Hellboy bust and matrix mold making tutorial

[Ivar_L]

Hi,
I'm new here. Can't say I'm new to sculpting - as a child, plastiline was maybe my favourite "toy". But as an adult sculpting is a pretty new hobby for me. I made a couple of smaller figures when I discovered polymer clay, this one here is my first serious sculpt.
I wanted to try the whole cycle from prototype sculpting via mold making to the coloured resin cast. I also wanted to have something nice on my shelf, so I started my Hellboy bust...

It's not finished yet - at the moment I have only some resin plaster castings and I'm trying to find some resin. I's not easy here in Estonia... (Tried resin my friend is using for making canoes and it's not working).

I took many photographs when I was sculpting and making my plaster/silicone matrix mold. Several people thought it is good idea to post them here, so I will do so. It was the first time I was trying to do this, so of course I made some mistakes. But in overall I think I made pretty good job with it and I hope those pictures can help some other people to demystify this whole mold making process.

I will not post too many pictures about actual work-in-progress bust. I posted them on Hellboy forum when I was sculpting and most of them are not so important or interesting anymore. One more thing - polymer clay I'm using is German made Cernit, it's the one I can get here in Estonia. There are a couple of more clays in shops here - Russian made one I use sometimes as the first layer of clay on wireframe (don't like it enough to sculpt) and Fimo, which I've never tried. There are many colours of Cernit, I used white for this sculpt. It's not the best colour to photograph but I tried my best.

Here are some pictures of my Hellboy:
Original Cernit bust with Mezco figures:

Rotating gif:

First resin plaster cast:


PS: sorry for my English, haven't learned it in school!...

[Ivar_L]

Some sculpting progress photographs:

[Ivar_L]

Mold making 1 - cryptic cardboard base:

[troyboy]

Let me be the first to say what an awesome job you did! That bust is Mignola all the way and MAN, did you do him justice! There've been so many Hellboy busts put out but I gotta say that yours is one of the best I've seen. Are you selling casts? If so, and it won't break me, I'd definitely be interested.

Welcome aboard dude and again, great job!

[ddes3]

Wow!
Nice!


Tore näha et ka eestlasi siin liigub.
Eile regasin - huvitasigi just skulptuuride osa, nüüd vaatan et ültse hea koht õppimiseks.

Kust sa seda savi said? Ja 'moldi' tegemiseks vajaliku kraami?
Fimo saab firmast nimega Tamore: http://www.tamore.ee/

Ise elan Rakveres, ei ole veel ostnud sealt aga lähiajal on plaan.

Edu!

[Ivar_L]

troyboy -
thanks! Like yours sculpts too!

It's not so easy here, I had a lot of trouble when I was trying to buy some mold silicone... The same with resin. I will make some casts, primarly for myself and I need a couple of them as gifts. But resin plaster I have at the moment is still a plaster and I'd like to get some stronger material.

One of my main goals was to try to sculpt a Mignola style bust. There are so many film inspired stuff but not so many comic book statues. Even the Mezco comic book Hellboy's face doesn't look like Mignola's drawing...

ddes3 -
I sent you a private message...

[Bowlin]

I agree, this is one of the best bust of hellboy made. Excellent job!

[Ivar_L]

Mold making 2 - preparations for the first plaster side.

I used Russian made plastiline (I will call it clay here), but the water based clay could be better.

The first thing to do is to define the plane which separates the two mold sides. I'm not very precise here, as this clay I'm sculpting now will define the exact plane which will separate the two plaster molds. It's important to get it almost right, but there is no point to overwork on it, as the time to define the real (silicone) mold will come later.

The clay won't even touch the sculpt. In fact, I used cling film to cover the sculpt most of the time it's covered with clay - this way I will have much less clean-up to do later.
So, this is the clay what simulates the second half of the mold:



The next step is to use some more clay and to cover up the whole sculpt. This clay will be replaced with silicone later, it will become the one half of the silicone mold. So, the layer of clay should be not very thin and also not very thick. I think I used maybe too much clay here, could've got away with less silicone later...
Note the cling film and also various details which will later help to synchronize the plaster mold's sides together (round sockets) and also silicone mold and it's plaster cover (called mother mold).

It all will make sense later...

[alexvez]

this bust is awsome !
thank to post this tutorial
I hope you can find all the stuff you need to cast it.

[Laszlo]

Awesome!

Thanks for posting this!

[dreamsorcerer]

That's a real clean, sharp looking sculpt, perfect and completely flawless! Even the mould you're making looks clean and sharp!! Nice one mate

[Ivar_L]

Mold making 3 - first plaster side.
There is fabric inside the plaster to make it a little bit stronger:

[Ivar_L]

Mold making 4 - second clay side.

Mold and sculpt after removing from the cardboard base:



The clay what simulated the second plaster side is now removed. The clay still there will be replaced with silicone later:



Sculpting the second silicone half. Again, there is a cling film over the sculpt to make the clean-up easier:



Finished side 2. The paper towel tube will become the hole in the plaster cover to pour silicone in:

[Ivar_L]

Mold making 5 - second plaster side.

Here is my mold after the second plaster side was made...



...and after some clean up:



Very important thing is to use some vaseline (or similar agent) on the areas where two plaster sides will touch each other before making the second plaster side. (It's the area with round sockets on the next pictures.) Without it there will be one monolithic plaster shell which is impossible to open. I used some and with the help of screwdriver it opened easily!

Here is one finished plaster side after I removed all the now unnecessary clay from the inside:



Edit: it's clever to measure how much clay went for filling the mold, the same amount of silicon is later needed.

The next step is to prepare the other plaster side for silicone pouring...

[Zaphod]

I can't belive I missed this thread! I must be blind, because I was even looking for it. Great work! You already know I think it's great, since I was one of the ppl requesting it! Thanks for posting it! I will be following the process!

As a sidenote:
I'm going to see if I can make a summary of the info I got in my thread on where to get materials in Sweden. Perhaps a new thread could be made sticky so that people from other countries could post where they get their materials too. It seems you have the same problem with getting polyurethane resin as I had (have).

[Shannon Lee]

That's just amazing. If that were on the market now and I had the room to put it someplace. I would buy that in a snap! Fantasic work!

[Ivar_L]

Thanks for the kind words!
Of course, I have nothing against if some company wants to produce this. I could make and provide matrix molds for first generation copies...

[Ivar_L]

Mold making 6 - preparations for the first half of the silicone mold.

Now it's time to figure out the exact line which will separate the two silicone mold's sides. It was roughly defined before plaster cover was made, but now it must be finalized as precisely as possible.
Here is the second side of the mold with the bust and silicone simulating clay.
Note that although I'm cleaning up and smoothing the clay, the cling film is still there. The reason for it is simple - I'd really like to keep the clean-up minimal as I will keep my original sculpt.



Then I removed my sculpt and cut the cling film, so there is some 2 mm area around the bust where clay will touch the sculpt.
This cling film use is not mandatory, it was something I liked to do. Sometimes it's not as easy to remove the sculpt, sometimes the cleaning up is not a problem. So it depends.



Here the sculpt is back in the mold, the cling is invisible and the silicone-to-be is almost defined:




I haven't written about the most important aspect here - how exactly my sculpt was separated to two mold's sides. I wanted the front of the Hellboy and two sides of the base to be on one side of the mold, the backside of the Hellboy and another two sides of the base in another. That's the reason why this mold is somehow askew... There should be smallest under-cuts possible on the mold and of course the mold must be such that it's possible to remove the cast from it. It's different every time.

And now the final addition - a groove around the sculpt. It helps to synchronize two silicone mold sides, it also helps to keep casting material inside the silicone mold.

[Akiman]

:o You're Sİck Maaan!!!

[egerie]

Where did you learn all these casting techniques ? We did learn some basinc casting techniques in college but nothing as clean as what you're doing here.

[ElvisMcVegas]

All I can say is WOW, your style is incredibly true to the comic, any chance you going to sell painted versions of these?

[Ivar_L]

Akiman and phlem117 -
thanks!

I don't know about selling. At first, I don't have resin yet. Second, I think I will dry brush a couple but it's too time consuming to make some just for selling. And third, I'd really don't want to get to Mike Mignola's black list as sculpture pirate...


egerie -
It was funny to read that my tutorial is more complicated than what they teach in American college...
When I decided that I want to try this process, I searched, read and watched as many mold making tutorials as I could find. As I don't have the exact same materials here, I tried (like some sort of MacGyver) to synthesize my own version. I bet not many people use Sprite bottle in mold making...

Basically there are two ways of making silicone molds - box mold and matrix mold. On box mold making sculpture is basically surrounded with some sort of border or box, lower half is sinked into clay and silicone is poured over it all. Then flip over, some clean-up, a little bit vaseline and another silicone pour. Box mold is much quicker and easier to make but it takes much more silicone. As much as I can tell, it's ok for smaller details like hands but is not as good and stable for bigger sculpts as matrix mold, where plaster cover fixes the silicone layer.

PS: at the moment I'm working on something like this:

[Ivar_L]

Mold making 7 - first silicone side

Silicone I used is white, two component 1:20.



Note the small hole inside the plaster on the next photograph - I drilled it so the air had another place to come out of the mold. When I saw the silicone coming through it, I knew this part of the mold is filled with silicone.



On the next day:



After some clean-up, one side of the mold is ready!

[slinky]

Ivar-L

Excellent work. I've done some molding and casting of my own, and it's never turned out as well as what you are illustrating here. Please keep posting, you are turning out a very, very nice piece and a very informative tutorial. Thanks for taking the time to do that.

[EndTurn]

WOW, that Marv looks great. This tutorial is really great. Ive been hoping for something like this on the site for a while. You spell everything out clearly. I hope this is saved along side smelly bugs tutorial. Cant wait to try this process out sometime soon.
Thanks

[Zaphod]

Great process! Keep it posting. I'm so glad you posted this sculpt in my thread first, so that we could encourage you to post the full tutorial!

I vote for this thread to become sticky! A lot of valuable information combined into one tutorial makes this a must read for anyone looking into casting!

Thanks!

[StrangeAlchemist]

This is a really cool, informative thread. That Marv bust looks swe-eet. Thanks for taking the time to post your process.

[Ivar_L]

Thanks for all the comments!

As it was the first time for me to try mold making and as I tried to document the whole process with my camera, I was trying to make it as clean and perfect as I could. Don't think my next mold will look as good...

I will re-read my earlier posts and add some more comments, as there are some important points and details I forgot. So, if the message is edited there is probably some more text...

[Ivar_L]

Mold making 8 - second silicone side

Here is second plaster side (actually the one I made first) after the clean up:



I repaired the plaster sides a little after the clean up, as there were some cracks inside and also the opening with screwdriver left some disintegrating marks to the mold's borders.

Here is the closed mold with another silicone side inside and curing:



Again - it's very important to cover the already finished silicone mold with vaseline! Not the whole mold of course, but the visible area between plaster and the sculpt. Very thin layer is all what is needed. Without it there is only one way to open the mold and to get the sculpt out - exacto knife.

Good mold making silicone can go through very small openings. That's the point... So, it's very important to seal the mold very thightly. I couldn't find plaster bandages, maybe I just didn't look around enough. So I used simple masking tape in several layers. And I'm happy that it worked! Some of the silicone came through from between the plaster sides but it didn't came through the paper tape.

It's visible on the photo that this time silicone on the hole doesn't seem as smooth as the first time. The reason is simple - I had some leftover silicone from the first silicone session from the jug and from the first mold. The amount of silicone I mixed this time was maybe too exact. So I used scissors, cut some of them to the small pieces and sinked to the liquid silicone through the hole in the plaster. Recycling!

[danimation2001]

now that's what a hellboy bust should look like.