Today I had some time so decided to get to work on creating the body of the alien which I sculpted last week, which I wrote about in This Post.
The head of the creature was interesting and I enjoyed making that, at the end of that session I created a bust, for the head to sit on, knowing that I wasn't going to get into making the body that day.
I bought a few spools of wiring for the model making, and for this I decided to use the thickest one that came with the set of five.
At the same time, I bought the modeling stuff, I bought that set of pliers and a wire cutter too. The pliers come in handy for rounding off the edges of the wiring, wrapping it around, and attaching it.
With one arm and both legs in place, I was ready to finish it by attaching the second arm. I didn't measure them out and just kind of went by eye, but it worked out okay in the end.
There's my reference for the new neck and shoulders of the body, as I thought it was a good measurement for the head of the model.
With that complete I was able to move on and start wrapping tinfoil around the wire frame, to bulk it out a bit.
As I finished the tinfoil, it started to take shape, and I could see a bit more detail.
At this stage, I started posing him a bit, and while doing that I decided to make a base to attach it to, and I went ahead and covered that in tinfoil as well.
Everything up to here took maybe 45 minutes, but now the really time-consuming part started, where I was starting to coat the tin foil in the clay.
Between this picture and the last I probably took about an hour or more, and it was at this time I decided to take a quick coffee break.
It is a pretty tedious process, and while at this stage I was happy to see it take shape, warming up the clay to make it more malleable to attach it started to become pretty annoying.
Almost there.
By this stage, the entire body was covered, but then I started to cover the base for the model too. I had a few old models lying around, which had become damaged when I moved house.
I liked them and thought I would repair them at some stage, but I decided to just break them down for their clay. Surprisingly enough, removing the old clay was easy, and it just peeled off the tinfoil bases pretty smoothly.
I didn't end up picturing it, which I'm kind of raging about now, but how or never.
Now with the base a bit more covered I decided to pop the head off the original bust and break the bust down for its clay, I also just wanted to have a look at what it would look like attached to the body.
I think it looks okay.
Now with the base completely covered, I can get a better look at the model. I still need to smooth out some areas of it here and there, but for the most part, the base coat of clay is on and looking okay.
One thing I didn't account for was the legs, I actually wrapped the ends around the wiring of the base, to hold it in place, and by doing so I lost a bit of length; so they kind of look a bit stubby now.
But, it's an alien so it's not the end of the world. I will try and rectify this if I can when it comes time to design the outfit and put some detailing into the model.
Clothing
While doing this I was working out the style of clothes this guy is going to wear.
I'm thinking - boots, combat trousers, and a trenchcoat-style jacket of some kind. Something with a bit of a collar, and then some armour pieces, like a shoulder pad, or a knee pad, and a belt with some satchels and stuff like that.
I don't want it to be symmetrical, I'd like its outfit to look old, and recycled. Odd pieces of armour and that kind of stuff. For the pose, I'm thinking he should be holding a blaster, but I've also been thinking of a staff too; either or would work. We'll see how that goes when I get around to that session.
I hoped to be further along than I am, but getting me to this stage took longer than expected and I ran out of time. Tomorrow is another day though.
Any ideas for the outfit/ armour? Let me know and I'll see about incorporating some suggestions.
In my mind, it's a post-apocalyptic, sci-fi creature, so whatever it's wearing shouldn't match or be uniform with each other, it should be scavenged and used gear.