Shop Log – 12/31/22

I think it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: blogging hasn’t been a huge priority for me these past few months. So much so, I’m a bit taken aback that this is my first Shop Log since October. I’ve spent half of November and half of December visiting with my family in Ohio for the holidays, which hasn’t left a ton of time for my more focus-heavy projects (and even less time for blogging about it). But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been crafting!

Earlier this month, I made a little bit of progress on my Mecha Burger project. Though that progress mostly consisted of adding ball joints to a resin duplicate of the torso sculpt and an attempt to rough out a sculpt for the two upper leg pieces. This was before I purchased an angle cutter for clay and struggled greatly with creating beveled edges. I also tried to sculpt the rest of the head, which made me realize that I’m going to have to redo the entire head from scratch, including the face.

I also drilled out what will eventually be the socket for the ball joint that will be attached to the top of the waist piece. Before I left for my family’s place in Ohio, I decided to put Mecha Burger on hold until I got back to my place (which will be this Sunday), since it was one of those focus-heavy projects I mentioned. Plus, I wanted to level up my sculpting with some other projects so that I would hopefully have an easier time finish the rest of the Mecha Burger sculpt when I eventually circled back to it.

One such project was this random muscle man that I started sculpting out of Sculpey Premo with no clear plan in mind outside of trying to follow two youtube tutorials to create the torso and arms. A few days ago, I got the idea that I wanted to turned it into the Rick from Splatterhouse but haven’t gotten around to sculpting the head, feet, hands, and the rest of the clothes (a tattered suit jacket and some rips around the cuffs of the pants after I sculpt the feet).

Expect a separate article on this practice project when I do finish it, since I’d like to make a resin copy or two and paint it. But again, this project was just to get some reps in and get more comfortable with sculpting so that I can better complete my other major projects.

The reason why I didn’t wrap up my practice sculpture was because I quickly became absorbed in what would be the main project I worked on while I was in Ohio, which is a bit of an odd one. Watching various youtube videos on basic sculpting, I stumbled upon a pretty exciting bit of advice. This person (and I wish I could remember who said it) mentioned that a good way to learn and subsequently improve your sculpting skills was to copy existing objects. This got the wheels turning and I thought it would be fun to make larger versions of some of my smaller figures.

The first one I wanted to do was a scaled up five-inch version of an Eternia Minis style figure, which I plan to turn into a template body pattern/buck body that I can use for any number of different characters. I also plan to give this entire process its own article when I’m finished, but I started by taking a bunch of reference photos of my Eternia Minis He-Man figure and scaling them up to five inches in photoshop before printing them out on cardstock. I print all my sculpting references on cardstock because I end up handling them a lot and regular printer paper probably won’t hold up as well.

From there, I used the reference images to shape my armature wires and secured them with a two-part epoxy clay (in this instance, it’s Green Stuff) to create the basic skeleton for my sculpt. I also use these reference images to make measurements with my digital calipers to get the dimensions I need while sculpting to keep my sculpt as close as I can to my source image.

Over the holiday vacation, I sculpted most of the body and I’m quite pleased with how everything is shaping up. This was my first time using Super Sculpey Living Doll polymer clay and I really enjoy working with it. Note that I didn’t include much detail on the feet, crotch/trunks piece, and wrists because again, this sculpture is just meant to be the basic body pattern for what I hope will be a series of figures in this particular style.

Once I finish sculpting the head and a few other minor things, the plan is to make a mold of this sculpt with which to create a few resin duplicates that I can then divide up into the parts that will be articulated in the final figures. These include the arms, hands/wrists, head, torso, and waist. After attaching ball joints to the torso and waist and drilling out their respective sockets, I’ll make another set of molds for each of these parts. Then, whenever I want to create a new figure from this buck system, I’ll pour some Monster Clay into the parts I want to modify for that particular figure, retool the sculpts, and make new molds of said parts (which I will then cast in my FlexIt-90 resin to make the final action figures). Again, the full process is forthcoming in a separate article.

The back looks a bit charred because the first time I baked the polymer clay, I used the toaster oven in my mom’s kitchen and that turned out to be…not so great. But it’s nothing a bit of sanding and some specs of Millput couldn’t fix. And since this sculpt is just the means to an end and won’t really matter after I make the initial mold of the entire thing, the discoloration doesn’t really matter. I’m really excited about the possibilities here.

A side project that I started on back in November and still need to finish is a head sculpt of this panther wrestler that I plan to use with my preexisting Mexican bootleg luchador molds. Much like Mecha Burger, this panther wrestler was another random background decoration that I saw while playing through Saints Row 2022 and convinced myself that it would make for a cool action figure. Also like Mecha Burger, it’s a project I temporarily put on hold while I improved my sculpting on other projects, but I plan to finish it at some point after I return to my place in Pennsylvania.

Once again, I’ll give this project its own dedicated article when I’m done that details the whole process, but I basically just sculpted a rough panther wrestler head in polymer clay, made a mold (well two molds actually, one for the head and one for the lower jaw), and then produced some duplicates in Monster Clay that I intend to refine down into the final project. Obviously not done yet, but here’s a progress shot of the current batch of Monster Clay head sculpts in various stages of completion (only the best one will make the cut).

Also, I took a belt from a vintage wrestling figure and molded it all in one piece. The original belt had one of those pull-through buckle things to make it adjustable, but since I can’t replicate that with any kind of flexible resin, it was molded already in its “fastened” state. I plan to sculpt the design on the belt seen in the reference image, stick it to this blank belt, and make a new mold for use with the finished figure. The belt pictured below is a test casting from that blank mold and surprisingly, it turned out great. It fits around the waist of the bootleg luchador body as well as around the shoulder like so:

I won’t spend this last bit of my final blog post of 2022 making big plans for next year because knowing how I am about these things (and not knowing how busy I will be with other non-crafting things), that will just be setting myself up for disappointment. But I will say that the projects listed here are the ones I want desperately to finish early on in 2023. Overall, I learned a ton this year (specifically about molding and casting) and I plan on learning even more in 2023 with more of a focus on creating toys based on my own original sculpts. I also want to pivot back towards project-specific articles and away from these intermittent Shop Logs, but that's largely contingent on me actually seeing these works-in-progress through to completion. So here's hoping for a much more productive 2023.