Transparent sculpting medium?

[Westfalia Chris]

Hey folks,

Yesterday, I watched "Forbidden Planet" on Turner Classic Movies, and since I already built a Robbinspired automaton for Retro SciFi games, I thought, hey, that "Monster from the Id" would be nice.

Now, I thought about using thin wire to form the body shape, then paint it in various reds to recreate the energetic discharges seen in the movie, but then I thought a translucent creature could be even nicer.

My question, therefore, is: Does anyboy know of a soft-ish transparent material that could be sculpted (ie carved, smoothed) to create a shape, or would I have to take a detour via mouldmaking and casting in clear resin? My sculpting skills would be adequate, I hope, but by mouldmaking leaves a lot to be desired.

[Ramshackle_Curtis]

MAking and casting in moulds isnt hard, but you have to consider the psoe before stering the sculpting. I dont know of any transparent sculpting material, but maybe one exists?

[Westfalia Chris]

MAking and casting in moulds isnt hard, but you have to consider the psoe before stering the sculpting. I dont know of any transparent sculpting material, but maybe one exists?

Problem is, I would have to either split it or make a complicated mould, the latter would be good to avoid unsightly glueing areas within the model.

Here´s a movie still:



Something like that. As said, a model made of wire outlines would do the job, but would be terribly flimsy and would only really look good from a single angle of view, I´m afraid. Difficult pose to achieve in a single casting.

I do have some experience with simple drop-moulds, but when I tried multi-part moulds, I failed to various degrees of spectacularity.

[Glitzer]

You could try a very soft mould, You don't need to reproduce it hundreds of times, do you? When I was young I used plaster moulds, that were very similar to gloves About one to two milimeters, You could produce a mould like that by adding multiple layers of latex with a brush (but don't forget to add a sepperating agent to your mini first)

You could try to avoid glueing areas by using the same materials for the mini and for glueing. Epoxy resin glues could be a thing to experiment with.

[headzombie]

There wouldn't be depth to it, but you could print something on a color printer on transparent sheets and cut it out.

[Uncle Mike]

Personally, I would sculpt up a master in whatever medium you are comfortable with and then mold it. As long as you are using a silicone based mold you could cast up the  critter with a product called: Crystal Clear from the fine folks at Smooth-On. Crystal Clear is a water clear finish and will not yellow over time! And as an added bonus you could color it with some So-Strong Tint...available in many colors! The only issue here is that without a pressure chamber the cast will have little bubbles throughout...just my two cents worth.