I put a cup of clay in some hot water, so it'll be weaker and easy to handle.. .




Ok, now for the inner urethane rubber mold.

ok, trouble ahead. the second part of the plaster mold has a bad crack, through the whole thing. This is where i realise had better gone through with a three part mold, but again i wanted to safe time. As you can see, this is pretty time consuming.
It will have to do. I'm repairing the mold with polyfill, and some more delicate parts with epoxy clay..

The toilet paper roll will leave a hole in the outer mold, through which i'll be pouring the urethane rubber. I also attached the stand for the puppet. I need it to fit exactly in the plaster mold. This is where the armature will be attached to as well. This is one of the most important parts...


I'm making a hard outer mold here, using plaster, to afterwards make a flexible inner mold. This way the flexible mold will be thin and easy to roll of the puppet when it's cast. I won't be using silicone for the mold this time. I've learned my lesson. i'll be using urethane castingrubber.

The bottom, where the tie-downs are, don't look to good either.. The mold i made isn't useful anymore, cause a lot of the puppet's silicone is just removable from it. I just have to make a new mold, a better one.
First i have to repair my master model, 'cause it broke it's limbs when opening the mold.
Bad luck? No, i just wasn't patient enough the first time around, when i wanted to save time making the mold this way.
I also need to make a new armature, for i want to keep my first attempt.

So the puppet came out busted and torn. Yet, the result isn't a total loss. I now know the puppet is movable like i want, and i don't have any airbubbels that got stuck in the silicone when casting the puppet.

I seem to have lost the pictures i took making this really bad idea of a mold.. I did a lot of things wrong here,
some good too.
First of all, I thought i would get away making a silicone mold for a silicone puppet, if only i used enough loosing spray, and on top of that a different kind of silicone for the puppet. But as turned out, bad idea. Getting it out, it became clear the puppet got stuck to the mold at some places.
Secondly, the mold itself is monstrous, and not easy to use. The three parts where a good idea, as will become clear later on, when i go for my second attempt, making it a two part mold. I just made the mistake of making these huge lumps of silicone moldparts, not easy to pry off each other, and certanly don't help when you try to carefully get the puppet out without tearing it's skin.

Once i'm happy with the armature, i make a double. And start to sculpt around one of them, using super sculpy. This way i know the armature will fit nicely in the silicone puppet in the end.




I'm starting with the armature.
I'm using aluminium wire for the joints, because of a really tight budget, i can't use the fancy ball and socket joints.
I found a plastic eye in a hobby and crafts store, very suitable. The different little parts i made from MDF, of which when finished i made silicone molds, so i could reproduce them easily.

This is the concept i have to work from. the little monster is a 'mutant-mix' of a slug and a human being, about 4 inch tall.
it has to have a real life-like eye, and the skin has to be snail like, brown, translucent and slimy.. best thing is to make it in silicone.

But first i have to work on the desing, and make an armature for the inside.