EIGHTEENTH ENTRY - Moulds Part II

DISASTER

After our first week of tests I was feeling pretty confident. I had previously spent weeks and weeks looking for all the information I could get about mould making with silicone and resin. Many online videos, many conversations with professional SFX people, including my dear friend Andrea Leanza, and the master mould-maker Robert Freitas, and all this research finally seemed to have paid off. We learned things from the tests, but there were no panics, no disasters. Things felt like they were going surprisingly smoothly.

And the calm and comfort of Donald's home, his wife's cooking, and our evenings after work watching films and drinking wine and coffee made for the perfect work environment. We were both experimenting with products we had never used before, and enjoying getting back into the spirit of stop-motion.

 As it was impossible to predict time, though I could not anticipate the actual setback that befell us, my priority was to get the character of Isolde to Liz before anything else. Therefore I was bold, and started making moulds directly on the two main characters. I probably should have started with Anna.
Donald and I worked together, slowly building up the clay beds surrounding the two figures, working on two moulds at once.

 I had bought three blocks of Chavant clay from Tiranti, before leaving London, and had not thought to order more from Mouldlife. And I also packed one block of CKC plastiline which I had from the old order made in Italy, from Flockart.

Unfortunately the Chavant was not enough, so I brought out the CKC. I had checked on the Flockart website to see if this clay was not for use with silicone, but it made no mention, or at least no clear indication against it. There was absolutely no reason to assume otherwise.

In the picture above, the light tray surrounding the figure is Chavant, the slightly darker grey of the internal wall is CKC. This wall was to allow for the resin shell to extend past the silicone layer of the mould.
Building the first bed of a mould is a very slow and delicate process, particularly for people who rarely do this. Donald was introducing me to strange and obscure music, and I was enjoying the backwards thinking involved in this meticulous process of laying a figure half way in clay. A bed seems to take at least a day to make.

 Donald found a block of hard Chavant he had purchased at some point, which was a terracotta colour. It was added to the mix, and I used some to strengthen the keys in the CKC, as the Italian clay was very soft and difficult to create good keys in. We commented a lot about how soft the CKC was, and we ended up using it quite a lot as it made things faster.

 Russeau surrounded by CKC, wearing a first coat of PlatSil© Gel 10 silicone. CKC is also filling the holes in his chest where I had left access to the armature joints, but then decided they were better filled.

 To our horror, in some places the silicone did not cure!

 Quickly it became clear that the CKC was reacting badly with the silicone. It had contaminated everything. Anywhere that the silicone touched it, or touched something that had been touched by it, the rubber would not cure.There was a spot on Isolde's forehead that I had nicked whilst working on the clay bed, and I'd fixed this with a sculpting tool I had been using to smooth the CKC with. This spot on her head was contaminated! The same went for the areas around the filled hex key holes to the joints, and anywhere else in the vicinity of the CKC

 It was obvious that CKC had a high sulphur content. High because the people at MouldLife said that Platsil Gel 10 had a higher resistance to sulphur than many other silicones.

Donald and I, feeling terribly deflated, commenced in making test charts of what worked best to clean away the contamination of the CKC enemy. Lighter fluid, alcohol, fairy liquid, and white spirit. The latter seemed to work best.

The resin did not have any problems curing onto the CKC, but of course I would later be casting silicone puppets from a contaminated resin, so these would need thorough cleaning as well.

It felt like a chemical spill. Everything contaminated, everything needed scrubbing down with white spirit. And though the white spirit softened the clay, it also softened the wax, therefore cleaning the figures could mean deforming them.

 We cleaned everything down, slowly, and rebuilt the surface of the bed and walls with recycled Chavant from underneath the figure.

I believe we had to do this whole process twice.

Another week was ending, and we could clearly see that by this point we should have had all full moulds finished (each a rubber version as well as a resin one), and the foam casts done.

I worked through the night until 5:00 in the morning of Friday, making a third and last attempt for an uncontaminated silicone mould.

an acrylic spray sealed the contaminated  clay off before using the wax spray, and also (probably not needed) the Flockart Barrier (probably petroleum jelly relabelled and with an inflated price).

 02:27 AM

 Passing time between silicone layers curing time

 part of one of the contaminated layers.

Photoshop plastic wrap effect nostalgia

 04:59 AM. Lauder is very pleasant at this hour.

The culprit.

RECOVERY

On the Friday Donald and I made the resin shell over the silicone moulds I had worked on through the night, hoping for the best. Later that day I moved to Edinburgh, to Moat House, where I would spend another week recuperating the lost time, and finishing what I had been able to salvage.

Working with Donald had been wonderful, and as good an experience as I can imagine. And Rosemary's hospitality such an incredible gift.

 Removing the bed of clay

  Clay beds removed from both figures. Hex keys were cut and inserted into shoulder joints for armature suspension.

 Resin poured for bottom halves. 

Removing the silicone mould and its shell. Sea Monster.

Though some areas around the edges were not perfectly cured, as a whole the rubber mould was successful, considering what had happened.
Since I was most concerned with having a master mould of the faces, and after the disaster that had occurred, I only worried about making the top half of the mould in silicone.

 Incredibly both figures were intact, this made me very happy

 New wall for top half of resin mould

 mould finished and opened.

 cracking it open

Faces always get lost

 Two part resin mould complete, many months worth of sculpting destroyed. Most liberating.

 Two destroyed figures. Two decent moulds.

 I was blessed with Liz's presence for a day in Edinburgh. Here she is cleaning the wax out from the mould.

 In the next room, Tobias, catching up with Mr. Bernard, and Sophie Gackowski working on her first painting.

HANDS

 first hand mould. Isolde's hands. Cut straws were placed to leave an opening for the armature to slip into the cast silicone elbow.

 On the Thursday, following the CKC disaster, I ordered new blocks of Chavant clay from MouldLife. Here the terracotta colour is a soft batch.

Fingers are tricky to sculpt, tricky to work clay around, and tricky to clean the clay away from.

 Hex keys slide into the mould and suspend the armature from the wrist and elbow.

 Very fiddly, but a successful mould.

 First silicone hand test. I tried laying the wire down and letting it run up the forearm, rather than trying to fix it into the palm stick with some sort of adhesive. I may experiment a little more with this concept.

ANNA - THE COMPLETE MOULD-MAKING PROCESS

For some reason, we beginner mould-makers, are afflicted by a sort of instinct to begin a two-part mould face up. It just doesn't occur to us to do otherwise. I decided this was a misleading instinct, and that I would try Anna face down, as it would avoid the danger of accidentally damaging the face whilst preparing the clay bed, and also, it might be easier. Rob Freita's slide talk suggested this idea. It also allows you to make final adjustments to the face before the last step.

Moreover, it made much more sense, as I would be making the two different top layers of the mould, and this way they would both be working to the same, finished base.

 Robert Freitas' brilliant technique of using a flashlight to find the mid point in the figure. Thanks for sharing secrets, Rob!

 building the Chavant sulphur free clay bed to surround but not touch the figure. I would then bridge a thin layer to make contact.

Ears are the trickiest part of these moulds, and made easier with the figure face down.

 cut hex keys in shoulders, and long ones that will slide in and out from sides of the mould to fix the ankles in place.

 My only mistake with this mould. My intention was to create a gap surrounding the figure for overflows of polyurethane foam to flow into and minimise the pressure against a tight close during casting. My mind didn't think things through in the backwards way a mould-maker must, and I created the opposite of a dip.

 Mould Wax release agent was sprayed on, and a first thin layer of Easy Flow 120 resin poured and sponged. This resin is transparent until cured, so you are able to see and clear any bubbles, if you work quickly.

 After two or three thin layers, a thickened final layer was applied. This was bulked with Alitrihydrate, and thickened with Polyfibre.

 After the resin cured, everything was flipped to start work on the top side.The orange wood was the wooden base for the sculptures, which I used here to bulk and raise the clay to use less of it underneath the figure. Something better could have been used, but this is what I had to hand.

 Clay was carefully pulled and cleaned away, revealing the resin bed.

 I used wax, being cleaner and easier to work with, to create a wall that would contain the silicone, with keys for it to lock in place in the resin shell, which would extend past the silicone and lock to the opposing resin base.

The silicone I am using is PlatSil© Gel 10.

Pins are inserted into the eyes, and a first detail layer of silicone brushed on.

 Various layers of silicone, alternating colour to help get a good coverage, until I felt I had enough.

In the background a rolled piece of clay poked with a brush handle, used to cast the silicone "Sea Monster Nipple Keys"

 Wax barriers removed. Mould Wax release agent was sprayed on.

 Resin shell created.

 Pins removed from the eyes, the silicone peeled off perfectly. No contamination this time.

 Base prepared with release agent, pins inserted, detail layer of resin sponged on, followed by more layers.

 This entire process seemed much easier after beginning with the figure facing down. The ears were much easier to deal with whilst building the clay bed, and feet were more straight forward in the resin application, as it is easier to fill a hole, rather than cover a steep slope.

 Anna had been split in half to insert the armature a while back, so when the mould was opened she came open again.

 For some reason the wax was a lot easier to clean out this time.

Since I had messed up with the grove around the figure for the foam to spill into, as an alternative I tried drilling 3mm holes around her instead. I don't know how much this affected the polyurethane foam casting, but it was hellish to get the foam out of the holes, so I sort of regretted it. 
Some small holes were drilled in the high points of the back of the figure as vents.

After a few attempts each, on my final work day, the 12th of March, Tobias' birthday, I managed to cast usable foam versions of the puppets for Liz' costume design.

I traveled back to London the following day.

Finally the wax sculptures are gone. I can no longer endlessly fine-tune them. It is a great liberation.

SEVENTEENTH ENTRY - Mould Making

On the 21st of February I packed my sculptures again, ordered materials, and traveled to the Scottish Borders to stay with Donald Holwill and work together in the quiet of his workshop in the remote land of Lauder, where the winds are soft, and the birds continue noisily after dusk.

My objectives were quite simple: do as much as possible, but the main priority being to cast foam versions of the figures, to be costume mannequins for Liz to work from.

There seem to be two main suppliers for special effects products (Bentleys with Smooth-On products, and MouldLife, supplying Polytek), with very small reasons to choose one over the other. It was suggested to me, for my needs, to go for Mouldlife, who were quite wonderfully helpful over the phone, and impressively efficient at sending the order to arrive in Lauder before I did.

Donald picked me up from Berwick Upon Tweed, a now relaxed and retired professor, and after settling in we commenced with some tests.

I had prepared a mockup test version of the grandmother, made from wax pushed into the fiberglass mould, a mould I had half made in Italy, and half, months later, in Surrey.

Below are images from the test run.
I wanted a silicone mould as a backup and also to be able to recast the figures in wax, from which I could demould the original sculpture without damaging it, to then make a new mould in hard resin.

 pins were stuck in the eyes to help keep the beads in place later during casting. A first layer of PlatSil© Gel 10 was applied with a soft brush.

 perhaps one or two more thin layers were applied, before a thickened version.

 Then a wall of oil based sulphur free Chavant clay was created half way around the figure. I had applied silicone keys (here seemingly deep sea monster nipples) in the last layer of silicone, so that the rubber mould would pop into place in the hard shell. 

EasyFlow 120 was used to make the shell. This is a two part resin mixed in 100 to 90 ratio, and which can be bulked with Alithihydrate, and thickened with Polyfibre. It is transparent during working time, which is good as this allows you to see any bubbles, and it cures to white.

 I was happy enough with this test at this point, so didn't bother with the other half of the shell.

the silicone skin came off of the sculpture perfectly, though the pins which were embedded into the ribber sliced through the eyelids of the wax original. We avoided this problem in the following moulds by removing the pins before demoulding.

 

 The silicone mould was successful, and an important test.

A poured resin test of the mould. Detail seemed perfect.

A new wall was built in clay for a two part resin mould. 

 Again, eye pins were inserted, and a thin layer of resin was brushed on.

More layers were then applied, and after the first side was done, the back side was made.

I embedded pieces of hex keys into the back of the mould that fit into the shoulder joints and suspend the armature.

I used the old fiberglass mould of the grandmother to test the polyurethane foam which I intended to use for the costume mannequins. The foam is the S5 High Density Soft Foam. It is very tricky to use, as it goes off in seconds, but after a few tries you get the results you want. Here I pushed some clay into the face in case the foam decided to not let go of the detail in the mould. I'd had some unpleasant experiences with hard polyurethane foam when making the puppets for Solo Duets. This soft one is much kinder, but still a little scary.

My first silicone skin. A test made in the grandmother mould.

The test results. A resin head made to test the silicone mould. A silicone skin, and a silicone skin filled with S5 foam. This made a very nice head to punch hair into, but as the foam is so unpredictable to use, I don't imagine I'll take that rout.

And two legs. The one on the left was made with a silicone skin, filled with S3 Low Density Soft Foam. I wanted to try this as a substitute for Foam Latex (which I lack the facilities for), as a light weight soft bulk for the puppets. However, being such a high expansion foam, filled with so much air, its bubbles affected the silicone with a strange older than old lady texture, and the foam didn't seem to bounce back to its original shape as much as it needed to. 

The leg on the right was made with solid PlatSil© Gel 10 silicone encompassing the armature. Amazingly it is soft enough that it does not resist the tension of the armature. Hence I believe I will get away with just building a light weight hard bulk skeleton onto the armature, under silicone skin which will be solid in the joints.

Donald and I spent the week on these tests, and on Friday morning we traveled into Edinburgh, where I participated in a crit with 2nd year students at ECA, and spent the weekend with Atzi, my composer friend, and my brother Tobias and Sophie.

Tobias and Sophie hosted a brilliant animators evening at Moat House, with Atzi, Ainslie Henderson, Will Anderson, Catriona Bruce, and Vitali Sichinava.

 Will Anderson, Catriona Bruce

 Atzi

Ainslie Henderson, Tobias Feltus

Sophie Gackowski, Vitali Sichinava, 
listening to Atzi read out loud a Hans Christian Andersen tale.

 Ainslie and Cat

Atzi and Vitali, a week later during Tobias' Roman birthday dinner.

During the weekend Tobias and I did some tests for eyeballs. I am unhappy with the shape of the beads I am using (which were pretty much the only round 4mm beads I have been able to find). They dip inwards around the hole, the opposite of what they should do to mimic an eye. This was so problematic during sculpture that I ended up turning Isolde's eyes so the hole was hidden within the head, which meant later needing to drill holes for the pins into the mould.

We tried sanding down the front of the bead flat, to the size of the iris, and then adding a drop of Araldyte as a lens, after painting the iris on the flat surface. It was a good experiment, but not satisfactory.

Tobias Feltus sanding irises into beads.

My dear friend and mentor, Professor Donald Holwill, in his kitchen in Lauder.

SIXTEENTH ENTRY - Boxing Day Rewrite

The Unattended Lessons has recently been undergoing changes.

On Boxing Day, during a morning walk, I rewrote the script.

I made changes to the protagonist's profession, clarified certain important aspects of his relationship with Isolde, and gave the film a rather different feel.

I had been working on these changes for a few weeks, but the day after Christmas things fell into place.

I believe it has been simplified and strengthened.

FIFTEENTH ENTRY - Eyes

Eyes.

Again, just like the mistake of making incorrectly proportioned armatures before sculpting, eyeballs should be made properly before anything else.

I found back in the days of Solo Duets that there seems to be no such thing as round glass beads the correct size. They say they are glass, but in reality they are cheap brittle moulded plastic, with a pearl effect coating. And they are the same damned ones you'll find in any shop, just packaged differently.
Has anyone else ever found actual round 4mm glass beads with tiny holes?

And apart from the fact that they are cheap plastic, they flatten around the hole, rather than protrude slightly as I would ideally want.
Trying to sculpting eyelids over a ball that flattens where it should protrude to mimic the eye's lens  is very frustrating.

So although they are ridiculously small, there must be a way to next time sculpt eyeballs the scale and shape I need, and cast them in resin or something.

FOURTEENTH ENTRY - words

It is clear that one of my main mistakes, as I have mentioned repeatedly, was to first build armatures, and sculpt the figures onto these. The bone structure I had created without enough study into form made it impossible to achieve the figures I desired. And because I thought things would be moving much quicker, and I was moving production down to Italy, I hurried to build a second armature for the young girl, a smaller one, again, before leaving and before sculpting.

I do wonder, however, how it would have been had I done things the "right" way. Today I thought to use the young girl's first armature in the place of the armature built for the old lady. This latter one had been made economically, and hence has wire arms. As I now have an extra full ball and socket armature sitting idle, I thought to use that for the old woman. The two armatures are roughly the same size, at least in height. Grandmother has wider hips, but this would not be a problem.
Instead, what of the full armature did not fit in the mould were the arms. She had been sculpted with wire in the place of the bulky elbow joints, and therefore can only work with wire, or with smaller joints, which of course I don't have.

This has inevitably brought me to worry about the fact that in all the puppets there are places where the skin only just covers the joint, and this will surely be very problematic when casting the silicone puppets over their skeletons.

Clearly, therefore, sculpting onto the armatures is the correct way to work, but only after first making quickly sculpted mockup to be sure of the right proportions to build the armature to.

THIRTEENTH ENTRY - a return

two views of Apartment II

the floor plan of both apartments, Assisi November 2010.

Liz's costume patterns, Assisi Feb, 2010

and the little disasters... She was so concentrated on the details of her work that she only noticed later that she had placed the sculpture down... face down...

Assisi, November, 2010

Something that bothers me about working with puppets this scale is the impossibility to have bones in the fingers. This is something I'm just trying, hoping that the rubber will prefer to bend at these thinner points. Assisi, February, 2011

In an earlier entry I mentioned how I found it suddenly easier to sculpt the head with hair, rather than imagining baldness. Here the face was well enough established that the hair could come back off. Assisi, February, 2011

Yet another problem with designing the armatures prior to the sculpture. Shortening the foot as much as possible against the established armature. Assisi, February, 2011

hands

I spent a good few hours on the internet looking at props for 1:6 scale action figures. Too many hours. I could have made my own props in that time.

In the end I ordered one set of silverware, but was not impressed by the quality, so worked on options of my own.

My first resin mould, started in Assisi (February 2011), and finished during a weekend at Longcross Studios (September 2011), outside of London, where I worked on the film World War Z.

It is not a masterpiece of a mould, but passable.

The resin was Diaspro Calk, from the Italian company Flockart ( www.flockcart.it ), suggested to me by the make-up designer Luigi Rocchetti.

Grandma staying moist, half way submerged in Deruta clay.

My first silicone mould test (in MouldMax 25), done in Cardiff, November 2010. I used a very intricate crab shell I found on the beach in the Gower, knowing it would be too intricate, but trying nonetheless to quickly patch up holes where undercuts would be too deep. I wanted to test an interesting object, even if this meant a failing test. It was quite unsuccessful, but I was impressed with the detail the silicone picked up from the newspaper it was poured onto (or whatever it was I had underneath).

Armature for the girl, kindly assembled by Joel Calvert at John Wright's studio (January 2011).

I decided she needed an entirely new armature, as the original did not suggest her correct age.

In November 2011, passing through Bristol after revisiting the Gower in Wales, I took the girl armature back to John Wright Modelmaking for a quick modification to reduce the gap between two joints so that the clavicle chest piece wouldn't stick out so much. This was the only modification I am allowing myself. The arms will have to stay long.

And here they are again, back in the box, traveling back to the UK in February 2011, when Liz and I moved to London and joined the crew of Marc Forster's 'World War Z'. The sculptures stayed in this box for many weeks. I finished the mould for the grandmother, taking advantage of a workshop, but started an oil painting to keep me myself during the weekends. I only just put the tools back to the sculptures in the last few days.