figurine sculpting process

Shortly after I finished up the Midna figurines, I started what would become a 7-month, 45-figurine marathon of sculpting for the Mother 3 Handbook. I’m not quite ready to show off the fruits of my labor just yet (expect a post about it on April 1st), but I wanted to explain my technique for making clay figurines. 

For this example, I’ll be making a Mani Mani statue from Earthbound which is an old Super Nintendo video game from 1995. These were given out by starmen.net as prizes for the annual Halloween Funfest.

I started out with a compressed ball of foil.  For bulky parts of a figurine, a foil core acts as a filler to save clay and prevent cracking when it’s baked. It also makes the final piece much lighter.

I used Super Sculpey, because the final piece will be painted. I smeared a little Translucent Liquid Sculpey (TLS) on a piece of rolled out clay so it all stuck together. I find that if I don’t use the TLS, I have problems with bubbles under the surface and the foil tries to separate from the clay as it’s rolled into a ball. 

It’s important to remove all bubbles at this stage, because they’re more difficult to deal with later. If one pops up when it’s baked, just slice it off and refill with a little TLS and more Sculpey.

I repeated the previous steps to form a torso, and used a small piece of tie wire to join them along with a drop of TLS. The wire isn’t necessary, but it does add some strength. 

Ready for bake #1. I stopped here so I could have a solid, smooth surface to add the features and details to. This process isn’t as fluid as if I had waited until the end to bake, but I find that it allows for more sanding and hopefully a little less frustration. It’s kind of like saving as you go because there’s no command Z. I don’t bake the clay for as long as it’s required to cure when I bake in stages. If I did, it could burn. I sanded the figurine after each bake to keep the surface as smooth as possible.

Bake #2. I used some TLS as glue and gave some areas more definition. I decided to stop here because I kept having to go back and fix the sharp edges as I handled the model. That’s usually a good sign that it’s time to bake again. 

Bake #3. I wanted to bake it after I sculpted the legs, so the feet would be easier to attach. I waited on the lower part of the arms until after the body was sculpted to get a better sense of the proportion. 

Bake #4. The clay does start to darken after it’s been in the oven a few times. I try to put the thinnest pieces on last because they are the first to burn. Keep an eye on it. If some areas start to get too dark and look like they might burn, lay some clay over them. It acts as a shield and helps a bit.

I drilled two holes in the feet, and put wires inside. The ends of the wires were very sharp, so I pushed them onto the base to make indentations as a guide for where to drill. Since this will be molded and cast, I filled the seam around the feet with liquid sculpey for a cleaner cast.

Final bake #5 . I added the sword and horns and touched up the eyebrows a little. Now it’s ready to be painted.

Everything went just fine up until this point. This figurine was going to serve as a painted model that could stand on its own and as an original for casting in resin. I like to paint my originals a metallic color which allows the imperfections to stand out so I can fix them.

Unfortunately, this was my first time using this particular brand of paint and I didn’t test it on a scrap of cured clay first. Over the next few days, the paint became increasingly sticky. There was some kind of reaction between the paint and the clay. I tried going over it with another spray that I know works (Valspar ‘Odds ‘n Ends’ Liquid Enamel), but the damage had already been done. One side was still relatively smooth even though it was very soft, so I cast a mold of it anyway. Before molding the second half, the paint had to be removed. The surface was a mess, but the paint came off after a lot of sanding and scraping. Thankfully, the figurine was fine underneath. 

Sometimes, the silicone seeps between the model and the first half of the mold. It happened here because I had to remove a fairly thick layer of spray paint before casting the second half, which left a space about the width of a hair. I haven’t found a good way of preventing this (maybe applying a thin layer of vaseline under the model?) but it is removable. If there’s only a little, you can rub the excess off with a paper towel (don’t use anything sharp). The mold surface may be damaged a little but as long as you’re careful and it’s not in a really detailed area, it should be okay. 

I was planning to mix in some iridescent powders with the resin, but after 5 frustrating attempts, I had to find a different approach. The powders had likely absorbed moisture, which made the resin fill with bubbles as it cured. I’ve read that the moisture can be removed by spreading the powder out in a thin layer and baking it for a few hours, but I wasn’t sure that would work. Fortunately, I found an iridescent, clear-pink spray paint that produced the same effect. Yay! Whew! This one was a challenge, but it all turned out well: