I just launched my first ever figurine available for preorder at Fangamer.net. Avarus was inspired by Chrono Trigger’s Mammon Machine: a device used to draw power from an evil source for the sake of greed.

4.5in x 3.5in

I used a combination of old, dried out scrap Sculpey III and Super Sculpey for the original. The dry texture allows the clay to hold sharp edges.

The sculpting process took about a month and a half. One of the biggest challenges was making everything symmetrical. I mainly used an x-acto blade, a large sewing needle, and a colour shaper tool to sculpt the details. I used fine grain sandpaper to smooth the surface but it became shiny and polished as I handled it, working between bakes.

The artists at Mana Studios will cast them in resin for me, and then I’ll paint them by hand. A little Rub n’ Buff gives the surface an antique patina and the color highlights are painted with acrylic and cel-vinyl paints.

I decided to incorporate the word ‘mammon’ into the symbolic icons which cover its surface. Mammon means material wealth and gain regarded as an evil influence.

The tick on the front symbolizes the machine’s purpose, while the Anubis heads on the shoulders foreshadow destruction brought about by greed. Lavos’ three forms are represented on the back and Queen Zeal’s greedy eyes look out from under her crown. The meaning of the electrical diagram is left as an exercise for the engineers out there. Moth wings represent how ephemeral material wealth and gain are: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy…” Matthew 6:19

]]> http://camilleart.com/2010/07/13/avarus/feed/ http://camilleart.com/2010/03/09/flapjack-skymaid/ http://camilleart.com/2010/03/09/flapjack-skymaid/#comments Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:26:45 +0000 Camille http://camilleart.com/?p=297 I love this cartoon :3 The Skymaid is one of my favorite characters so I had to make some fan art in the form of a pin.

2.5in tall, polymer

The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack is © Thurop van Orman

Ness, the hero of EarthBound, is cast in 4 pieces, painted with acrylics, and is 3.5″ tall. There are 6 total.

Here’s an in-progress shot. The original is made of Super Sculpey.

Minus Man is inspired by a little known Mother 3 enemy. I cast 20 of these sad little fellows in Task 9 resin bySmooth-On and added yellow and white dyes for color. Each one came with a happy sun pin made of polymer clay. I had a lot of fun designing the packaging~

I was particularly proud of this mold because it gave me so much trouble, and I finally got it to work. I had to slice up my model and change the original pose to make a two part mold possible. It held out just long enough to produce all 20 casts.

The annual Starmen.net Halloween Funfest had a chimera theme, so I made some Ultimate Chimeras to be given away as prizes. I’ve been thinking of trying something different, so I bought some flocking fibers and glue.

Applying the flocking fibers wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be, but it definitely requires a little patience and experimenting. I lined a box with a plastic bag to catch the excess and filled a small squeeze bottle with the fibers and went to work. I smeared on a nice thick layer of tacky glue mixed with a little water to thin the consistency a bit. I heavily applied the fibers to make sure the surface was completely covered. The tricky part was being fast enough to apply the glue in a thick, even coat before it dried too much for the fibers to adhere.

After they dried, I shook off the excess and they were left with a pink, velvety texture. I also learned that if the flocking didn’t quite turn out, it was easily peeled off in almost one piece with little damage to the surface. I’ll definitely try this technique again!

A friend commissioned an Animal Crossing figurine as a gift for his lovely wife, Jen.

I designed the background in Illustrator. The figurine is painted with acrylics, and made of Super Sculpey (for the head and body) and Sculpey SuperFlex (for the hands, flower, watering can handle, legs, and feet). I used nylon thread to simulate water and applied brown flocking to the bottom.

Making this figurine reminded me of the many months I spent digging up fossils, watering flowers, and collecting furniture in this game. It’s addicting!

I wanted the Boranges to have a shiny, candy-like finish. After I painted the eyes and signed them, they were coated in clear resin. I haven’t tried this before, but I’m happy with how smooth and glass-like they are and how protected the paint is. Glazing them seems simple enough, but I had my share of scraping and re-applying.

To apply the clear resin, I wore a fresh pair of vinyl gloves, dipped my fingers into a cup of resin, and smeared a thin layer onto the surface. Dipping the Boranges would have used too much and caused puddles around the feet. Parchment paper (used for baking) was the perfect non-stick surface to set the newly coated Boranges. The resin lifted right off after it was fully cured. I did this outside and there were a couple windy days, but fortunately, I could slice off the dust particles with an x-acto and re-glaze them. 

The resin I use has a 7 minute pot life, so I had to work fast. I found that pouring it out onto a paper plate where it could spread out lengthened the pot life a little.  I knew it was time to stop when the resin got hot. I only needed to mix up a very small amount for glazing, and unfortunately, my measuring methods aren’t as accurate as they could be. Some of my attempts came out cloudy, bubbly, or soft, so I chipped away at them and re-glazed until they were right. I also needed to touch up the glaze if I applied it too early or late in the resin’s curing process. Too thin and some bare spots formed when the resin ran down too quickly. Too thick and the surface didn’t come out smooth. Frustrating as this was, I found it to be very forgiving. Drips could be sanded away and a fresh glazing covered it right up.

I’ll definitely use what I’ve learned here in my future projects. No amount of varnish or clear spray could protect the paint or smooth out the surface as well as a shiny coat of resin.

I removed the left hand to mold separately. Then I made a couple two-part molds with Smooth-On’s Oomoo25 silicone and started casting them in black tinted resin. The complexity of the cast shape caused my mold to wear out sooner than expected, so I was only able to get 10 good casts. I’m still learning to make molds, so each cast had some trapped air in the chin and occasional bubbles here and there. To fix these areas, I tinted some air-drying Lumina polymer clay with black paint and used Zap-a-Gap glue to seal it in. After a little sanding and a coat of black spray paint, they were good to go.

I tried to design these Punks to require minimal painting, but despite their limited color palette, each took over an hour to paint. Sculpting has frustrations of its own, but painting details requires a steady hand, held breath, and a tiny brush. Luckily, those mediums are flexible and you can always add/remove clay or paint over a mistake.

Here’s the painting in progress:

I signed my initials on the bottom of the feet and added the title and number. Then I drilled a hole in the left arm and hand to join them with glue and some heavy duty tie wire. After a few coats of clear spray and some matte varnish, they were finished!

Next was the packaging. I designed the inside of the paper insert and logo in Adobe Illustrator, and Reid designed the back:

I made some little burgers out of Sculpey III polymer clay as an extra. A couple rough rocks were perfect for adding texture to the buns and burger patties. I made the bun look toasted with a little transparent liquid sculpey tinted with oil paint. These were a lot of fun to make!

I’m planning to make more Shark Punk figurines in the future. They’ll probably be made 10 at a time, and each set will be slightly different. In the meantime, I’m going to start working on another round of more simple figurines too, and I’m hoping to make a lot more than 10. Visit the Fangamer store if you’re interested in getting a Shark Punk!

EarthBound is my favorite video game and I spent many happy hours watching my brother (Steve) play it while I thumbed through the handy player’s guide. The guide had illustrative clay models of almost every character and enemy in the game. I studied each page and it was a great source of inspiration for me.

After waiting 10 years for the sequel, Mother 3 was only released in Japan, so a small group of very talented fans translated the game and released a patch for english speakers. The folks at Fangamer thought the experience wouldn’t be complete without a player’s guide to complement the game and created the Mother 3 Handbook. This book is an art-filled 240 page guide with clever and entertaining writing, packed with game facts, secrets, and stats.

It was an honor to be a part of this project and have my work featured alongside the work of Emilio Orsi and Sebastian Hardy; all brought together with Jon Kay’s mastery of design. I feel that I’ve really improved as an artist these past 9 months and I enjoyed every moment of it. Working on this book with Reid (my husband) who did a lot of the writing, my brother, and many good friends has been excellent.

I’ll look back on this project with fond memories because once again, a Mother game has brought my brother and me closer and allowed us to work together. Thanks to Steve Campos, my figurines are perfectly cut out of their backgrounds and appear blemish free and ready for print. His Photoshop skills and laser-like focus and attention to detail are amazing! Thanks Steve!

Most of these figurines were made with 10-year-old scraps of Sculpey III polymer clay and painted with acrylics. The tallest is 4.5 in and the smallest is 1.5 cm tall. On average, each took 12.7 hours to make.

Here are some in-progress photos:

Here are a few (unedited) photographs of my favorites:

Visit earthboundcentral.com for more pictures and info!

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:

I began by sculpting the pieces in Sculpey polymer clay. I decided against the usual paper clay because it takes a bit to dry. Liquid sculpey also really helped to soften creases. I decided to make her in several pieces to ease the molding and casting process.

After all 4 pieces were finished, I used them to create molds. 2 molds were in 2 pieces, and 2 were one piece molds.

Then I began casting 40 tiny pieces in all. I wanted to give the heads, bodies, and hands a base color, so I mixed in a little oil paint to tint the resin. If it’s not thoroughly mixed, little opaque chunks of paint float around in the otherwise semi-transparent resin. It’s a little tricky, but using a palette knife and mixing a little part B resin into the paint before adding it to the pour cup works.

Once I had all the pieces cast, I used some brown left over Lumina polymer clay to fill in bubbles in the resin and to add ears and shoulder curls, which were too thin and delicate to cast. As an added bonus, these pieces were given a little more durability due to Lumina’s flexible nature. I also drilled holes for assembly later.

The painting process was a lengthy one, but I enjoyed it. I went through 3 very fine tipped brushes. It was fun to make the crown look like stone, and once I had a system for applying a base coat, highlights, and shadows, it all went smoothly. Since Lumina can be mixed with acrylic paint to match, I used it to fill in gaps between pieces. I gave each of the pieces a matte finish except the eye, which is glossy.

The ponytails were the final pieces, which I made with SculpeyIII. These pieces were last because the bodies and heads needed to be assembled first, so I could adjust the height and angle. I decided against creating a mold and casting this piece because it would have required another 2 piece mold, setting me back another 2 days at least. Something this thin and curvy would have been a challenge to cast without getting bubbles.

I used heavy duty tie wire and gorilla glue to assemble them. The tie wire is a rough material to work with because it’s razor sharp when cut. The figurines seem fairly sturdy though, so despite my cut up hands, I think I’ll use it in future projects.

I haven’t used resin, Lumina, and SculpeyIII together in the same project before, but they work so well together, I’ll definitely try it again. I’m pleased with the end result, and this experience has given me a little more confidence in taking on more detailed and challenging projects.

I begin by mixing some acrylic paint into a little Lumina clay. I’ve been going for realism lately, but any color works well. I then roll the clay through a pasta machine at thickness setting 4-5. If you’re going to be using a leaf with thick veins, you’ll want to use setting 3-4. Lightly press a leaf into the clay just to make it stick.

Roll the lumina (with the leaf this time) through the pasta machine a second time on the same setting you used previously.

Carefully peel the leaf from the clay. You can use the same leaf several times.

Cut it out with an x-acto blade. I try to angle the cut inward so the edges look a little thinner and more realistic.

Pinch the leaf to give it a little dimension and let it dry thoroughly.

Coat the leaf with a light layer of acrylic paint if you’d like to highlight the veins. I like to use a contrasting color.

Before the paint dries, wipe away the excess with a moist paper towel.

Add a coat of matte Mod Podge for a nice finish, and you’re done!

Here are a few things I’ve made with this technique, which are also for sale in my Etsy shop

I decided to try Lumina in 2005 after noting its similarities to Modena, a clay I really liked, but is only sold in Japan. Lumina is an air drying, resin-based, polymer clay that holds up well even when rolled out thin. It’s semi waterproof and very flexible. Cured pieces won’t break but they can tear, warp (if stored incorrectly), or melt (if left in water for a while). It’s great for making lifelike flowers, leaves, and thin delicate forms. Its strength is greatly increased with a beading wire core for the more delicate and thin pieces.

Lumina doesn’t stick to itself well, but a little Mod Podge makes an excellent bond. This clay only comes in translucent, but by kneading in acrylic paint, you can completely customize the color. Kneading in the paint is a messy job, but it beats having to buy a bunch of different colors.

It’s important to keep Lumina at its ideal moisture level so it maintains the right texture. While I’m working with it, I knead in a little water occasionally to keep it from drying out too much. So far, I’ve only been able to find it online at dickblick.com and joann.com.Lumina does have a few cons. If you’re used to working with the oven cured clays, it may take a bit to get accustomed to this clay. It’s quick drying nature makes it less than ideal for sculpting large, thick pieces, or canes. I’ve left packages out for less than a week only to discover I had a nice mold garden or a solid, dried up brick where my clay used to be. You can avoid both problems by storing it sealed tightly in the refrigerator. This past summer was extraordinarily humid, which caused all of my Lumina pieces to become unusually soft and even a little droopy. Fortunately, they returned to their usual state as soon as the air dried up again. The biggest con I’ve noticed is an unfortunate increase in price in the past year from $7-8 to over $10. I’m optimistically hoping that trend will change.I hope you’ll try it out and find a new favorite. I’d be glad to answer any other questions if I can