Shop Log 10/31/22 – 31 Days of Progress Week 4

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 Monster Clay for when I inevitably screw up and not have to resculpt the entire piece again (think of it as like a save point in a video game). That alone is worth the little bit of silicone mold making rubber that I sacrifice for these middle molds. I can also cast the shape in a hard resin, which will make it easier to fit the waist articulation ball joint for when I’m ready to move on to that phase and I can make sure that everything lines up with the torso before I commit to a final mold.

I made additional progress on the face sculpt as well, also using Monster Clay. I wanted to stick as closely to the reference image as I could while also wanting to infuse even more of that G1 Transformers energy. Like every rough sculpt, I made multiple versions as a means of teaching myself how to sculpt something that I never sculpted before. One of the sculpts was so far removed from the reference image that I figured it might be fun to keep it around in case I ever made a similar robot in the same series or universe.

After hitting upon three sculpts that I liked well enough to worry about messing up as I refined them further, I decided to make a middle mold of them so that I could pour as many Monster Clay duplicates as I needed in case I accidentally squishes, marred, or otherwise messed up the facial features I so painstakingly worked on as I began to rough sculpt the rest of the head around said faces. This is quite easy to do when you’re sculpting with Monster Clay, because the material gets softer and softer the more you work with it, which can easily distort the features. This is why I recommend letting the Monster Clay sit and firm up for several minutes at a time, even though it’s a major momentum-killer. You can also put it in the freezer or refrigerator, which I often do, though I should probably warn you that it makes the Monster Clay somewhat brittle.

Mishaps can also occur when you’re smoothing out the surface of your Monster Clay sculpts using a cheap nylon brush dipped in some isopropyl mystrate (this was recommended to me by a youtuber whose name escapes me at the moment), so it helps to have a mold on hand that allows you to make multiple duplicates of your basic sculpt. More experienced sculptors probably don’t need to be quite so cautious, but I wouldn’t know. I’m a complete novice and I’ve only been teaching myself how to sculpt for a couple months.

I did start on the rough sculpt of the head, though I should probably explain exactly what I mean when I refer to something as a “rough sculpt”. This is basically me freehand sculpting something that I never sculpted before as a means of teaching myself how to sculpt it (if that makes any sense at all). Mostly it involves making basic shapes in clay, cutting them with a clay cutter or hobby knife, and manhandling it into something resembling the overall shape that I need. All the while, I take notes in my head of what shapes to combine and how to combine them. This often takes me several (dozen) attempts before I stumble upon something that makes me go “hmmm, this might actually work”. Only then do I take my mental notes, my calipers, and my reference image and start making measurements for when I actually try to sculpt the part for real.

Obviously, I’m not at the latter stage quite yet with the head sculpt.

Rough sculpts are also good for lightly test fitting onto existing parts to preview how they fit and what else to add for the actual sculpt (like more of a neck, for example) and determine whether to make the actual piece bigger or smaller. And yes, I made a middle mold of the burger torso as well and poured a duplicate in Monster Clay. This will also come in handy as I sculpt more parts and need to determine where and how they’ll fit for when I’m ready to add the arm and neck joints to the torso (as well as the socket for the waist joint).

As I mentioned before, it takes me several attempts to hit upon the right shape when I’m doing a rough sculpt of something. Hence why I made so many copies of the face. If this seems excessive, know that I’ll probably go through all of these faces as I work towards sculpting the overall head (and that’s if I’m lucky).

In other news, I finished some side projects, namely the handful of resin recasts that I used as test dummies for the Slap Chop painting method and the custom Toxie figurine that I started several months back. As I stated in past Shop Logs, the Slap Chop figures and the Toxie custom will each get their own standalone articles that I’ll upload in the next couple days.

Looking back at the Shop Log for Week 1 of this year’s 31 Day challenge, I felt somewhat discouraged that I didn’t make anywhere near the amount of progress on the projects that I earmarked for this month (particularly the Oni figure and the Mecha Burger). Losing my pressure pot and getting screwed over by the manufacturer was another bitter pill to swallow (though I did order a new one and it should actually be arriving tomorrow). 

But if nothing else, my work over the past couple weeks served as a reminder that my best move it to  take my time with the early sculpting phase of these projects and not to rush the early sculpting phases, that it’s better to sculpt something multiple times and make multiple versions than to just ram an inferior part through the molding and casting process for the sake of getting a project done. In any event, progress on Mecha Burger (and then the Oni figure) will continue even as this year’s 31 Days of Progress draws to a close. While I’d like to at least get all the Mecha Burger parts sculpted and molded by the end of this year, I know better than to put a hard and fast deadline on such a project.

I should note here that I’ll once again be away from my place in PA as I visit family in Ohio for most of November, and while I probably won’t have a ton of hobby time while I’m there, I do still plan to at least take my sculpting supplies with me since everything I plan to bring easily fits into a sewing box. Who knows, maybe a temporary change of setting will do me some good?