I made a little (3cm tall!) baby JP raptor toy figure. This post is about the sculpting process, and more photos of the finished figure can be found
here at my site and
here at deviantart (ETA: and
here at cara).
Materials:
Starting point: three bits of wire, bent into spine and legs for the figure.
I filled out the torso a bit with aluminum foil, then put polymer clay
around it to bring out the shape more. Sewing pin for scale, but it's
also a sculpting tool.
After baking that, I started on a layer of polymer clay in the figure's final colours. I wanted to make the patterns with clay instead of painting them on.
I coated the light grey clay with liquid polymer clay to act as glue between baked and raw clay, mixed three shades of brown using brown, yellow, and light grey clays, and carefully smoothed very thin sheets of them over the figure to make the surface even.
Then eyes! Before baking the figure again just yet, I made a few small balls of glow-in-the-dark polymer clay and baked them. Then I picked the best sized one, and cut it
in half. I fit the halves in the eye sockets with a drop of liquid clay
under each.
Then I shaped the face around the eyes before baking. The tools I'm using are the same as what I used for Skye's figure and Swiftdive and Treeclimber's bases. The sewing pin continues to be my favorite; it's very versatile, and surprisingly easy to manipulate like a pen. I also used the silicon brush quite a bit, and a loop of thin nylon line for some things the pin was too sharp for, and a small craft blade for cutting the clay and scraping flat sheets of it off the glass photo frame I'm workin on. That's mostly it so far.
When baking, I didn't want the figure to lean on one side so it wouldn't flatten, so I used a little wire and baking paper "cradle" I originally made for Skye's head. The tail is still mostly stripeless as it's a convenient handle to hold the figure by while working.
While the oven heated up, I also made a pair of feet and sickle claws,
and I baked them with the figure. They were separate at the time, though
in the photo they're already combined. After baking I trimmed the
sickle claws' bases to fit them into the holes I made in the middle toes
of the feet. One just wouldn't fit, though, so I made a new one with
raw clay directly onto the toe. That works, too.
Time to start making the legs. Also pictured are some other DIY
sculpting tools, a loop of aluminum wire and a paper clip where I've cut
the plastic coating and pulled it over the metal inside to make a stamp
for tiny circles (for Skye's foot scales, originally). Didn't use the
wire loop this time (the project is too small for lines that thick to be
necessary), but the paperclip will come in handy later.
Legs covered with clay, and feet attached. Baking again!
Then arms. I rolled small balls of clay and put them in a line with
darker and lighter brown alternating. Then flattened it into a sheet
like in the photo. I cut that in half lengthwise, and rolled each piece into a stripy worm. Then added some more of the lighter clay in one
end of each, and shaped that into a hand (cut two slits to separate into
three fingers - it's less fragile to work with than rolling each finger
separately and attaching them). The holes I made in the torso for
attaching the arms may not have been necessary, but I just filled them
with liquid clay before putting the shoulders on top of them.
A new support contraption for baking. I was hoping I'd get the figure to be able to stand on its own, and the feet aren't securely posed yet.
Finished the tail's stripes, too. There's a crumpled up piece of foil
under the tail to support the tip in case it starts to droop as the clay
warms and softens during baking, since the tip doesn't have wire
armature inside it (since I didn't have thin enough wire for that).
Adding detail to the feet, and claws to the hands, too. I did get the
figure to stand, but not very steadily, so I decided it's best to just
make a base.
Moss? Moss.
I textured the moss using the paperclip and sewing pin, and added more bits of green clay here and there after adding the figure, especially around the feet. There's a generous puddle of liquid clay under each foot, attaching the figure to the moss under and around them. I also had a few blades of grass left over from Swiftdive and Treeclimber's bases, so I added those, too. The foil is there to keep them from falling over since I couldn't plant them very deep. And the grey clay is to keep the supports from sliding away.
Decided to bake with the clay directly on the plate I've been baking it on (with a foil pan upside down over the figure as a "tent" to protect it from heat fluctuations), since the figure is not heavy enough to flatten the baking paper completely, and I want the bottom of the base to be smooth. Not sure if the plate would be okay to eat off of again with a thorough wash after this, but I'll keep it for just clay baking anyway now.
After baking the figure for an hour for the final bake and letting it cool completely, finishing touches. I painted the pupils with black acrylic paint, and glued one of those painted epoxy putty pebbles also left over from the JP:TG raptors' bases onto the moss.
And so—baby!
This took me two days to make, which is pretty quick compared to Skyefigure's four months, but despite being an experiment at some things new to me, it was a lot simpler. I'm happy with how it turned out, and happy to discover I can make something that tiny and have it still be detailed. The colours are darker than they should be for accuracy to
the character's design, since this looks more like the palette of an adult female JP raptor than the light and dull browns I draw baby raptors in, but her clutchmate sibling
Daydreamer's figure also has adult colours despite being a baby, so I suppose it fits.
An experiment in miniature sculpting, for the most part successful!
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