Here are a couple of pics from the tutorial to wet your appetite. Smellybug does this thing for a living but why not pick up some hints and tips from an expert? And he is GOOD!
Concept Drawing
Building the Skeleton
Filling it in
Refining the Detail
Getting Ready for Baking
Painting
I left out the finished sculpture, you will have to read the thread for yourself. It is a great read!
I enjoy making things. I can make things with wood or metal or even digitally with Photoshop. But lately I was developing the urge to sculpt something. Since this was the first time I considered using clay to sculpt something I had no idea where to begin. I picked up a 5 pound box of sculpting clay from a hobby store going out of business and dove right in.
It was fun to form and make things like monster heads and small animal figurines. But when I decided a couple of these brick-a-brack were worthy to be saved I tried to take the next step and harden those creations. Sheesh! 2000 degrees for hours and hours for fire them!
I looked into making my own backyard kiln, but compared to the few trinkets I wanted to fire the time and materials involved would be staggering. And there were precious few places around the neighborhood that rented kiln time.
Into the closet with the 5 pound box of pottery clay. Maybe someday. A while later I chanced upon Super Sculpey Clay. What a great find! Handles very well, not too soft nor too hard. Has a long shelf life without special conditions (ask me what happened to my 5 pound ROCK after a couple of months sitting in the closet). And it can be baked hard in an ordinary kitchen oven in little time.
Ok, I thought, let’s get started! I wanted to make something right away but usually when I made a deer or some other object the unsupported parts would begin to sag and droop even before I got it finished enough to get to the baking staqe. I searched Youtube for different ideas until I came upon this video. I got all my ideas lined up and finally had a notion of how to execute my first sculpture.
This is a GREAT video to watch and learn if you are just starting out with polymer clay modeling. Watch and see and I am sure you will agree, this is a great foundation to build upon.
If you ask me technical questions please don’t argue with me because you don’t like my answer. If you think you know more about the topic, why ask? And if I’m arguing with you…it’s because I am positive that I am correct, otherwise I’d just say “I don’t know” or give you some tips on where to look it up, I don’t have the time to just argue for the sake of it.
Starting a conversation by insulting yourself (i.e. “I’m such an idiot”) will not make me laugh, or feel sorry for you; all it will do is remind me that yes, you are an idiot and that I am going to hate having to talk to you. Trust me; you don’t want to start a call that way.
I am ok with you making mistakes, fixing them is my job. I am not ok with you lying to me about a mistake you made. It makes it much harder to resolve and thus makes my job more difficult. Be honest and we can get the problem resolved and continue on with our business.
There is no magic “Fix it” button. Everything takes some amount of work to fix, and not everything is worth fixing or even possible to fix. If I say that you just need to re-do a document that you accidentally deleted 2 months ago, please don’t get mad at me. I’m not ignoring your problem, and it’s not that I don’t like you, I just cant always fix everything.
Not everything you ask me to do is “urgent”. In fact, by marking things as “urgent” every time, you almost ensure that I treat none of it as a priority.
You are not the only one who needs help, and you usually don’t have the most urgent issue. Give me some time to get to your problem, it will get fixed.
Emailing me several times about the same issue in the same day is not only unnecessary, it’s highly annoying. Emails will stay until I delete them, I won’t delete them until I’m done with them. I will typically respond as soon as I have a useful update. If it is an urgent issue, let me know (see number 5).
Yes, I prefer email over telephone calls. It has nothing to do with being friendly, it’s about efficiency. It is much faster and easier for me to list out a set of questions that I need you to answer than it is for me to call and ask you them one by one. You can find the answers at your leisure and while I’m waiting I can work on other problems.
Yes, I seem blunt and rude. It’s not that I mean to, I just don’t have the time to sugar coat things for you. I assume we are both adults and can handle the reality of a problem. If you did something wrong, I will tell you. I don’t care that it was a mistake, because it really makes no difference to me. Don’t take it personal, I just don’t want it to happen again.
And finally, yes, I can read your email, I can see what web pages you look at while you are at work, yes, I can access every file on your work computer, and I can tell if you are chatting with people on an instant messenger or chat room (and can also read what you are typing). But no, I don’t do it. It’s unethical, I’m busy, and in reality you aren’t all that interesting. So unless I am instructed to specifically monitor or investigate your actions, I don’t. There really are much more interesting things on the internet than you.
