Erin's WWWIP Week 2
Hey Friendos, it’s Erin from the Foam Corps!
I figured I’d start this post on a slightly more personal note just for context. I broke my leg in August by falling down a staircase and had to have pretty major surgery (3 days in the hospital, a bazillion pins in my leg, only been cleared to walk normally for about a month; I am definitely about half cyborg now). I only bring this up because while I’m mostly recovered, being careful with my leg is still a huge consideration while crafting! So don’t worry about my well-being. I’ve been cleared to do everything I’m going to do over WWWIP and more--but if I mention being slower, or hurting a bit, or whatever, that’s all.
I included this image just to prove my cyborg credentials. Pretty impressive, right?
Anyway, on to the crafting! Now that I created patterns for all of Eirika’s armor pieces, I started considering the size I wanted each piece to be. I started off with a simple tape measure, holding it against myself in a mirror and considering the look I want to achieve. In the end, I decided to err on the side of larger armor because, while Eirika’s armor isn’t huge, her proportions also are not realistic, and I tend to prefer the detail pieces to take up more space on the actual human body. 10” tall it is!
Now that the pattern is printed, here is a general list of my next steps:
- Find a shape curved roughly how I want the armor to curve (tip: smaller garbage cans are great for large pieces; they’re cheap, and they come in a huge variety).
- Tape the cut-out pattern to my form with clear packing tape, covering all of the paper sealing the paper is important because the next step involves wet clay and a lot of water. I also roughly blacked out the parts of the clay sculpt that will be the deepest, or lowest, so it’s easier to see what I’m doing.
- Sculpt the shapes over the pattern with Apoxie Sculpt (the brand doesn’t matter but clays like Apoxie Sculpt, Magic Sculpt, etc. won’t shrink like water-based clays do). I use water and steel clay tools to smooth and guide my sculpting.
Note: I always try and get my shapes as close as I can to my end goal, but sculpting this way always looks better if you sand your piece more precise afterwards.
- Once the clay form is cured, sanded, and looks exactly how I want, I plan to apply a layer of vaseline, then heat worbla over it and pop the worbla back off again. I will be able to do this process twice to create the detailed portions for both hip plates. This method works very similarly to vacuum forming, and means I don’t have to sculpt this extremely complicated hip plate twice.
This sculpting portion will take me quite a bit of time. This hip plate is, in my current estimation, the most complicated piece on the costume which is why I tackled it first! So expect sculpting updates over the next week. Plus I will be gathering more materials to start on the jacket. Tune in later this week, friends!
-Erin