Monday, 29 July 2013

To Sculpt a Clown

I've forgotten how much I enjoy the process of sculpting a character. It can be so rewarding when everything happens just as you envisioned it. I have only just baked the head of Jangles the Clown which I have been working on over the past couple of days.

In the more recent past I find that I've rushed through characters in the hope of creating something great, quickly. The results of doing this are always personally disappointing (Wormwood in particular).

Starting with a bare armature I bulked out the characters basic form with some clay, being careful to maintain symmetry at an early stage (which means being careful with the quantity of clay, being sure that it is added in even quantities around the character). It's a slow process and the firm clay doesn't make it any easier. It took me from roughly 12am to 4pm with a few breaks (and lots of movies, James and the Giant Peach & The Witches in particular, why Roald Dahl? I have no idea) and I managed to get to this point:


It might not look impressive, but at this stage most of the laborious work takes place at this point. Moving around relatively large quantities of clay and trying maintain some symmetry isn't exactly difficult, but it is time consuming and requires a pair of enduring hands.

The next day I managed to bulk out the legs and add some shoes, which took another 2 hours.


It's at this point I realised how out of sync the perspective and foreshortening in my sketch was when compared to the sculpt. When faced with this it's better to ignore the conflict and just accept that you've made a mistake in the sketch.

Then the face, this is always my favourite part and I should really have left it until last for desert, but I think I needed to enjoy myself after two days of boring work.


At the end of the third day, at around 10:30 at night I ended up with this:


I knew it was a good start, but wrote a list of required changes like: "change ears, smooth out lips," and left it for the next day in which I finished and baked the head:


[Note]: It doesn't look anywhere near as dusty in real life, that's odd.

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