The Sculpt

With all prosthetic pieces and designs there is the creative realisation and implementation of making your design in to a 3D sculpt.

In order to accomplish this you will need a set of sculpting tools, I will post images of the set that I bought for around £10-15 from E-Bay, they are fantastic. This will be in a separate entry, with a list of all resources.

So then, My design was almost an octopus woman, I did earlier sketches so that I was able to work with the idea, I also sculpted tentacles as a separate prosthetic, these will be cast in a completely different way, I am yet to do this, but rest assured as soon as it is done, the process will be posted.

Beneath are the various stages of my sculpt, the various tools I used as well as the fact that I got carried away and needed to re-do it!

I used a plasticine based clay to sculpt with, this is durable and tends to not dry out, where as traditional sculpting clay will dry out as it is water based.

To make the plasticine based clay to be more pliable place it in an oven on around 20-40 degrees for about 10 mins, this softens it enabling you to work at ease.

This is the cast 

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applying the clay to the contours that I wanted to accentuate, I then built it up with small amounts of clay, repeating the same process, at this point, it isn't the detail you are after, it's building up layers, smoothness is not an issue here. 

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Here you can see that i have brought the clay over the lip, generally when a prosthetic is cast, to get a good seam (lines that the prosthetic end on) around the mouth it is either facing in to the lip and mouth or above it, this gives better movement once applied to the models face. 

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Side profile , the gaps near to the eyes are where I plan to place some of the tentacles. 

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Here we can see that I have begun to add detail, I was way ahead of myself, this was all erased.

Detail is the last thing you add, I will speak about this further in the next stage explaining why.

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Tentacles 

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I made the tentacles by using the same clay, I rolled the clay in to 1" thick and 4" long then began to use my tools to straighten the edges and create the V shape inner line. 

For the suckers, i rolled out half little circular pieces of clay, around half the size of a 5p and used the end of a took the give the indentation. 

My helpful dad holding the design up, just to give you an idea!

I have to say that it resembles Yoda with a red ear! 

The next stage to follow is the one where all this detail is completely changed!