Sunday, January 23, 2011

Skull construction part II

Woohoo !  What a week.
Many hours spent on my sculpt, but little progress with it.  

I took both eyes apart and made new ones, more circular.  I was afraid to continue adding details, because the core was too soft and weak, so i've baked it in my little oven in order to get a harder one.  The heaters were a little too near the sculpt so many large cracks appeared and one eye felt.  I patched the cracks with a new layer of Super sculpey, glue the felt eye back at its place and add more details.  The second baking was done in my BBQ outside the house at -25 deg C.  Heavy cracking again.  The other eye felt.  Glueing and patching again.  Third layer was baked with a hair dryer.

Some pictures of the sculpt before the second baking (BBQ).






I've applied some "spackling" stuff on it and used some sand paper to smoothen rought spots.  Two holes were done with a drill for the lighted eyes.  LEDs light come from the rear of the head.  Had some translucency issues.



Test with the LITE-BRITE pins. 



These are homemade light sockets that restrain light to illuminate only in the eyes.



Three orange pins are black tapped together with some SS for the shape.







More SS were added on the eyes.








Some tests with lightning.

 





  

 


It begins to look alive...

7 comments:

  1. Truly excellent work. Looking amazing!

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  2. Woa! That is starting to look really cool man. Nice sulution with the eyes, like it a lot!

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  3. Wow! That looks the business! Very dramatic and menacing. This is gonna look so good. Great work.

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  4. Great work Vince,

    When you're ready to paint it lookup drybrushing and wash weathering techniques on Google.

    This will really bring it to life by enhancing the edges and making it look bigger than it actually is. Plus they're really easy techniques to do.

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  5. Thanks guys ! I'm happy because the shooting will be done under very low light, so the imperfections should not irritate the eyes, as it would on day light.

    QiKsilver: Hey dude ! Thanks for the tips. I was just reading about weathering today. I was thinking about applying a layer of black primer, than maybe two different gray tones with air brush and dry brush weathering for the finish.

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  6. If you were working with a light color you could have looked at pre-shading where you paint a dark color and overpaint it with a lighter color to create a shadow effect.

    But since you're working with dark colors you can't do that.

    Unless you've upgraded your Airbrush skills since we talked I suggest you forget shadowing with an airbrush and instead work with chalk pastels.

    Find them in places like Omer De Serre (Has to be the dry type, not the oily one). Grind the stick with a sharp blade to produce a fine powder then rub it with a brush to create very nice effects. Also you can mix colors almost like paint by mixing different powders together.

    Chalks also works for highlighting edges using a lighter tone aka drybrushing.

    The downside to this technique is that you'll have to wear latex gloves to handle the model unless you want finger prints all over. Not so good for animation...

    One solution would be to spray the finished model with a clear coat which I usually don't do because it gives it a certain an amount of gloss. In your case however that thing looks a bit slimy and a final coat of clear might just be what you need. You can find clear coats with flat, semi-gloss, gloss finishes so you can start with a less "shiny" one and work your way up.

    Hope this helps... hey give me a call or even better drop by if you want to chat and have a beer!

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