Okay this will sound a bit weird, but I had this dream the other day where there was something in my nose, and after a bit of digging I pulled this horrible looking dead alien out of it.
It had a shell, that looked like a snail/ hermit crab, but it had these red fleshy legs, arms, and a weird cyclops-looking head, that was sort of like the creature in the trash compactor in Star Wars.
The thing was dead, and even though I was terrified of it initially, I just stared at the thing, inspecting it and today I decided to try and sculpt it and maybe add it into the sci-fi world I've been writing in.
I started out by making the three legs out of some wiring.
With the legs stable, I got another strip of the wiring ready, and attached it to the legs, at around the correct scale I was going for.
The small set of pliers I got to come in really handy for getting the twists good and tight when creating the armature.
I then got another strip out and wrapped it around the spine of the creature and tightened it, again, I'm just doing the measurements by eye because the idea of this thing being asymmetrical is in my mind, so I don't need to be over particular. Nevertheless, I think I got it pretty spot on.
With the skeleton of the creature in place, and in the general pose I want it to be in, I got the tinfoil ready to give it some bulk before adding clay.
So, I got the first layer of tinfoil down, and from here I just added more to it, especially on the back of the creature where I know the shell of it will be.
I included the tinfoil to the head of the creature, knowing that I want that section to be a little bit bulky. Right now, it started to look a bit like a weird dinosaur.
Now with the tinfoil in place, I got to work adding the clay in small sections until completely covering the model fully. One thing that I have made the mistake of here, is spreading the clay a bit too thin, to the point that the tinfoil starts to show. The last time that happened to me, I always make sure to be generous with the clay I add.
I got into the zone, and while it is a tedious process, I usually just keep my head down and power through it. It's not even the process of adding the clay, it's more so warming it up in my hand's piece by piece to the point it is more malleable. After getting to the head of the creature, I know I wanted a large eye at the front, so I left a piece of wiring on show, where the eyeball would sit in.
Since this creature needs a mouth, I carved away some of the clay on the underside of the head and decided I would have it posed with the mouth open. I was originally going to go with a crab-like mouth, but decided against it, and went for a regular flap. I also added a nose at the top of its head, behind where the eyeball would be included.
With these bits included I started making some carvings in the head, just to add in that bit of detail, before moving on to the eye. Sadly, it is kind of hard to see in this picture.
I added the eyeball to the front of the head and decided to carve into it a bit. To be honest, it looks kind of weird, the nostrils at the back look like the eyes and the actual eye looks like a large round nose. But, I think with a bit more detailing and especially paint, it will look a lot better.
That's It For Today
I am pretty happy with how it is going so far, but I had to down tools to do some other stuff. The arms and legs are going to be a tough task to do I think, or at least, do justice.
The way it looked in my dream was like extremely thin tendons, almost like nerve strings or something like that. I don't know how exactly I'm going to do that, because I don't want to leave the clay so thin that the model can't actually support its own weight.
