Blog

I will be putting some blogs up here now and then :) People are welcome to get in touch with me if they have any questions about my blogs.

First silicone puppet

I tried making a full body silicone puppet the last 4 weeks to experiment a bit with silicone. I decided on a dog since, I would have to work around the tail too.

I thought a two part mold would be the best way to cast the silicone puppet in, since when I needed to put the skeleton in I would have more control and I would be more in control with finding and destroying bobbles.

The mold got made in AcrylicOne, called AcrylCast from FormX, and I bought the silicone the same place which was a MoldMax-T series silicone (but really good products).

I made some mistakes early on with the canals which should have only been on the side and not in the middle of the casting and the surface on the inside was not smooth, but a bit bumpy because I had not made the clay smooth. Also I should have used more Easy Release, since my 3 of 4 round circles which should have kept the two parts locked when casting the siliscone broke off and also one side of the mold broke in half, but I could fix that by making some more resin and putting it back together (I had to of courses sandpaper it down inside the mold). 

After making a casting in the mold I found some mistakes in the way I have arranged the puppet. When making a full body it is good to keep all finger on only one side of the mold, with both hands, like having the puppet bend it's albue a bit so the finger are covered. Also it is possible to make a tail or the like, but there needs to be a little canal between the puppet and the tail or other object which is a lot thinner that, and when pouring the silicone you will need to pour at the "base" or thicker part where the puppet and tail or other are connected the most.

The most important thing to remember when making a silicone puppet is not use or use very very little Easy Release when you are finally casting with silicone because otherwise your puppet will be greasy and not really dry and it is one of those things that are very difficult to fix again.

Another good thing to know is if your puppet has big bobbles (which you can remove most by banging the mixutre together before pouring it), is that you can recast your puppet again. I, for example, was missing half of the side of my puppet, but after casting only the side missing it was almost complete (I had made the mistake of not conneting the left hand well and not pour enough at the left ear).

But when making a mold for a puppets it is always difficult to know before hand what will and will not work. So have fun! :)

WiredFly internship

I was an intern at Wiredfly for 2 months, and I learned so much! I got to make professional props from start to finish (I became a master in applying rust and moss on props), and I learned how to set up and animate puppets for stop-motion games. I also got around to use the motion control for when we did 3D scanning of the props.

But what I loved making the most was the silicone or Flex Foam casting we did! I used to not like casting silicone, but after the 2nd or 3rd try it really clicked, and I started to love it when we were casting some silicone hands or shoes.

With the Flex Foam I got it right away, since it was not as diffucult as silicone. We also make some tests with Flex Foam to see if we could replace silicone with it, but we had a problem with the bubbles it created.

I also had the pleasure to get invited for the release event of Felix the Reaper (a game by Kong Orange), and it was absolutely amazing! The people talking at the event was really interesting, and the music was so good. The event got even better when a dancer, dressed as the main character (Felix) in the game, came out dancing to the music. Amazing!!

FLex Foam Casting

While being an intern at WiredFly in Aarhus, I got to work with Flex Foam when making some feathers, and we started experimenting with it to see if we could make some hands with skeletons in or props for puppets.

Flex Foam takes 2 hours to harded when it is in the cast, but you only have 60 seconds when you mix Flex Foam part A and part B, so you have to be quick when trying to remove bubbles. You also have to make sure something heavy is on the top of the cast or that the cast is somehow put under presure because the Flex Foam rises.

The hand with the skeleton in it worked quite well, and had less bubbles, but there was still some bubbles in both the hand and the shoe. When we were making the shoe we tried to have the Flex Foam mixed with some colour, but the colour got a lot lighter than intended, so there is already some white colour in Flex Foam and we will have too make the colour a lot more dark to start with.

With the hand we wanted to paint on it after casting it, and we mixed paint with Pros-Aide. On the feathers we made it worked well, but on the hand it did not look right. Also when cutting off the extra material it still left a little line.

But even thought there is some things that still needs to be fixed or figure out, it work really well and it has a lot of potential, and it is a material I would love to work with in the future.

Just remeber when working with Flex Foam or Pros-Aide to always were gloves :)