene to the back of my master pieces. That way when I am casting there is a spill shelf built right into the mold.

I also like to use scrap styrene and a low temp glue gun to build my mold boxes. I was pretty proud of my layout for these molds.

I got a bag of colored hot glue for free, but I love how it shows up in pics. I wonder how much more it is to buy than regular glue?

Smooth-On Mold Star 15 Slow has now become my silicone of choice. Its easy to mix, has a nice balance of flexibility and strength, Arizona Art Supply carries it, and it's the same color as our logo. What's not to love?

The molds came out beautifully, no air bubbles on the surface or major leakage! I was counting on the silicone to pick up every little detail of the wood. It will make the painting and weathering I do later much easier.

I didn't take any pictures of the sanding process, but to get Raksa's head to look like the comic I used my belt sander to file the middle part to a wedge, and then super glued the two outer pieces on. I also used the sander to give the smooth backside a grainy texture.

The first casting looked...ok. The tint I used in the resin worked great, but he was lacking something. Then I remembered that Jackie wanted to carve some extra face detail before I molded it. So after getting yelled at for rushing ahead, I got to redo the head mold. I had used up all my Mold Star 15, but I had some leftover Rebound 25 brush on silicone.

Not really the kind of mold Rebound 25 is designed for, but I made it work.





We also noticed that Crick was having a hard time staying on all fours. Any bumps to the table or gusts of air would knock him down. He also looked a little too 2D. For the second casting I glued styrene spacers between the legs and the body, and bent the body and tail a bit. To do the bending I removed body section from the mold before it had cured all the way and just flexed and held it. The end result was a piece that could stand on its own and had that 2.5D pop that was missing from the first casting. I used Rub'n'Buff for his joints, Krylon Matt topcoat, and several layers of watered down black acrylic paint to finish him off. This will be the way we assemble him from now on. Everyone we do will be slightly different, but I look at that as a bonus.

Over all I am really proud of the piece we were able to create. Hopefully we will have some for sale at con this year, so make sure to stop by. And if you are reading this close to the time it was published, you can help Meredith print the first run of Hinges by supporting her Kickstarter!

Hardware Store Silicone Mold Makeing

So occasionally I will have a budget of pretty darn close to $0 to do a build. I am working on a prop for a steam punk web series called Mantecoza ( http://mantecoza.wordpress.com/ )and I needed to make 4 copies of this oversized fuse. In a perfect world I would just run down to my local supply store Ball Consulting
 and pick up some platinum Polytek mold making silicone or order some from Smooth-On. But we don't live in a perfect world, and I don't have the extra cash to spend on materials right now. So I started Google-ing different ways to make molds, and ran across people using hardware store %100 silicone caulk. Now everybody seems to have there own recipe, some thinning it with naphtha or adding acrylic paint and glycerin, but that would mean more money and time. So I used what I had: clay, %100 silicone caulk, soapy water, and Bondo fiberglass resin jelly. (Ok so I cheated a bit. I also used some mold release. Its the only non-hardware purchase you need to make for this to work, and if you are going to be casting in your new cheap-ass mold you will need it anyways. Pics with the can to follow, also a good video on this is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0KrE3G4t_o) After getting the fuse set half way down in the clay, and using the domed head of a bolt to make registration keys I was ready to start applying the caulk. I laid down a bead all the way around the base where the fuse met the clay. After getting my fingers good and wet I patted down the caulk. That seems to work better than trying to spread it out. I then laid 3 beads going along the length of the fuse and patted them down as well. The fist layer is the most important, so I tried not to trap any air between the silicone and the fuse. The internet also taught me that this kind of silicone cures by moisture, so the water isn't going to harm anything. It also taught me that if you lay down to thick of a layer that the outside will skin over and the caulk will not cure all the way through. So for this mold I did 3 layers on each side, letting each layer cure overnight. Now 6 days to do a mold might seem like a long time, but lets remember that I just bought 2 tubes of Ace brand 50 year %100 silicone caulk for FIVE DOLLARS. Cheap is not going to be fast, but it is going to be cheap.  A mold this size took a little over one tube to do.

After getting one side done, I sprayed mold release over the silicone and clay and did a jacket of Bondo fiberglass resin jelly. Its like regular Bondo but it has fiberglass fibers in it already. I don't really like the stuff, and doing a regular fiberglass and resin jacket would be lighter and stronger, but I've had half a can sitting around my shop for over a year and it seemed like a good time to use it. I cut a piece of mattboard and Bondo-ed it to the back as well so when I flip the mold over and remove the clay it will stand on its own. You could use cardboard as well.

As you can see the mold came apart nicely! I was pretty surprised actually. With my luck I figured that not only was it not going to work, but it would ruin my original as well. A quick test cast proved what I had hoped, that you can get a decent looking cast from this method. Now let me take a moment here to say that this IN NO WAY is better than buying professional mold making silicone. But if you have a tight budget  and don't mind having to do some clean up on your cast pieces, this way works.