Final Sculpting process

1st Stage

2nd Stage

3rd Stage

4th Stage

5th Stage

Texturing

Before starting this sculpt I still was not set on a design, I knew from the 3D testing what I didn't want and the placement of the phone etc, but I didn't have anything specific to follow, which I think is why I struggled with it for a while.

Firstly I decided to use some of my flat pieces placed on the core just as a last idea for the sculpt before starting.

I definitely think that there is enough space to sculpt down onto the neck and across the face.

I definitely want to make the phone less rectangular on the head, and more organic, and look as if it is embedded in the head.

The first stage of this sculpt was getting the major forms down onto the core, I started this before doing the first test, so the initial sculpt went into the hairline more, and I sculpted the veins coming off it, but I don’t think they look realistic at all looking at it now. so I will probably knock them back.

Initially I wanted to get the form, with the phone and the screen in with the prosthetic coming onto the face, sketching in tech design and tumours.

Fig. 23.1

Fig. 23.4

Fig. 23.9

Fig. 23.13

Fig. 23.16

Fig. 23.20

Fig. 23.24

Fig. 23.3

Fig. 23.11

Fig. 23.15

Fig. 23.19

Fig. 23.23

Fig. 23.25

Fig. 23.22

Fig. 23.21

Fig. 23.17

Fig. 23.18

Fig. 23.14

Fig. 23.12

Fig. 23.10

Fig. 23.7

Fig. 23.2

Fig. 23.5

Fig. 23.6

Fig. 23.8

Process Evaluation

I found this sculpt quite difficult and challenging, I think it is one of the most complex sculpts I have created because it is not 100% fantasy, there is a lot of elements of reality in this, so i wanted to make it look realistic. It is also the first time I have sculpted anything science fiction based. I really like this genre and hope to continue with it in the future.

For this process i am really glad that I met Don Lanning in the middle of it, as he said some really inspiring words about sculpting and art in general, which motivated me to create a really good sculpt.

Overall I am happy with this sculpt, and think it will work well as a makeup.

What i have learnt about this process is to constantly step back from the piece and revisit it with fresh eyes. Look at all the previous designs to see if there is something I could use from my sketches.

Also not to be afraid to change something if it is not working.

Also that it is easier to have a solid idea and design for the sculpture when coming into the sculpture rather than making it up in the process.

In the second stage I was still struggling with the sculpture, But I removed the piece from the top of the head, as I believe with all the hair my model has on the top of his head, this would not work.

Also as before in my drawn designs, I think that this confuses the message and complicates the sculpture too much.

I also knocked back a lot of the tech forms and texture as well as the veins to make it look more like skin.

Before continuing my sculpt I had to test some things on my model, Mainly how laying prosthetics into the hair works. I found that the thin long prosthetics were too hard to lay into the hair because of the thickness of his hair, and that the prosthetics with a broader edge, like the tumours, without things coming off of them were easier to apply and hide the edge.

Because of what I learnt in the makeup test I decided to knock the veins going into the hair back a lot until they were practically removed, and then add a thin amount of clay to make a broader edge, that will be easier to apply into the hair, and cover with laid hair. you can see this in Fig. 23.9 here.

Before this step I also had a tutorial with Pete about this sculpt and he said that the transition from the phone to the face needed to be more realistic and subtle. In the previous sculpt (Fig. 23.5) you can see how there were 2/3 large tumours then a bit of a step down. Now in Fig. 23.10 I carved down these tumours and added some clumps of smaller ones just going nest to the eye so it looks more realistic.

I have seen other sculptors do this technique, mainly in Don Lanning’s tutorials for Stan Winston. He uses really small balls of clay that he rolls out into thin oblongs, and then places 3/4 of them in the area he wants. The trick is to then use a silicone rubber tipped sculpting tool, to smooth them all together. So I copy this technique and believe the result is good.

Below you can see I used my own hand for references, the skin stretched between the fingers, and also when you pinch the skin and pull it upwards particularly was the effect I was aiming for.

Although the sculpt is progressing I am still not happy with it, I believe that there is something missing.

So I spoke with Julia and Wayne to get both their opinions. At the moment I think that is it not going to look like it is protruding from under the skin, but kind of boxy on the side of the head, like in the photo below. I am struggling to get past this.

For this makeup there were 2 steps to the texturing, firstly the skin texture, making it so that the prosthetic will blend into the skin. To do this, I used ken banks wrinkle and pore tools. And also a stipple sponge to create the texture. Because of the clay I used for this sculpt (chavant Medium) when it is cool it is quite hard, therefore i had to apply quite a lot of pressure with t the tools. So to make the texture realistic rather than carved, I used 2 layers of plastic wrap over the clay to get the desired effect.

The wrinkles in this piece were more important in creating realism, more so than the pores, because of the area of the face, there are not a lot of heavy pores, but on the neck and around the eyes the wrinkling it important. This was not so difficult as my model was very young looking, so the lines on his face were so subtle, so i had to keep them subtle on the sculpt.

The second set of texturing on this piece, was more fantasy and sci-fi based, I wanted to include symbols and designs that I found when doing my research.

to create the symbols, I used the parts of the broken phone as a texture stamp. Which I had done on the tests sculpts, it worked a lot easier with the softer clay, with this chavant medium it was a lot harder to get the desired effect. But in the end I kind of got what I wanted. I want this to look really subtle on the prosthetic, like a minor detail you may not see when first looking at it.

Rather than just having the ear to the side or on top of the phone, I have found a reference photo of a tumour growing around the ear, and I think that it is interesting how it misshapes and deforms the ear.

For stage four of this sculpture I added some texture that looks like stretch skin across, the tumours, to make it more interesting, and look more like an infection and something really pushing from under the skin.

The idea I came up with after the advice, was to put broken stretched skin over the top of the screen to look really like it is bursting through under the head. To sculpt this I used the same technique as the stretched skin over the tumours above, but just on a larger scale.

Below you can see when I added the ear into the sculpture. I think it was what it was missing. I didn't include the whole ear just the top of it, because I didn’t want to cover over or mess up the phone and tumours, I think that there would not have been enough room for the entire ear below.