Land before time sculpturing

[Malte279]

[Petrie.]

Hey look its me!!!      (a very religious Petrie at that )

Now can that smooth surface be painted or will paint not stick to something so glossy?  I like the eyes.  So innocent really, just kind of standing there like "oh yeah, I'm here too...".

[Malte279]

Thanks a lot for the reaction! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you
I think soapstone can be painted (by the way most of the the ancient greek and roman marble statues used to be painted though we know them in black and while only as the color flaked off over the centuries), but it would be kind of a waste as soapstone has a pattern which has really some merrits by itself. Most stones in general have. I think it was Leonardo da Vinci who said that one could discover whole landscapes in the pattern of a stone (it is a good advice for anyone looking for an interesting stage for LBT story scenes). I wonder what it would look like if the presidents at Mount Rushmore were painted :blink:... something hard to get used to and no mistake
The "Oh yeah, I'm here too!" posture is one which offers itself for any soapstone figures as it includes folded wings. It would be impossible to do a Petrie with spread wings as the stone would break if turned into a too thin layer.

[landbeforetimelover]

I love your work Malte279!  I just wish I had the time to do it too.

[action9000]

Malte, the detail in your sculptures never cease to amaze me!
I don't know how you can get the proportions of Petrie so nice, especially in a medium where you can't really erase mistakes.  Very nice detail work in the eyes!

All I can say is, "Wow". B)  

[Malte279]

I don't know how you can get the proportions of Petrie so nice, especially in a medium where you can't really erase mistakes.

I often took a look on screenshots though I did not carve this Petrie to match a particular screenshot. It is important to keep in mind that the head of a child is much larger in ratio to the rest of the body than the head of a grownup (compare the ratio of Dinah and Dana vs. that of Cera, versus that of Topsy for example). Sometime mistakes can be erased in the stone, but depending on how deep the mistake was carved it may end up with a stone much smaller than it used to be. Therefore you are "switching tools" during the carving. For the rough shaping of the stone I use a sharp file which could reduce the whole stone to dust in a relatively short period of time. Then I switch to smaller files, to even smaller ones and finally to grinding paper. ¡s the stone won't "melt away" under the smaller files they you are not likely to carve a mistake beyond correction with them.

I love your work Malte279! I just wish I had the time to do it too.

Thank you for the comment. Maybe you do and just don't know you have the time . It took me from August to March to finish that Petrie figure, but mainly because I couldn't work on it from November to February at all due too too much university stuff to be dealt with. A figure as large as the big Petrie can be finished in less than a week if one really spends the days on them. The little Petrie can be finished in a day or two. It's up to us if we use the time for sculpturing or for other hobbies

[DarkHououmon]

Nice. ^^

When I first saw this, I thought Petrie was wearing a cape. ^^; I guess it was due to way his wings were folded.

[Lain_EX]

*makes a funny dumb face* Ooooh! Petrie statue!

[landbeforetimelover]

The little Petrie can be finished in a day or two

I can't even spare an hour away from my work, let alone 24-48!  Where do you find the time?

[Malte279]

Where do you find the time?

I did in a time when there was not too much university work at hand. Moreover I didn't make them in one "shift" but rather on several hours dispersed over more than two days.

[Malte279]

It has been a while since I posted here. I just didn't ever have the time or muster the energy to upload the pictures of the next project.
There are more spoons such as the one of Spike which I turned into a tin figure. The second spoon I used was the one of Cera. This time I also tried a different material for creating the mold for the tin figure. I already mentioned the disadvantages of the silicone rubber (very high price, very tricky to work with as you must add exactly the right amount of volcanizer for the stuff to harden thorough but not too quickly, toxic fumes, very messy to work with etc.). So this time I tried a different material, oil sand. Oil sand is a red sand that will form almost like clay and crumble only if you really mean to crumble it. If you stomp the sand on a figure, there will be a very detailed imprint of that figure in the sand. The sand does not create any toxic fumes (you still shouldn't eat the stuff ) and as it can be crumbled and reused almost infinitely it is also a lot cheaper than the silicone rubber.
Here is the first picture the Cera spoon is pressed into one layer of oil sand:

Next the oil sand was covered with a thin layer of talcum powder to prevent the second half of the sand mold (which was to be stomped on top of the first one) to cling to the first half.

Next the spoon was removed from the mold which you can recognize as such in the next picture. The white stuff on the red sand is the talcum powder which I mentioned.

The two halves of the mould were put together and filled with tin (I posted pictures of the tin melting and casting before and I don't want to bore you by posting all that once again):

Here is the result of the first cast. As you can see there are still parts on it which would not be supposed to be on a finished tin figure, namely the parts of the spoon which filled the room between Cera's legs. Remember that in case of the Spike spoon figure I created a wax figure first, then removed the unwanted parts and then made a mold of the waxfigure:

[Malte279]

Now here are two closer shots at the Cera I cast after I removed the unwanted parts. Here is the front:

And here is the back:

As you may see the result with the oil sand was not quite as good as the results from the silicone rubber molds. The surface of this Cera is not as smooth and there are two big holes on her rear. So I cleared that figure up a little (by filling up the holes with wax and grinding the surface of the figure smoother) to create a silicone rubber mold of that figure after all.
Here is a picture after I finished creating the first half of the silicone mold. You can clearly see some of the "patched up" spots on the Cera figure in the modeling clay on the right. You can also see that I put the caps of two felt-tip pens in the mold to create two "pegs" below Cera's feet. There is a reason for this of course:

Here is a picture of the final silicone mold:

[Malte279]

As for the "pegs" below Cera's feet, I made those to set Cera up on a special apron I created for this figure. In case of Spike I had just made a little base right below his feet with a bit of modeling clay. The spoon of Cera however had come with a cup and a lid of that cup shaped like a patch of Great Valley landscape. So I made a mold of that cup lid as well. As the apron is rather large I decided to cast it with a material other than pewter. It would have been very expensive to fill a large mold of that apron with pewter, and I doubt that my foundry ladle would hold enough pewter to fill such a mold. Moreover that apron would have been rather heavy. So I decided to make the apron of Stewalin, a kind of plaster refined with synthetics so it does not chalk as much or break as easily as regular plaster does. I used a cheap kind of rubber to create that mold (I wish that kind of rubber was suited for pewter as well, but it wouldn't stand the heat). Here are two pictures of that apron mold:



And here is a picture of the finished apron. The holes for Cera's pegs had to be drilled afterwards. It took a long time to paint that apron properly:

And here at last are some images of the final painted Cera on her apron:

[pokeplayer984]

When someone does well on a Cera project, I can't help but feel proud of that particular someone.

You did a great job there, Malte.  Good going!

I think I might actually try a little project of my own.  What building material will I use, you might ask?

Well, I have quite a collection of LEGOS that I haven't touched in quite a while...

[Malte279]

Thank you very much for your reaction. I really appreciate it a lot.

Hey, I'm really looking forward to see a lego Cera
Do you have orange legos, or will it be mainly about the shape rather than the color?
Please show us when your project is finished  

[pokeplayer984]

The biggest problem with LEGOS is that you have a limited supply of colors to work with.  I only have the following colors to work with:

Red, Dark Red, Yellow, Dark Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, White, Brown, Gray and Black.

So, unless I decide to paint the LEGOS, the colors will be off.

On top of that, I hold a very limited supply of Green and Brown, so the use of them HAS to be miniumal.

Furthermore, the green is more limited to a small flat stand to build on and being the "glass cover" for cockpits.  Not to mention that the green pieces that don't consist of that are rather large and flat.

The Gray pieces could really help me out on the design for the jaw of Cera and Spike as there are certian pieces that can easily be used for the main build of the front for a ship. (Whether it be one for sea or space.  It could also be used for the front of a plane or jet.)

There are also certian body parts of the charcters to take into account.  My biggest problem is definately going to be Cera's "armor" that goes around her head.

The final thing to understand is that I'm working with a bunch of squares and rectangles, and they can only fit in certian ways.  Unless I plan to go big, and break apart the model when I'm done, you're more than likely going to see something that's "off" in design.

Certian things could help me out.  I do have White pieces that already have an eye painted on them.  However, this would mean that the eyes would then only be seen from certian angles.

As you can see, there's alot to consider when building with LEGOS.  This definately won't be easy. :^.^:

[Sky]

Can't wait to see it.  

@Malte
WOW. Your sculpturing is really amazing and impressive.
You got some unique stuff there that nobody has in the world.  
Keep up the good work.  :^.^:

[Malte279]

A very late thank you
I've been too lazy about this thread for a long time. It is partly because one project I meant (even back then) to post here next is still not finished. It is a soapstone figure of Spike with Ducky on his back. While carving it a large part of Spike (including one leg) broke of due to an enclosure in the stone. It could be glued, but ever since I did not really dare to approach the stone with a file fearing to do more harm than damage. So that project remains semi-finished for a while.
However, I did complete another project in December which I didn't post about so far. It is a tinfigure of the only one of the five main characters I hadn't done as a tinfigure so far, Petrie.
As a positive for this figure I took a little figure of Petrie which I had purchased via ebay (it is one of a series of six figures, Chomper included, so there may be more tin figures based on this series when I have more time again).
The figure is quite neat, but does have some shortcomings on details which I corrected with some wax. The following picture shows the figure embedded in some modeling clay in the box in which I cast the liquid silicone rubber for the mold. You can see the blue plastic cone on one of his feed which will in the mold form the hole through which the liquid tin is cast. On his other food a piece of wood is placed to create a "Windpfeife" (an air channel through which air can "escape" while the mould is filled, so there won't be air bubbles messing up the figure. The bumbs in the four corners are meant to create notches which will allow for the two parts of the mold to be fitted exactly onto each other. If you look closely you will see some of the edits I did on the figure with wax along the back of Petrie's had and the wings:

Here is the messy and tricky part of the work which I mentioned earlier in this thread (if you add a few drops too much hardner into the liquid rubber it will become hard too quickly to make a detailed mould of the figure while a few drops too few will leave the rubber liquid so you can throw away the figure as well). I did mess up a pair of pants on this mould

But at least I had the amount of hardener for the rubber correct.

Here the first half of the mould with the figure is ready in place for the second part of the mold to be cast on top of it. To prevent the two halves from sticking together the first half needs to be greased with vaseline:

Here is a picture of one half of the mold on which you can see the Windpfeifen very clearly which are running from Petrie's wings (where air enclosures would be particularly likely) to the top of the mold:

[Malte279]

The liquid tin is cast into the mold, which as you can see has to be held together in a rather peculiar manner. The problem of this mold is that you need to have pressure on the edges to prevent tin from pouring out there, but there mustn't bee to much pressure on the center, or else the wings wouldn't be filled up completely:

In spite of all this it did not work out right away from the first cast. Petrie's wings are particularly complex to cast as such a thin layer of tin gets cold very quickly even before filling up the mold completely. Also the windpipes may not have worked out correctly in this cast, the right wing (viewers perspective) is not filled up correctly:

However, it is rather normal for the first casts to fail. During the casting the mold warms up causing the tin of later casts to remain liquid for a longer time so the mold is filled up better. So behold the attack of the "clone flyers"

The figures need to be "entgrated" that is the superfluous metal parts (tin that got into the Windpfeifen or the cone of the hole through which the tin is cast) need to be cut away and then the parts have to be smoothed with a file. The left Petrie has not yet been entgrated completely. You still see superfluous metal on his feet and beak:

The following two pictures are to show the difference between the original figure and the tin cast I did. Looking at the profile you will notice that the tin figure on the left side has a larger head and beak than the plastic original on the right:

The wings are different as well. The plastic figure sports the "bat version" of Petrie's wings which I changed with a bit of wax:

From the left to right you see an unpainted tinfigure, a figure with the white basic color (which is also used to smooth out some uneven parts along the wings where the wax edged to the plastic figure), and a fully painted Petrie:

And here is a final picture showing the finished Tin Petrie from all four directions:

[Kor]

Nice, looks like hard work also.