Kai's Garage Kits

(break the mold? i still gotta make the mold!)

Exciting news! I received a few more emails from the Momocon organizers over the past week, including my booth number: WON-0715. Now I know where I’ll be sitting!

Right on the corner, assuming nothing changes. This will be my first time exhibiting at a con, so every time I get another bit of news is a new experience for me. I’m excited and I can’t wait! If you plan to go to Momocon, come stop by and say hi!

Ok, back to Yume-chan. Four more molds… let’s get this (mostly) finished off!

Yes, it’s time to contemplate the flow of resin some more. I’ve gotta admit, I don’t have a whole lot to add here that I didn’t already cover in my last post. I’ll repost this graphic that I made last week, just because I like it and I think that it explains what I’m trying to achieve a lot better than words could:

I’m just making paths to get the resin in and get the air out. Simple as.

I put all the hands and feet onto a single sprue for easier casting, and I did the same with the two stuffed animals. Well, I actually started doing this last week, but now they’re mounted to cardboard (which will be the future bases of the mold forms):

As you can see, for the limbs, I glued the wax sprue down with hot glue. HUGE mistake! The heat from the glue softened up the wax up enough that all the pieces started drooping off to the sides. I had to hold everything in place until they cooled off again. Let me tell you, when you’re just sitting there holding a thing in place, trying not to shift it around, every second just drags on f-o-r-e-v-e-r.

For the stuffed animals, I came to my senses and just melted some extra wax to secure the sprue onto the cardboard. It still introduces heat, yes, but it can be applied with much more precision and it solidifies much faster. Works much better that way!

Once everything was at last secure, I added wax wires to form pathways for the air to escape. Resin goes in one way, air goes out another. I don’t want to have the air bubbling up out of the same channel that I’m trying to pour resin into. Smooth flow is the goal! Last, I built the mold forms and poured silicone.

Finally… we reach the head. This is the most finely detailed part, so of course it was the one that I was the least confident about casting. That’s why I left it for last (well, next-to-last; I’ll do the base after I have the finished casting, just to make sure I get Yume-chan’s final positioning right). I’ve been procrastinating, but now I have nothing left to use as an excuse, so here I go! Don’t screw up, don’t screw up, don’t screw up…

Out of all the pieces of Yume-chan, the hair and ears presented the single highest concentration of air-trapping points and ridges that I had to mitigate if I wanted to get a good result. Look at this web of lies… I mean, wax:

For most of this project I’ve had trouble attaching some of the thinner wax wires, a bunch of them seemingly preferring to melt away rather than attaching to the surface of the clay. I’ve found that the solution is to add a little wax to the tip of the wax pen and melt it into the gap between the wire and the surface, rather than trying to melt the wire itself. Anyone who’s actually proficient with wax sculpting is probably rolling their eyes right now at how obvious this is… but hey, give me a break! At least I’m better than I was last week. I’m progressing!

I wanted the mold to fill from the neck so that the main pour tab would be hidden under the clothes when assembled. To do this and still have room for the hair, I had to place the head on a fairly long sprue. This means that the face will fill with resin first and then the hair will fill from the bottom up. That’s fine, though! We don’t have to fill everything from the top. The resin should still reach everything as long as the air is vented.

Since this was a special mold, I saved a clear sheet of plastic from some packaging to turn into the mold walls. This way I could watch the head from all angles as the silicone filled up around it. Why did I want to do this? I’m not sure myself. Maybe it’s just because it’s neat to watch, but I’d like to think it’s a way of saying goodbye to Yume-chan’s face after putting so much work and soul into it. Hopefully there’s not some subconscious part of me that was sick of the frustration of sculpting and just wanted to watch it drown…

And, leaving aside the base, that’s all the molds done! I’ll cut them this weekend, and if all goes well, I’ll get to do a first test cast!