Jangles Sculpted

I've just finished baking Jangles the Clown (previously Dr. Jangles). Overall I'm quite pleased with how he turned out, there were only a few minor cracks after baking, but they sealed themselves back up once he was cooled and what remains of them will easily be covered by paint.

Above: Jangles the Clown after baking.

The trickiest part was perhaps his pants as they were quite bulky and it's difficult to get some good 'squash' and 'stretch' happening when you have so much stiff clay to shift. For his socks and stockings I made my own stamps and used them to imprint fine details. This required quite a bit of experimentation with various methods. At first I tried a basic flat stamp and tried to push it into the surface of the leg to give the impression of fishnet stockings. The clay was far too stiff at this point so the effect was fairly minor, it also resulted in the leg being distorted too much and required some fixing.

The second attempt was made using the same stamp on a flat strip of ribbon like clay which I would wind around the leg. The ribbon was too short however and needed to be stretched. I played around with a rolling-pin cross stamp method in which the stamp was cylindrical so the pattern would be continuous, but sculpting a consistent pattern onto the stamp was too difficult. In the end I just made a longer and more defined version of the first stamp (I made it's grooves and dents deeper to allow my detail) and then pressed this in a long strip of ribbon like clay which I then wound around the leg. The same process was used for the socks. I was quite impressed by the level of detail they produced and would like to develop a few similar methods for perhaps the texture of cloth and fur.

Above: Two of the stamps used. To the left is the original, to the right is the final.

I've been reading 'The Illusion of Life' lately and came across a few quotes by Walt Disney describing his attitude to the development of a character's history and personality. This has inspired me to write a few biographies for the characters that I may use in my research. The important distinction between the written descriptions and those I've written before is that I'm making no mention of a character's physical features, only their mood and personality which has shifted my thinking and attitudes toward them. I no longer see them as static artefacts, but a freeze frame of a character's life. The pose they strike in the sculpture is not their only and most defining pose, but just one of their many and it could be an insignificant and pedestrian pose (how they would stand normally as they go about their day) or a pose that defines a large aspect of their personality and story. In animation lingo, I see it as the difference between a 'key frame' and an 'in-between' frame, which is something that perhaps I will elaborate on later.