polymer clay and cast resin art
It’s been a while since my last update, but I’ve got a lot to show for it. I’ve been busy working on figurines inspired by EarthBound, Mother3, and Animal Crossing.
Ness, the hero of EarthBound, is cast in 4 pieces, painted with acrylics, and is 3.5″ tall. There are 6 total.
These little, orange, beady-eyed critters are only 1″ tall. They are each signed and numbered and available for a limited time through Fangamer.net.
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.
Almost exactly 2 months ago, I started creating a Midna Army. Midna is a video game character from the Legend of Zelda game, Twilight Princess. She looked like quite a challenge. I’ve never attempted to make such a complex figurine with so much detail.
I recently found Smooth-On resin, which works very well. Since it is fairly clear, I’m able to add dye and metallic powders to make a variety of different colors. It took some experimentation, but I am very happy with the results. When sanded and coated with a glossy finish, the finished product looks like it is made of candy 
The semi transparency added a lot of depth and made them more like tiny sculptures instead of toys. I appreciated not having to paint them because the slight differences in the grain of the metallic powder, and color gave them each more personality.
Each of these creatures is from an old, much loved Super Nintendo game called EarthBound ( also known as Mother 1, 2, and 3).
Here are various Starmen:
And here are some Mr. Saturns:
I used a matte finish on the Mr. Saturns to make them softer. The whiskers are made of stainless steel beading wire that I coated in Lumina, so they’re flexible like real whiskers. The bows on top were made of Sculpey SuperFlex.
Last month I bought some resin from MrArt.com. I looked through the reviews and settled on Environmental Tech Castin’ Craft Clear Casting Resin because it had a perfect 5 star score and a lot of favorable comments. I expected the best, but what I got was less than sub par.
They sent me a really old can (resin has a shelf life of 6 months at best). The top inch or so was completely solidified, rendering the product unusable. After I sent it back, I recieved a second container that looked promising enough.
I followed the directions and added the necessary number of drops of catalyst for my casting (which was difficult to determine due to confusing directions) and after several days the cast still had not set up completely and was too sticky to handle. I even experimented with adding more and less catalyst and it still refused to harden. I was unable to produce any usable castings after about 6 tries.
I really have no way of knowing if this was another old can of resin, or if the product was really that bad.
I did manage to find a product that I’m happy with. The silicone mold making compound and resin from IllusEffects Studios works great. The directions were easy to follow, the mold and castings turned out perfectly, and I will buy from them again. Thanks!
Since I was somewhat recently introduced to Lumina Clay, I’ve been experimenting with flowers, but I hope to start working with other subjects as I become more familiar with the clay. Looking through my older work at camillecampos.com has inspired me to vary my work more.
I’ve started combining the strengths of different materials to better translate my ideas into my art. For example, Lumina is durable and flexible when thin, but Sculpy can create such interesting effects and lends itself better to sculpture. Resin is my third material of choice and as it is very strong, may be painted, sanded, and used along with a mold.
Here is a necklace I’ve just finished. I’m not sure if I’m entirely happy with how it came out, but it was a valuable experiment.
Here are the original paper clay pieces. It was a little tricky setting these up to be made into a necklace, because I couldn’t test it out as a whole until I cast it in resin as the original pieces were too delicate.
I’m currently creating 22 resin figures. I’m still learning as I go, but I hope to do more molding and casting in the future.
I started out with this paper clay sculpture of a StarmanDX, a character from a Super Nintendo game called Earthbound. I made it a few years ago and cast a bunch of duplicates in resin. I’m using the same original again, but I’ll be making a few alterations later for a different final product.
The first step was to put my original in a box and encase half of it in modeling clay. The clay allows me to make one side of this two part mold at a time.
