3D Design Testing

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Testing with Flat Pieces

I want to test this makeup with some flat pieces, firstly to see what the phone and the tumours would look like in silicone, and also to test some designs on the skin, so for my final sculpt ill have more of an idea of what compositions look good.

I will also use these pieces to test sizes of tumours and prosthetics on the face.

For these pieces, I used Chavant medium clay, as this is what I will use for the final sculpt, as I want to test how the texture would transpose onto this clay.

1. The first thing I sculpting in these tests, was the phone tests. From all the 3D testing I did above, the design I like most is similar to the last one, still with the screen in, and the buttons protruding under the skin. Then with tumours and veins coming from the phone, to make it look like an infection.

What is challenging me about this makeup is the science fiction and fabrication of this prosthetic, unlike previous make-ups i have done, I do not have a clear image of what my makeup will look like at the end.

With this idea there is a lot of leeway with design.

Therefore I need to test various ideas, for this i have used WED clay on the second core I made, these sculpts were all very rough and quick spending about 5 minutes on each just to get an idea of what would work and what wouldn't.

For these designs i also used the broken phones that I took apart, when researching into the technical designs.

Test 1

For the first test I didn't really have much of an idea what to do, but i thought the idea of the phone embedded into the clay was a good start. The sculpt below is really basic, but I think that it has the right idea of what I want about it coming onto the face, and the right sizes of tumours. But I think that the phone is to long and not going to work.

Lastly, I wanted to test the tumours. These sculpts are fairly simple, because I want some element of realism in my piece I copied the tumours as closely as possible from the research and reference pictures i have. it was good to test the sculpting but the main thing I wanted to test with these were the various sizes of them. As you can see in Fig. 18.32 there are 3 different sizes of tumour that i have sculpting ranging from really subtle, to realistic and then one that is very large and over the top. I want to see what will work best with the phone and how they will look on the skin. to see which one looks the most like an infection but also realistic.

I think that also the addition of the veins works well with these tumours, as it gives some guidelines for painting, and some extra interesting textures.

When I visited Creaturegeddon this year, I spoke to the artists at the Hammerhead Sculpting stool. One of them was a great sculptor, for his work he used the Hammerhead sculpting plasterline, which is an oil based clay. Unfortunately there was a fire in his workshop, the resulting effect can be seen in one of his sculptures in Fig. 18.30. He told me that from then on he used his blowtorch to create this effect on his sculpts.

So for a quick test i used my blowtorch on some clay, to make a flat piece out of and see if it looks like burnt/ infected skin and see if it could work with the actual sculpt.

Fig. 18.33

2. Secondly I wanted to create some texture in my sculpt, and make my makeup quite cyborg-like and technical. I have used a chip board from one of the phones I dismantled, to first imprint the texture onto some clay and secondly lodge the board into clay and mould it straight from there, with also some clay spread around the edges, so it can be blended into the skin. I am interested to see which technique works the best, for what I am looking for. Which is a really subtle tech effect similar to the prosthetics on the rich people in the movie Elysium. Unlike the other prosthetics in that film, I want the prosthetics to look like they are coming from under the skin, not breaking through or attached on top.

Fig. 18.29

Below is a sculpture that tries to combine, both the tumour and the cyborg/ technology designs together. For this sculpture I tried not to copy a tumour directly, but found a photo of a mutated cell, and used inspiration from this, as a way to link the two aspects of the makeup. I really like this sculpt, and hope it works in silicone, I think that the fantasy element makes it work better than just copying the skin lesions. The veins off the tumour also work well going into the cyborg design.

Texture Ideas

Obviously for this sculpt I will be adding skin texture so that it blends really nicely into the skin. But also just by messing around in these initial 3D tests, I found that because this clay is so soft it picks up the texture from the broken pieces of phone and memory board really easily. So I can used them like texture stamps and include them in my sculpture.

This clay is very soft, so it might be more difficult to get the same effect on Chavant Medium.

Carrying on the testing I decided to include more tech ideas, this is where the idea of the wires and the head phones, comes in. I know in my 2D designs i decided not to include the hearing aid inspiration in my makeup. But i thought since i found the headphones it might resolve the wire issue and deserved a try. I decided to put the wires into the clay also to act as arteries and veins in the clay, instead of sculpting them in, just to see if it would give a different effect. I also placed them into a position where the natural arteries in the head are to see how I could use this practically.

Continued below I added a few sketchy veins into the clay, Which I like the style of, how they go right from the phone and onto the face to make it look like they are coming from it, like it is the source of the infection. I also like how they turn from human to tech like, just as an idea.

I knew that I didn’t want this phone case in the sculpt as it was too large, but when i took it out i preferred the effect it left, with just the imprint of the phone, I think it gives the impression of the phone and looks kind of cool.

Instead of having the whole phone shape in the ear I think it would be enough to just give the impression of the machine inside the head, but just having the screen there. so below I have done just that. Looking at it now i do not like the wires in it at all, I think it makes it messy and will be too complicated. but if you look closely under the screen I have carved in some small details that mimic the designs from the memory board. In this something I like and will probably include in the final sculpt. Also the composition of tumours in this test, seem to work well.

Before I discarded this case altogether I thought it necessary to try it the other way around so the back of the phone is facing outwards, because this is the way you would hold the phone to you r head, so it is logical to sculpt it this way. However this gives less room for design and detail work, and I think would be a less interesting sculpture and makeup. I also think it gives less opportunity for the makeup to be lit up like I want it to be.

Concentrating on the front of the face, I really like the idea of using the broken pieces of the phones in the sculpt to add lots of detail, the one above the eyebrow especially that acts like a vein. I think that if it is really thin, it will be really subtle, but it needs to have a blending edge around it when I sculpt it on the real thing.

I am also wary of where the edge ends on the face, I do not want it to be a straight line on the face because it will make it really obvious in the makeup where the edge is. But if it goes in and out around the eye like below it might work if I sculpt it thin enough.

One last phone design i tried here was one that I copied from a Photoshop design, I really like it and I think that it works really well to have the screen in the top and the keys sculpted into the clay. This design is also more on an angle rather than straight vertical, so that it is in more of the position it would be when you speak on the phone in real life. However this is really boxy on the head, as you can see in Fig. 18.23 and if I did this sculpt for the final thing, I would have to ease the transition better.