Outpost 206

Picking up where I left off last time , I set about sculpting the waist piece/tomato slice for the Mecha Burger figure. I toyed with the idea of using some premade polymer clay shapes, but even after some heavy sanding, I couldn’t get overall the shape to look the way I needed it to look (typical for any pre-existing bits I’ve tried to use in this build) so I sculpted one from scratch using Monster Clay. I cut out the shapes using some small oval cookie cutters that were more or less in scale with my reference image and tried to bevel the edges with a sculpting tool that had a wedge-shaped head. After test fitting it against the burger torso, I made a quick silicone mold of the waist piece so far. I consider these intermediate or “middle molds” because they’re about midway between the initial rough sculpt and the final sculpt (which will have its own mold, complete with articulation joint). That way, when I’m making further refinements to the overall shape, I can pour new ones in Mon

Going to be a shorter update than what I usually post, but I unfortunately didn’t get as much done on my projects as I hoped I would over the past week. Still, keeping with the theme of this month , some progress was made and some progress is better than no progress. I more or less finished the latest sculpt of the Mecha Burger torso after some refinements to the buns, though I still need to sand it a little more. Maybe give it a coat of Mr. Surfacer to hopefully smooth it out more. I also peeled off the gray polymer clay “base” that I built the torso on top of as I couldn’t sand it down to be thin enough where it could blend in seamlessly between the bottom of the torso (which I’ve also been sanding as flat as possible) and the top of the waist. I also still need to trim down the dowel that I used to mark the area of where the head and neck will go and I’m holding off until I sculpt some of the remaining parts (arms, waist, legs, head, fry cannon) before I fully commit to gluing dow

31 Days of Progress hasn’t exactly been going to plan, as I suffered a major setback to my projects this week. Once again, my California Air Tools pressure pot needed for my resin casting has malfunctioned. I’ll spare you the technical details, but there’s something seriously wrong with the valve that the air hose attached to and not only is the pot slow to pressurize, it appears to get stuck at around 20 psi or less. I’m almost certain that it’s something to do with the valve because when I disconnect the hose and open the valve, it doesn’t vent any air and I have to depressurize the pot using the safety valve (which I don’t make a habit of using). I checked for blockages and found none. My pressure regulator knob hasn’t been adjusted (I know better than to try to mess with that thing from the first California Air Tools pressure pot I had to exchange with Amazon), so I don’t know what the problem is. I’m thankfully still under my 12-month warranty and I’ve reached out to the manufac

This time last year, I gave myself a challenge (well, more like a general theme) dubbed 31 Days of Customs . This year, I want to instead challenge myself to make as much progress as I can on what I consider my highest priority projects and see where I’m at with them by October 31. I decided to go with 31 Days of Progress because I feel like I’ve been spinning my wheels with the projects and I’m hoping I can overcome that this month. But on to the projects and what I’ve been able to accomplish in week one. Up first we have some Mexican bootleg MOTU figures that I recently picked up on ebay. Given the simple articulation scheme, I wanted to not only make some molds of these first but also to modify these figures to add head/neck articulation (and to allow for swappable heads) as well as replace the skinny peg articulation in the waist with a superior ball and socket joint. Step one was to make molds of the arms (which are the same for both figures), the legs (which are also identical