Clive's first go at sculpting a body for his Fimo head...

Hello again...

This evening I have mostly been messing about with lumps of Milliput stuck onto a wire skeleton with a view to fashioning a body of sorts to go with the Fimo head as described in another thread...

First off, I made up a skeleton from soft florists wire, using my rare, LGB-compatible figure height gauge which I might be selling on evil-bay this weekend:



You can probably make out the nicks in the metal where I have marked off the positions of the knee and ankle joints. Then, I packed lumps of Milliput around the hips, chest, thighs and shins. I kept all of them separate because I wanted to be able to bend the figure into its desired pose before continuing the sculpting:



Incidentally, that is one of the reasons why I am not using scrunched-up aluminium foil for an armature - the fact that if bent back and forth too much (eg. arranging the figure's desired pose) it will weaken and break. That, and the awful truth that I am very rubbish at scrunching up aluminium foil to make armatures.

Note that the loop of wire at the top will become the arms once the Milliput has set hard and I am able to cut it at the top of the loop.

Oh, and just so's I know which is the front from which is the back side:



I need to let this cure fully now, so perhaps tomorrow evening will yield further, if modest, progress... Caveat: I have absolutely no idea if this will work. Whether or not it is successful, I will report back!

So last evening i took the leap into the dark that is cutting the loop to form the arms. I also took the opportunity to experiment with a few poses, to see what might be easily modeled yet look 'natural'. I chose the old 'sitting casually on a bench with one leg crossed over the other' look:



I think I needed to make the loop slightly larger, as unlike the legs I don't have an awful lot of spare wire on the arms. This second picture shows this!



Also in this picture, you can hopefully see that I've started to bulk up on the upper legs and plant some creases and folds in various places.

Artistry Clive. And way beyond me.

Thanks John, but to be honest a year or so ago I would have said it was beyond me too...

It's only by having a go with cutting up existing figures and learning how to put them back together, that has given me the confidence to extend that to actually making a figure from scratch - that, and of course scouring the net for hints and tips from the real experts! It's almost developed into a hobby within a hobby for me.

Why not have a go, as Bruce and Patrick have done...

OK we move on... This evening I started the 'bulking up' of the body. I found out the hard way that it doesn't pay to try and do too much in one sitting - more than once I ended up trampling over an already sculpted area (with clothing folds etc) with my great big lummoxy fingers as they were attempting to do the same to a neighbouring area:



I still have some bulking up to do around the body and of course the legs/feet. However, when put together with the head it seems to still have a rough sort of balance about it. Plainly though, a serious bribe will be needed if he is to win any beauty contests!



But what about the hands? Well, here is another new area for me. This evening I tried to sculpt the hands - one sort of fist shaped, the other open. I read somewhere that by first making a former out of a small ball of Milliput allowed to cure, then a hand could be sculpted that would have the natural 'rest' position of the fingers: slightly curled. Here is my attempt, less the thumbs which will hopefully be added tomorrow:

Here's how the hands look after a night of curing...

Right:


Left:


I accept the right hand could easily belong to Nosferatu, but I think it could improve somewhat once I've added the thumb and generally tarted it up a bit.

Incidentally, I also found I'd saved to my laptop the image of how to make a hand... trouble is, I still can't remember where I got it from! If I do remember I will append this thread with full credit to the original author - I would hope though that he/she accepts that I am reproducing it here with no malice or intent to profit:


I needed a bit of care to prise the right hand off its Milliput former, but the fact that I used Green Stuff helped significantly, as of course even when cured it remains flexible. The former is a bit scratched, but that's no problem I made it in such a way that I can use it as a new head for a different figure.

Progress update:

Firstly, sorry I missed a step - or rather, I missed photographing a step I did this afternoon... although it wasn't that momentous. Just a bit of bulking up on the midriff to lose the girly hips, that's all.

But this evening got very interesting! I found myself in the position of being able to add some layers of clothing. Just the shirt and the waist band of the trousers:



Looking at it, I wasn't 100% happy with how the folds and creases in the shirt turned out. But no matter. By dint of some overestimation on the amount of Green Stuff needed, I then decided to add a tie to hide it:



Even that didn't use up all the GS I'd mixed up. Time for some fast thinking...



OK so how did that all look when put together? Well, a bit like this:



It was at this point, that I realised I'd forgotten to make some thumbs for his hands! Don't you just hate that when it happens?



No real opportunity for me to progress this tomorrow evening, but hopefully Friday will be better.

OK I lied, I managed to get a few minutes today to spray the figure with grey primer:



One of the problems I have with Green Stuff is it is naturally shiny, so I sometimes have difficulties in seeing the true contours of what's been sculpted. Dulling it down with some sort of matt colour helps to make things a little clearer.

Still to do:

A jacket

The lower legs/shoes

The left hand is a little oversize, so I might try and disguise that somehow. The right hand is a bit naff, so I might try and disguise that too by having it hold a book or something, so that it's at least partially obscured...

Getting there... Tonight I added the jacket detail, and fixed the hands. Before doing so, I trimmed some of the 'wrists' away and the ends of the arms too. I then fitted them to their respective posts, and applied some GS over the top to hide the joins and to further disguise the hands:



As you can see, I abandoned the idea of a book, as I felt the hand position looked better the way it is now. Still a bit oversized I feel, but hopefully it won't be too bad once painted.

This morning I was able to do some work on the legs, and one of the feet:



I need to let this dry before tackling the last bit, then we'll see how it looks for being undercoated again.

A bit more work over the weekend. Second leg completed, then a bit of dremelling:



Then this morning, a final spray of grey undercoat:



Hopefully this week should see the final painting.

In fact, this afternoon saw the final painting:



So there he is, a figure from scratch!

Not particularly handsome, but given that he's my first figure totally sculpted from nothing, not too bad either!

i dont think mosts folks are hamsome clive, he just looks normal...... well to me

Brilliant.........

He looks like a bloke I once knew who used to sit completely stoned outside the Turks Head in Reading about 20 years ago.
He always a kept a mouth organ in is top pocket and flick knife in the other.

I made a start on a second 'from scratch' figure last night, and with a blob of excess Milliput I made a laptop-bag for this character. If I had read this first, I would have made a flick-knife instead!

Mr Hibbs it occurs to me that you have associated with some serious ne'er-do-wells in your time, have you not!

By way of a closure on this particular figure, here he is, complete with said laptop bag: