Sculpting with Super Sculpey

[Vermis]

Only just noticed I posted that strength test already.

I'm pretty sure there is (or were) some pro french sculptors using this kind of putty !

I like FIMO soft putty, personnaly. It's cheap, and very good quality. I use the champagne or skintone colors.

Yup. Some ex-Rackham sculptors whose names escape me at the moment, prefer sculpting in fimo classic.

IIRC they're fond of the champagne colour too. And now I've found some of the names of those 'talented miniature artists': http://www.miniaturestudio.net/links/
http://www.jeremiebt.com/index.php?page=siteuk
http://www.jeremiebt.com/pages/page.php?page=pub_pate_sculpt&lang=uk

I should bookmark that page by Jeremie; it's good stuff.

[sundayhero]

By the way, is "baking putty" compatible with vulcanized molding, or is it only compatible with silicone molding ?

I remember when I was a freelance modeller with sculpting jobs to do  that I was using greenstuff exclusivly because of vulcanization high pressure and temperature.

[Vermis]

On the whole, it's too brittle or fragile for vulcanising. I think Ed Fortae at Troll Forged Miniatures has done it once or twice, but with an awful lot of care and experience.

[sundayhero]

Thanks for the answer. Always good to know!

[Connectamabob]

IIRC its temperature tolerance is too low also. The temps required to vulcanize the molds chars the clay.

I actually much prefer polymer clays as a sculpting material in terms of workability. IMO they really are quite superior to GS in that regard. Problem is for figures they're only practical if you're going to be casting the piece in resin before using it (either as an intermediary material for metal molds, or for direct tabletop use).

If I were sculpting for resin figures, or for a caster who was good with doing resin intermediaries, then I'd rock the polymer clay. Otherwise I'd go with epoxy even though I find it less ideal to work with. In the end, the same degree of end-result sculptural quality is possible with either, so avoiding the one that makes everyone's life easier in the end because it's a bit less forgiving to learn seems IMO kinda unprofessional and lazy.

That said, everyone has their limits. There's a few things I'd like to do that I'd never be able to do in epoxy at my current skill level (I've tried), so polymer clay at that point does become the difference between a thing getting made or not at all. And I'm a resin proponent, so if I started producing my own minis they'd be in resin anyway.

[Connectamabob]

Carmen's Fun Painty Time - he did a whole thread on using Super Sculpty in making homes etc for cavemen
http://carmensminiaturepainting.blogspot.ca/search?updated-min=2008-01-01T00:00:00-06:00&updated-max=2009-01-01T00:00:00-06:00&max-results=50

Notice that those are not figures, and generally have a cone/pyramid mass distribution thing going on. Some of the bits on the middle altar would be VERY breakable, and or only "safe" because they are sheltered from direct impacts/handling by the base, and by being in the lee of bulkier parts. The tusks on the hut are high-risk too, though he appears to have done a good job laying them so the thin bits are directly up against the bulk of the hut instead of sticking out. Still, If I were him, I'd wick a bit of superglue around where they touch before painting, since stuff that's just lightly pressed together like that can actually pop free pretty easily.

In the general sense though, he's absolutely right: polymer clay absolutely ROCKS for terrain pieces and large non-mechanical clutter.

[sundayhero]

Personnaly, I'm more experienced with greenstuff, since almost all the freelance works I had to do were for metal casting. I never thought that I could make a resin (what kind of resin is compatible, by the way ?) intermediary master. Good to know too, thanks !

I used FIMO only for a a few 54mm freelance, projects, and I really like it !

I also made a few tests/practice with FIMO, and I found it pretty sturdy. I'm a bit surprised by some comments on polymer clay breakability.

I even re-baked (even if I know it's not recommanded) a practice figure a few times with no particular problem (one time for the base, one time for the dolly, one time for the feet, one time for the cloth). The mini's still sturdy last time I saw it (I kept it in my "wreck" box with millions of other aborted projects. I'd probably can find and make a pic if interested.

[Connectamabob]

I've never had to do the intermediary thing myself, so unfortunately I have no idea what resin they use. I'd probably start by looking through the spec sheets at Smooth-On (or whoever your local resin suppliers are). That, or just look on Frothers for a caster known to have done such work successfully before.

Breakability can vary a lot. It never gets half a tough as epoxy, but how you bake it can make the difference between it being brittle and crumbly and surprisingly usable. There was one of these links, can't remember which, where the guy said that Super Sculpy turns dark brown when baked: that guy was waaaaaayyyyy overbaking it and burning it.

Usually the times an temps recommend in the instructions are not actually the best to be using. Baking at a lower temp for longer (about by 1/3 or 1/4) usually gets you more consistent results. If the sculpt is thick, it's good to poke a few tiny vent holes through it with a bit of thin wire before baking (I use a bit of steel guitar string) in order to ensure the core cures to the same degree/at the same rate as the outside. It can also help to "tent" the piece with aluminum foil while baking, to promote even heating so extremities don't brown while the bulk is still soft.

If you plan on doing multiple bakes, you can par-bake it in the first round to further reduce the chance of overbaking it on the second. Par-baking will solidify it just enough to be safely handled for the next sculpting phase, but without fully curing it or eliminating the plasticizers that cause curing.

On big sculpts you can use a butane micro torch to spot-cure surface bits so you can handle the sculpt without messing up details you consider finished. You don't want to actually touch the flame to the piece, just flutter back and forth a couple inches away in a few seconds on, a few seconds off intervals for twenty seconds or so.

On a side note I strongly advise caution re: Champagne Fimo. It's got the exact same visibility drawbacks as Super Sculpy. Translucent tones are very deceptive: you THINK you can see all the detail you've got going on while you're working on it, but then you prime it and find out there's fingerprints where you didn't see them before, and those wrinkles aren't the depth or smoothness you thought, or the base shape has asymmetry issues in it's planar breakdown, etc. Doesn't matter how physically good your eyes might be: the optical effect takes place in the material. It throws you off your game in a lot of little ways you won't spot until later, so it's super easy for your brain to trick itself into thinking the clay was fine (because hey, you remember thinking you could see it just fine at the time, right?), and it's your skill, or memory, or the objective distance of time, or whatnot to blame (all of which can also be true to various degrees, but delayed-effect bad optical fidelity muddies the waters, so to speak).

Some people feel the fleshy look helps them visualize what they're sculpting, but that same factor is also very good at tricking your eyes into seeing your form/detail as more organic than it actually is (kind of like how a good paint job can make a bad sculpt look good). It's very visually flattering, but that's not a good thing. You want something that's as visually honest as possible, even (or especially) where the truth might hurt.

Translucent fleshy tones feel very comfy, but this is a trap. You will produce better quality work and come closer to your actual skill potential with a neutral opaque color. Even if you're French.

[sundayhero]

 


Thanks for all the advises. I like the champagne/flesh tones because they were catching my 2 modelling cold white lights. I never saw issues with it, but I'm not an advanced sculptor (I'm "specialized" in wargames accessories and scenery, both natural and constructions).

What kind of color would you use for sculpting ?

[Evilcartoonist]

As others have said. I only use sculpey for terrain pieces (and the random assortment of bitz such as bags, packs and miscellaneous.)

Connectamabob made a good observation; I did indeed lay those tusks on top of the hut to help protect them from breakage. And I have dropped one of those huts once; nothing broke. I think I was mostly lucky

These days, I still use Sculpey for the occasional large item (and some small bits and items with bulk), but I use green stuff for horns, tusks, eye stalks, tentacles etc. -- anything long and spindly. Still, the Sculpey served as a nice sculpting training ground before I moved on to GS.

Carmen

[Connectamabob]

I never saw issues with it, but I'm not an advanced sculptor... 

...What kind of color would you use for sculpting ?

It's very much one of those things that sneaks up on you. It took me literally two years to figure out why my Super Sculpy work often looked slightly courser and less precise after it'd been primed. Don't trust translucent clay, no matter what sweet things it wispers. The best lairs are by definition the ones you don't spot until it's too late.

As far as best colors go, scientifically, whatever most closely matches the color balance of your lights is best. That's going impractically far though, so middle grey.

Green is technically the color our eyes see with the most fidelity (why night vision video is usually rendered in coherent green instead of just straight B/W), but with white (or off-white) lights green is actually less efficient then grey, because it's only reflecting the green wavelengths instead of all the light.

Grey is also aesthetically neutral, meaning you won't mentally project attributes onto grey surfaces as much as you might with other colors. The same human head sculpt might be slightly harder to judge in blue, for example, because the color is giving your perception a slight uncanny valley bias despite the physical forms. And conversely, a flesh tone will slightly flatter it by giving it an organic bias. Grey just looks null, like a B&W photo, allowing you to imagine whatever color you want in it without having to imagine away the other color first.

Tone-wise you want something that looks middle of the road relative to the output of your lights. I.e. lighter tone if they are dimmer, darker tone if they are brighter. Darker tones can deepen the appearance of shadows, while lighter tones can cancel shadows, so there is a reciprocal relationship between tone and lighting brightness. It's all about a happy medium where the shading is just enough to mark out low points, but without being too dark to where you start losing visual fidelity in it, and without the high points getting blown out by direct light, of course. Since it's determined by the lights + how good your own eyes are, there is no right answer or even system for this. Just something you have to calibrate for yourself through experimentation.

Opacity is the one absolute element. Tone is just about reflective efficiency, and color is mostly just a modifier to tone according to your lights' color balance. Translucency is what'll actively deceive your eyes no matter what the color, the lights, or your eyes are like. It creates sub-surface scattering and diffraction that can optically soften the surface boundary. No matter what color or tone you find best, you do not want translucency.

[Belgian]

Thanks for all the comments and useful information, much appreciated. I have also finished my first fully sculpey sculpt. I present mister rockman and work-in-progress family.