EWJ Mighty Mugg IV

Fail.



I'm going to sculpt a new head and make a new mold. The proportions are wacked so I plan to make a shorter fatter sculpt with less detail. The paint should take care of what I subtract from the detail on the sculpt. I think that by going light on detail it will be more true to the the style of a Mighty Mugg.



I removed the black piece that attaches the head to the body of the Mighty Mugg. The piece is well housed in the shoulders of the body. So there is no way to pry the neck piece off with pliers without destroying the Mugg body in the process. I recommend carefully removing it with a small rotary tool such as the Dremel.



Once I removed the neck piece I decided to sand the shoulders down so that the octagonal lip was no longer visible. I then used the Dremel tool to shape the plastic into the neck hole of the Earthworm Jim suit. In addition to the dremel tool for finer work I used an X-acto knife and sand paper in order to get the shape I wanted.





I left the Mighty Mugg logo on the foot for authenticity's sake. The next step is to sculpt a head, backpack, and crow zapper. Then I'll cast them, attach, and paint the parts and I should be done! I'll have to show what the casts look like but I'll try to have it done in two more posts.

EWJ Mighty Mugg III

I decided to split the mold down the side as opposed to cutting it into pieces as indicated with the yellow on the left.





Here is a photo of the sculpt after I extracted it from the mold. The latex seemed to soak up some of the oils in the clay slightly drying it out. It would still mold like clay, but I thought this a peculiar effect.



I then taped up the side and painted a layer of latex over the tape and the seam so resin wouldn't leak out.



Tada! Here is the cast I'll be using for my Mighty Mugg Custom.



Here is the first attempt at making a cast of the mold.



Detail.



Detailed detail.




Details.



Deets.

As you can see the result was less than spectacular. After discussing with my assistant what could have caused such catastrophe, we decided that not allowing time for the mold release agent to dry made the bubbles form. Had I properly used the agent, I probably wouldn't have had such a difficult time getting the cast out of the mold on the second try, but after some struggle I was able to get it out without destroying the mold.



Detail.

This was a great learning experience. This job is best done with help from another person if the mold isn't easy to work with. Since I had such an odd shape, and I did not take the time to make a brace that would allow me to properly pour the resin myself, my assistant held it while I poured and then we placed the mold in a cup stuffed with gift tissue to let it cure.

I was a bit sloppy with pouring the resin and I accidentally got resin all over my assistant's hands while she held the mold upright. She then waited for me to finish pouring (it starts to set in about 3 minutes) and the resin started to set on her hands. She spent the next hour washing her hands with dish detergent, lava soap, and nail polish remover to get the stuff off her hands and then another half an hour filing her nails.

Use rubber gloves! On the next try I used quite a bit less of the resin and my assistant wore gloves which she highly recommends as well. Because the resin cures so quickly it generates a lot of heat, which is another reason to wear gloves. After careful consideration my assistant and I decided it would be best to snip off the other end of EWJs head so that we could pour the resin in both sides, ensuring no bubbles would form in the narrow tip.

Now on to work on the Mighty Mugg's body, sanding the head, spraying with primer, and painting.

EWJ Mighty Mugg II

As promised here are some photos of the Earth Worm Jim sculpt I did for the Mighty Mugg Custom.







The clay I used is a wax-based clay which means that it won't dry out. This particular batch was made by a fellow artist, but is very similar to Castilene in that you have to use a heating lamp in order to soften up the material enough to work with it. Once you get to the later stages of the sculpting process the cooled clay makes for a firmer surface that makes it easier to do fine detail work.

Some people use polymer clays, which are desirable because the clay doesn't dry out and can be baked on low heat to harden it solid when the sculpture is finished. However, baking the clay can make for a difficult time, depending on the intricacy of the sculpt, if planning to do molds and casts of the sculpture. When doing casting and molding, the clay is then no longer the finished product and is often destroyed when releasing it from the mold.

I decided to try the Castin' Craft Mold Builder and Mold Release, and Amazing Casting Resin on my first try with molding and casting a sculpture. The process is fairly straight forward. Mold Builder is basically a viscous liquid latex rubber that once painted on a sculpture dries to a yellow rubber coating.



The directions suggest doing ten coats of the Mold Builder and also suggests using Castin' Craft Resin spray on the clay to coat the sculpture before using the Mold Builder. I did not before I started using the Mold Builder but I think it will be alright anyway since I partially peeled the mold off with no trouble.

Here is what the EWJ sculpt looks like with the Mold Builder applied.





So the next question is which method would be best to extract the clay from the mold? Cut down the side? Or cut the mold in half and do two casts that I would have to glue together? Yet another question that I'll have to figure out later is, how do I attach the head to the mighty mugg body and to where it is sturdy and still does not touch the rim of the neck?