Something I was working on a while ago...

About a year and a half ago I got really into the idea of trying to become a hardcore scratch-builder. I found a (relatively) simple Mamoru Nagano design from Schell Bullet:


I bought all kinds of polymer clay and moldmaking/casting materials and set to work designing a piece that I hope will ultimately work as a kit that I can cast for others to enjoy as well..

Here are some images of work I accomplished on the torso, arms, and hands.

Here's the torso in the mold box. The mold itself is the blue stuff which is then sandwiched with snug, but not tight, rubber bands between two pieces of scrap wood so that it holds its original shape and does not leak resin around the edges of the cast piece (such leaks, when they harden, turn into "flash" that must be trimmed from the part):


Demolding the torso. You can see the long pouring tube with a sort-of funnel shape at the top and the short vent tube at the opposite end of the part. It is better to fill molds from the botom up this way because it helps the air bubbles rise out of the resin so that they don't end up as pin-holes in your part:


This is the torso smoothed out with considerable filing work. This was my first-ever attempt at casting a part and I just decided to do it rough so I wouldn't be disappointed if it turned out badly. Even after smoothing the core piece, I still have to do a great deal of puttying work to sculpt out the final version. Then I'll have to cast that again:


The sculpted left forearm. Using white sculpey clay I worked the basic shape and baked it hard, then I tooled some details into the surface of the part. Now it needs to be molded and cast in resin:


The sculpted left arm-shield. Same technique as the forearm above:


I posed the hands from a Ban Dai MG Qubeley kit and sealed them with jeweler's wax (the brown stuff) If I hadn't sealed them they would have gotten locked into the RTV mold rubber, which has an amazing facility for flowing into the tiniest crevices. Then I could recast them. The blue suff the hands are emdedded in is oil-based non-drying clay. The fleshy-colored stuff is some PVC sprue cut from a Spriggan vinyl figure kit, used here to create the pouring tubes. You might also notice the frame of legos around the edges. Legos are great for building really solid mold boxes. They fit tightly together so that the mold rubber doesn't leak out and you can easily size them to fit whatever part you're casting.


Here's what the hands look like fresh out of the mold. You can see that I cut little vent tubes at the tip of each finger so that I could fill the mold from the bottom up again. Positioning your part correctly in its mold is very important so that it will fill smoothly and totally with resin:


After they've been trimmed up a bit:



This scratch building stuff sure eats up time, so this was as far as I've gotten, but it's really fun so I'm sure I'll get back to it eventually.