Because Digital art finds its roots and references in traditional media, I found it necessary to include sculpture and more specifically model making techniques in this tutorial section.
Thanks to Alan Dickinson, a friend of mine and a renowned sculptor, I made this tutorial that follows a personal creation and gives valuable information and methodology built upon his years of experience in this traditional and sensual media.
My first topic was inspired by an Hajime Sorayama illustration.The human body is not the easiest thing to embrace, However it is very engaging to work with. The main difficulties that I encountered were the size of the figurine. The scale, being quite small, gave me a challenging task to achieve detail while keeping a perfect smoothness.
The first step is to build the structure of the sculpture. A skeleton guide in the case of the human figure is really useful. Diffrent scale guides are available if you want the figure to be in a standard figurine size as the model kits.
The structure is build in wire. Usually the thickest size of the wire available ( picture below ). It follows roughly the limbs and spine of the guides. It is composed out of 3 wires : one covering the leg, running along the spine and then forming the shoulder and the arm; the second is just the other side counterpart; the third being the spine itself from the hips to the head. It is a good idea to give more length when cutting the wire since you can always reduce the length but not increase it ;)
THE TOOLS
Here are 3 thickness of wire. The Thickest is used for the main structure as shown above. The second one is used as a griping wire running along the main structure. The third one will be used only on the smallest parts like the hands` s structure.
Two different are used during this step. The wire cutter that helps you adjust the size. The pliers that will help you bend the wire along the guide lines.
You can also use a vice to flatten the wire and straighten it upon completion of the main structure.
The main structure being built.
When the three main wires are set up, a thinner wire helps to stick them together while running along them to give grip to the polymere clay that will be applied later.
Be sure at this stage that the spine does not move along the side wire guides.
The main structure finished.
The joints are symbolised by bending them to keep the sens of the placement of knees, elbows and shoulders.
Finally the structure is modified to match the pose of the original design or idea. This stage is extremely important since it gives the base for the sculpture.
Do not hesitate to spend time untill you have the perfect shape. Once the polymere clay is hard, the only way to modify a pose is to break it ;(
The Polymere clay .
Pros:
- Quite flexible to work with
- Easy to smooth out with fine oil
- Once hardened, gives a good base
- Easy to smooth by sanding once hard.
Cons:
- Breaks easily
- Once hard, impossible to make soft for changes.
- Cooking process
As shown above the polymere clay can be applied as little balls or muscle shape directly onto the wire. It is better to use little egg shaped balls of clay since you must not allow the air to infiltrate within the clay or between the wire and the clay. This would fragilise and break the material.
First one layer of clay will define the skeleton or rigid structure of the figurine. That is the step where you give the big details like the hips, rib cage, femurs etc...The emphasise on the bones and joints will give subtle bumps on the final figurine.
Once applied, the polymere clay need to be cooked to become a hard material. It then can be used as a base layer on which you apply multiple layers of clay untill you reach the last skin layer. For the clay to be cooked properly you need a heat/traditional oven (not microwave) at a temperature of 100 celsius degrees for 10 minutes. Let it cool down outside for a few minutes before working on it.
tips: the clay becomes rubber like on the first minutes after being cooked. You can at that stage easily remove parts with a cutter if needed.
You can now apply a second layer, adding the main muscles onto the bones and refining / sanding with sanding paper the first bone layer.
Second layer after cooking. Ready to sand out.