Beowulf WIP

[V]

My hands are not so steady after a coffee, lulz. But yeah, it does take patience and I'm not the patient type XD. Yup, the horn is made of polymer clay as well, but a different type of it.

 

[V]

 

[DreadnoughtDT]

Damn, how do you make these so quickly, Lexy? It seems like you only started it less than a week ago.

 

[Richtofen]

If you've been doing stuff like this for awhile, you're bound to get better and faster. :lol: I envy Lexy's talent for clay...she makes very beautiful peices.

 

[V]

Damn, how do you make these so quickly, Lexy? It seems like you only started it less than a week ago.

A week seems a long time to me - I expect to get something done every day these days, I guess I put a lot of pressure on myself when it comes to doing paid work so I suppose that attitude leaks into my hobby projects too. I work on this Beowulf a few hours a day so far. I guess he should be finished in another week or two. The final paint job will take at least a whole day I bet.

Faust is right, someone who is used to doing this becomes more efficient at it. To be honest though, I am fairly new to the medium, I've only been playing around with it seriously since I moved here last year, and I have skived a lot on learning what I should have been teaching myself about it.

I'm serious about working with sculptures now, and I am trying hard with them these days. I thought it would be harder to do, but it's not as difficult as I thought, it just takes patience more than anything. I have this feverish devotion to mastering things once I decide to, so I'm sure I'll get there in the end.

 

[Shadow]

Well...can he be adorably terrifying? >_> He looks great, though. ^^

=D Cool. *would commision you if she could*

 

[LordOfDarkness]

Your work is lovely, keep it up ^_^

 

[The crazy demon]

Nice Lexy, the details look really good.

BTW, i am sure Beowulf would be a lot funnier if you didn't had to ad the teeth XD.

 

[V]

But I'm looking forward to them X)

 

[V]

View of the armature. For something this large and heavy it needs a fairly strong setup. The forearm slots into the upper arm tube and is 16 gauge wire, with an 18 gauge wire inside supporting each of the fingers. The wires wrap around the arm wire and then I keep all that together with brass beading wire, and then cover it all in Araldite. So with any luck, the arm will be robust.

A lot of sculptors don't use this much armature, but I'm taking a leaf from a particular sculptor's book who designs creatures for games and ensuring that every part of the thing is properly supported. I guess he knows that his creatures will be handled and scanned and they need to stand up to handling.

The other hand will be a clenched fist, and it'll get in the way of me working on the legs if I put it on yet, so I'll get to it later.

 

[V]

 

[LordOfDarkness]

'E' followed by 'P', followed by 'I', followed by 'C'.

 

[Shadow]

:O Awesome. It amazes me that his arms stay on.... ._. For some reason I adore his eye.

 

[V]

:O Awesome. It amazes me that his arms stay on.... ._. For some reason I adore his eye.

I thought this too when I stared using this medium - how do they get the sculptures to hold delicate poses? Then I realised the inside of the whole thing has a skeleton to support it like ours, and the clay itself bonds chemically together when you heat it to 130 degrees Celcius and sets like vinyl. It's quite stronger than it looks.

Right at the start I made a few things just to smash them to see how strong the polymer clay really is. Different types can take different amounts of punishment but I have found one that is practically unbreakable. This grey one I'm using is very strong too.

 

[Shadow]

^ *nods* Oh, I see. Somehow it never connected in my head that it would stay stuck to the skeleton. *facepalms* Then again, my knowledge of clay is nil. O_O Unbreakable? *amazed* Do the different types have different degrees of difficulty when you work with 'em? (Sorry for all the questions! >_<)

 

[V]

Yes, they do. This grey one is called Sculpey Firm and it is harder to work with in some ways because it takes preparation and I prefer to add polymer oil to it to make it more pliable. Also (like the name suggests) it is 'harder' to shape things with it. Other types can be so soft it is like trying to make something out of chewing gum.

As a general rule I noticed the harder to use clays are also the strongest when they are baked.

When I say 'unbreakable' I mean once done I couldn't take a piece with a wire armature and snap it with my own hands, it was too hard. And when I dropped them nothing happened. But if it was a sculpture with arms and legs and stuff I'm sure it would still have stress points and would damage if you kicked it about. And if you took a hammer to it, I suppose.

Beowulf's horn is made from a different type which is even stronger than Sculpey Firm. I needed to I thought because the horn itself is a big potential weak point on the sculpture and has no support of its own.

 

[Vergil'sBitch]

How long would've it taken you to just do the hands, because there is alot of detail on them.

 

[V]

Probably no more than 3 hours for both hands. They would have been quicker if they were humans' hands but these were sort of an improv.

Although one hand doesn't have claws yet, so technically not finished...

 

[Vergil'sBitch]

This is going to sound silly, but i've never noticed his claws before. *laughs embarrasingly*

 

[V]

He's still very much unfinished.

Needs teeth, claws, hair lines on some bits, those lines of light & actual feathers... not to mention the rest of his body. And then he'll need a base and to be properly painted. Although he's grey already there are too many little mistakes to ever leave him unpainted. I'm nowhere as experienced as the people who can just knock out a sculpture and just need to blush it for colour.