Sculpting Armor...a short "How To"...

In this particular case, shoulder and chest armor for my Embo sculpt. For those of you that are saying "Embo who?"...here is a link to the character that is featured in The Clone Wars animated series...

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Embo

This is a little "how-to" in pictures - nothing too fancy but it will give you an idea how I sculpt, clean and refine pieces made using Aves FIXIT sculpt - which has a cure rate of about 4 hours - after that, the material becomes unworkable for most sculpting techniques.

For this how-to you're going to be working the clay in the final hour - when the tackiness has faded but the material can still be mended enough to create a shell. A shell you ask?......see the pictures below...

I whipped up a batch of FIXIT earlier and waited till the fourth hour to begin kneading and rolling the material into semi-flat sheet. At this point, the clay has lost the tack that would keep you from rolling the material in the first place- if you see the clay sticking to your roller, let the FIXIT cure a bit longer.

After you have flattened a desired portion of FIXIT, begin to drape it over the body and create the shape of the armor...keeping in mind that this will be nothing more than a shell which you will sculpt the details on later.

So once you get the FIXIT shaped the way you want - you have what you see above...a very rough, uneven shell.....but you're not finished. Let dry 24 hours....you have some sanding to do.

24 hours later - time to sand down your shell. You need some heavy grit sandpaper and an xacto knife for creating straight edges. As you can see in the above images, I've already spent some time sanding the shell down and refined the shape. Two reasons for the high grit sandpaper: the ease of sanding uneven areas down, and scoring of the smoothed surface. This will allow you to sculpt detail that will adhere to the shell surface.

So after cleaning up the shell, I begin sculpting the armor plates...here are a group of pics that show my progression.

I work in stages - a couple plates at a time, allowing them to cure overnight then add a couple more and so on till complete.

And that's it! - a simple how-to that takes some practice learning the effectiveness of the sculpting material - you'd be surprised what you can do with FIXIT. It's an amazing product!

Embo has full motion of the shoulders and arms with the new armor - just a tad higher that shoulder level. I hope you enjoy the pics and have learned a little about using the FIXIT sculpt! I appreciate all the comments and suggestions you may have - please, as always, e-mail me or post a comment.

For more photos of my EMBO's work in progress, check out my photostream on FLICKR athttp://www.flickr.com/photos/sith_fire30/

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Have a great weekend!

sith_fire30