Character face sculpting progress.

 As I'm looking into stop motion puppets and maquettes, I've decided that one part of my making aspect of this project will be focused on character designs, concept art and realising these figures in 3D. Although I know that hand sculpting and casting faces is no longer a widely used method in industry; as 3D printing is now much more efficient in terms of cost, time and accuracy of detailing. I'd still like to practise this method as it's good to understand the past methods used and how we've progressed. For a prototyping project I feel that this method is also appropriate.

I have a small amount of experience with sculpting and casting, so wanted to use this project to practice these skills. I would definitely like to look in 3D printing, but that would require using software I've never even learnt the basics to and in terms of my time management I'm not sure this would fit in with the schedule at this point in the project.

To begin sculpting I had to decide on what materials and style it is I wanted to use and create. I decided on chavant to use to sculpt the faces in, as its quite easy to use and smooth out if you know the right techniques! Chavant is oil based so doesn't air dry,  meaning I can work on the sculpts, leave and come back later without them drying out or cracking. Another advantage to this oil based clay is that once you've cast it, you can reuse it (as it wont have dried) so its quite cost effective and lasts a while.  A lot of detail can also be picked up with chavant, making it suitable for any size sculpts! 

I decided on working with a flat surface, as I want the face to be interchangeable possibly with the use of magnets on the back of them. As someone who doesn't have an awful lot of sculpting experience, working on a flat surface was also easier for me at this point. 

I now realise that working in 3D could gave been a lot more beneficial but I have learnt from this! Seeing the heads as 3D, being able to see every angle of them while I was sculpting would have helped a lot with proportions. 

The style I decided on was quite flat and usually based on one base shape per character, e.g. circles for Yool, Triangles for Ty. The sticky out ears, wide eyes and shape based forms were all design choices.