Emily (7)

I did the first castings this weekend with the molds I made of the sculpt.
Result.
Not as great as I hoped it would be.
I did three castings.
The first one resulted in a cast which showed a lot of things that went wrong with the recording of the sculpt in silicone. I apparently forgot to take out some clay that was hidden beneath the legs. The result is a really wobbly legs. Also the face mold didn't turn out to be so great. Material leaked out well, everywhere almost. The face looked nice, but the rest did not. The hairs were missing all together, and there were air bubbles showing in the rest of her hair.

The second cast I messed up the proportion of the polyurethane casting material. It didn't set, and as a reault I had to clean up the sticky molds before I could continue with another cast.

The third cast the plastic set well, but... same casting results as the first. A horrible combination of leakage, air pockets and the mold not lining up nice.

So what to do. Here's my plan:

First I'm going to repair the original sculpt. It's showing some cracks, but those will be fixable with some work. And probably do a new mold from the body.

Secondly, after talking it over with some friends of mine, I think I'm going to remodel the head. Meaning, I'm going to sculpt the face and hair separately. This way I can make two easier molds of the hair and the face, and attach them together after casting. I have to think this over a bit, but I think I wil go for it. I'll keep you posted.

So that's the plan for now. Back to the drawing table for me and starting by fixing the original sculpt.
I would like to do a serie of 10 castings, so ... they should come out almost perfect. I'm not plannign to clean up, resculpt and repair 20 casted parts.
It shows again that mold making is a craft in its own.