Practical Workshops

Character Sculpting with Pete Tindall

When making a fiberglass bust, either make it white or grey, rather than blue or red. Definitely do not leave the cast, un-pigmented as the fiberglass is hard to work on because of all the different colours and textures under the surface.

Often people then paint the bust the same colour as the clay they are using, to see the forms better.

Try to make your work as professional as possible. Your casts need to be top quality, as neat as possible. There are many reasons for this.

-A) sand down the bottom of the cast so that it can stand up in the sculpt.

-B) sand down the edges and make it as smooth as possible so that you do not cut yourself on fiberglass pieces when sculpting. – this is also important in industry when you go into a workshop if you pass your lifecast onto someone else to sculpt, or mould, you definitely do not want it to be mediocre, and should not harm the other person.

-C) the cleaner your cast the more professional it is, and this level of work is expected in industry.

It is very important to have a clean lifecast, with no undercuts or deformations as it will be part of your mould, and the cleaner it is, the better it will work.

Sculpting/ finishing the sculpt around the eyes

-There is nothing wrong with finishing the character sculpt just above the cheekbone and then doing separate pieces for the eyebags. These can just be taken from a template of the face, and can be done in bondo to get a better edge. Especially if the character has a lot of wrinkles/folds and movement in the face this is a good method.

If you are sculpting a cleaner character makeup it is possible to finish the sculpt in a natural wrinkle of the eye, about half a cm to 1cm under the eye. To aid with this get your model to wrinkle their face and take some photographs for reference where to end the sculpt in a good crease.

It is useful to have a generic head, so that you can practice your sculpting, or do your makeup designs on, particularly to sculpt in WED clay so that it is really quick to get forms out.

Sebastian Lockman and Don Lanning often do half scale busts for their concept art. There are examples of this below.

Sculpting quick designs

For this demonstration Pete created a space Precinct inspired animatronic makeup creature also used WED clay to show how quickly you can create designs.

Without too much precision you can throw on the clay and use your palms and thumbs to flatten the clay into shape.
All the time when creating sculptures you must think of anatomy of the human and the creature you are thinking of to make the makeup realistic. Despite the character whether it be an alien/monster or something fantasy, you need to base the makeup on human anatomy to make it believable.
Often when people sculpt on the human form, it can be front, back or top heavy. It is important to make the sculpture as even as possible.

When designing an animatronic makeup there will need to be a space in the makeup (usually at the back of the head) to insert a battery pack/ motor etc. So when sculpting you need to allow for this by adding a ball of clay at the beck of the head, like below.

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When the mould for the makeup is created there will need to be a core and a fiberglass skull cap of that form to wear underneath the makeup so the makeup keeps its shape, and there is space for the animatronics underneath.

After the initial clay has been added on the core, you then can take a rubber or metal kidney to smooth out the forms and create a general shape.

After the sculpt has been roughed out. The next stage is to create secondary forms. Adding ridges and skin folds for detail, before finally adding all the really fine detail and texture such as pores and wrinkles.

If you desire to fibreglass mould a WED clay sculpt you must first seal the clay with one of the following; Silver strippable spray, Lacquer or Shellac.

Don Lanning at the Prosthetics Event

Wayne's Monster arm Sculpting Demonstration

Airbrushing Recap

The prosthetics event took place in November of 2015 this year at the Ashton conference centre in Birmingham.

One of the artists who was demonstrating at the event was Don Lanning, (mentioned above). He is a world renowned sculptor, who has worked on films such as Pirates of the Caribbean: n Stranger Tides (2011), Star TRek (2009) and the upcoming Batman vs Supeman.

At the event Lanning was demonstrating a WED clay creature sculpt. Below shows photos of his process.

I am really glad to have met Don Lanning he was a really inspirational sculptor and speaker. And he definitely made me motivated for the project.

Throughout the demo, he was giving small tips on how he sculpts. Which I will write below.

When using WED clay after blocking our all the primary forms, Don waits for the clay to dry out a little before adding the detail, otherwise it is too soft.

WED clay is the clay or choice for Don Lanning, he says it is quick and easy to use.

When sculpting busts, Don puts a tool in the centre at the head, to create a centre line and help him keep symmetry.

The Power of the X

The power of the X is a technique created by Don Lanning, as a texture technique, it is helpful in creating old age wrinkles, elephant or monster skin. It adds an element of realism to your sculpts.

The premise of it is to carve wobbly, different sized crosses into the sculpt at different depths and have them cross over each other. There are other elements to this techniques which I have studied before, including carving out some areas in between them.

However the tip that Don Lanning gave at this demo, is to carve the Xs into the clay first, and then pour IPA onto the areas, let it soak for a while, and then take a stipple brush and brush it over the sculpt.

This is the final sculpt from the demo, with the eyes attached. The photo on the right shows how quickly you can change the sculpt to change the concept.

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For this Demo, Wayne cast his own arm, and is working on a plaster core.
It is important to cast the arm with the fingers in a position to work with your design, for example Wayne knew that this sculpt would have 2 fingers and a thumb, so he cast his hand with the fingers in a v shape.
This sculpt is done using WED clay, and is similar to the animatronic makeup sculpt done by Pete above, in terms of blocking out the sculpture and using the same tools to smooth down and then do the detailing.
This sculpt would be more inclined for a creature suit, The Appliance would probably be run in foam so that it can move really well.

When you sculpt monster hands, you have to take care when sculpting the knuckles, you want them to by directly over the actual knuckles so that the appliance looks natural and realistic and can move properly.

During this Demo Wayne also took us over the moulding process of a sculpt like this. you can see in the photo below right, where you would have to make a 3 part matrix mould, two halves of the hand and the thumb.

In this Airbrush recap, Wayne took us over how to clean and treat the airbrush properly, and how the different needles create different sized cones.

How to create thinner lines for veining and detail work.

How to use a pencil on the tip of the airbrush to create a splattering effect. This is especially useful for mottling work on creatures.

the difference between single action and double action airbrushes, and the use for them both.

We went over spray guns and their uses especially with laying on base colour and use for cap plastic encapsulator.

The most useful thing I took from this recap was the technique for constant practice, is the repetition of lines, dots and the letter Q to really help get the technique down.

Also to hold the airbrish with a pen and use your fore finger to squeeze the trigger, rather than your thumb, which i am prone to do.