Mould Making - Body

OK, Here's part two of my Mould Making Marathon.

In my previous post I made two part moulds to cast shoes for the Mail Man and hands for the Theatre Usher.

In this post I'm moulding parts for 'Elle' the Actress. Earlier I started to sculpt the body shapes onto the wire armature in grey Plastiline. You can see that post HERE.

Below is the finished sculpt ready to be moulded.

The body breaks up into five sections. 2 legs, 2 arms and the chest section. All these will be cast in flexible silicone so rigid two part moulds are needed.

I'm moulding both legs together in the same mould. This saves on time and the materials used. It also makes it easier to cast both legs at the same time. The split line will run down the inside and outside of each leg and around the base of the shoe.

As before I added plasticine keys and built a foam board box around the clay. The biggest difference with this mould is that the clay wall was built up higher against the sole of the shoes. I had to be careful that this still allowed the two half of the mould to be separated.

Above are the legs ready to have the second half of the mould added.

The chest is made in the same way. You may have noticed that I added K&S to the arms. The K&S helps to suspend the armature in the mould when its time to cast. I add Vaseline to the K&S to stop it from sticking to the polyurethane resin.

Below is a close up picture of the arms ready to be moulded. They are elbow length gloves and will be cast in white silicone. I forgot to take any pictures while I was moulding these so you'll have to take my work for it.

Hair Sculpt

The final part of the actress puppet to be moulded was the hair. I decided to cast it in silicone because I want the hair to have some movement. I hope that by having wire inside a silicone hair piece, I will be able to give the hair some bounce when animating.

Above is the final sculpt for the hair. Its made in Plastiline and attaches to the back of the head with  K&S. Once again I made a two part mould.

The sculpture featured some small undercuts but because I'm casting in a soft and flexible silicone they didn't cause any problems.

That's the end of my mould making marathon. I now feel much more confident at making two part moulds, but I'm glad I can now move on and concentrate on other aspects for puppet building.

I thinks that enough for today.

Next I'll be using the moulds I've made and casting all the body parts in coloured silicone.

Thanks for looking.