Hello there fellow mers. While I still think its a little early for me to be posting anything, I was recently encouraged to post my progress so far on mold making etc. and because things are taking so long to dry I thought I might aswell while im waiting
I started out with some MonsterMakers Premium grade clay. link here: http://www.monstermakers.com/product...ard-grade-html
First I started on the scales. After some trial and error with different types of seeds I ended up choosing a roasted melon seed that I liked the size/shape of.
Next I began creating a simple push mold of the single seed, pictured here:
Basically, I took a styrofoam cup and ripped the sides off so it could only hold about 2 millimetres of liquid. Next I took some Weld-Bond ( a type of glue found at the hardware store) pictured here:
I filled the styrofoam cup piece with the 2 MM of glue, sprayed the seed with Pam cooking spray(so It could be easily removed). layed the roasted melon seed into the glue so it was only half submerged in the glue. after a couple days the glue was rock hard and I peeled out the seed, leaving the impression of itself in the glue.
With that finished I took out a large sheet of styrofoam and layed it down as a base for my scales. I began picking small pieces of the clay off and pushing them into the push mold I had made, then peeling out individual scales. I layed them in rows on the sheet of styrofoam until it was covered.This is a corner of that sheet of scales done in clay:
with those done, I began sculpting the extra fins. First I drew the shape of the fin I wanted on a piece of paper. as seen here for a pectoral fin:
I then taped the picture to another sheet of styrofoam and used a fork to poke holes through the paper into the styrofoam along the lines in the fin. When I peeled the paper off I was left with a design I could cut out and begin to build clay onto. as seen here on piece of styrofoam meant for a dorsal fin:
To get started sculpting the fins I went out and got a clay extruder. Link here: http://www.walnuthollow.com/28301clayextruderset.aspx
basically it allows you to make long tubes of clay among other shapes. I made a bunch of tubes and started covering my styrofoam cut out fins in the tubes of clay. once the extra fins were sculpted I slid them off of the styrofoam piece underneath and put them aside so I could build clay walls around them later. heres a picture of some of the extra fins once they were sculpted:
Next it was onto the Fluke. I took an image of a real fish fluke and went to blockposter.com( basically a website that allows you to take any image you want and print it out to whatever dimensions you choose. It prints the image off in pieces on several different pages and you can tape them together to put the image together) link to site here: http://www.blockposters.com/
here is a picture of the image I printed out:
With that done I layed the image onto yet another sheet of styrofoam and traced it. took the image away and began laying tubes of clay down again to fill in the tracing. when I was done I had this:The tubes of clay start out big and get smaller the closer you get to the center of the fluke, it gives it a nice concave effect that I like.
Finally it was mold making time. I ordered some Shellshock brushable liquid plastic. link here:http://www.smooth-on.com/Shell-Shock...165/index.html
(Its a brushable liquid plastic that is not only very durable, meaning if I take good care of the molds I can use them over and over and over without damaging them at all and as an added bonus this particular plastic doesnt require a release agent to be used when pouring rubber into molds made from it. I used some anyways to be safe but even the parts of the side of the mold where I didnt apply release agent didnt have rubber stick to them.)
Here is a video showing all the clay sculptures, the clay walls being built around them and them after they are covered in liquid plastic:
Once that was dry, I peeled the sculptures away from the plastic ( was some clay left in the molds so I used a scrubby brush and some dish detergent to clean it out) and was left with molds like this one of the scale sheet:or this one of a pectoral fin:
this was before the last bit of clay was scrubbed out.
after that I applied release agent to my molds, Pigmented my liquid rubber, and began brushing detail layers into the molds. once the detail layers were dry I poured in enough rubber to fill up the rest of the molds.
after those dried I could peel them out. here is a sheet of rubber scales ( unpainted and untrimmed) they are slightly pigmented with a pearlized white color for one of the tails currently being worked on:
Details will be painted onto the pigmented rubber scales/fluke etc. after the details are painted on I will coat the entire tail in Perma Wet. link here: http://www.monstermakers.com/product...s-coating.html
its a clear glossy coat that will not only give some added protection to the paint but also it will make the tail always look like its wet even when your not near water which I think is going to be cool ^_^
I had scrap pieces of scales after I cut some of the sheets out to shape, and naturally while other things were drying I couldnt help myself but see how some colors looked on the scales. *Note* These are not the colors I will be using, I was only experimenting with some paint from my art kit
heres the pics:
So far the plans for the tails color patterns are:
1- A king salmon
2- A Rainbow trout
3- A Musky
Thats all I have to share for now but there will be more in the coming weeks
**EDIT** I wanted to post the videos thus far onto this first post so no one has to go searching through pages to find them:
Peeling out scales-
Fin Construction-
Scale Stretch test-
Start of monofin-
Monofin construction(this process has been modified and will be updates eventually)-
The bare skeleton of a tail-
a couple teaser vids of the salmon tail:
Swimming in the tail-
Also I would like to add here on this first post that the latex I am using is called: Monster Makers mask making latex RD-407, Link here: http://www.monstermakers.com/product...and-Props.html
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Originally Posted by Kanti
oh iknow for a fact that the tail will be WICKED,,can't wait to see the rest!
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