Kai's Garage Kits

(i hope the molds last!)

I’ve been pretty busy this week, but I did at least manage to finish up the molds for the two parts of Yume-chan’s base. This means I have everything I need to start cranking out copies of my kit!

I made two separate molds, one for the main base and one for the pillow. I debated putting them both into a single mold with a sprue running between them. In the end, though, I decided that doing the two parts separately would reduce the complication of the molds and (perhaps more importantly) allow for a cleaner, less sprue-covered result. It’s funny seeing the two side-by side. The mold for the pillow is the smallest one I’ve made so far, and the main base mold is so long, tall, and narrow! They remind me of a comedy duo. Although if they started cracking joked I’d be a little disturbed.

I had a lot of leftover silicone bits from cutting up the first iteration of the shirt mold, so I was able to fill a great deal of space with it and, consequently, use up a lot less fresh silicone this time around. My wallet is already thanking me. If I listen closely I can hear it whispering from my pocket.

I cut the mold open along the enclosed base’s bottom edge. After molding so many funky shapes and cutting around so many delicate little details, the simple, consistent curve of that puck of wood was comparatively so easy to follow that it almost felt like cheating! Maybe my next kit should just be a bunch of circles and squares. It wouldn’t look like much, but maybe I could claim it as abstract art or something.

And below we see the finished product. Turned out pretty good! Although the clouds got squished a little bit. If you read my post about sculpting the base, you might remember that I sculpted the clouds by forming sheets of clay over a base of crumpled aluminum foil. Seems that there were still some air gaps left between the clay and the foil, which got compressed during the molding process and left dimples on the surface. Normally this would be a huge problem that would have me tearing my hair out and redoing the sculpt, but honestly… it kinda works here? The clouds look even more cloudy now. While I’ll definitely take steps to prevent this in the future, just this once I’m not complaining!

At last I’ve started turning out copies of my kit! We’ll see how many I can get before the molds give out. I’ve also started prepping the painted prototype of Yume-chan, although there’s not much to show for that yet. One thing that I haven’t given a whole lot of thought to, but really should soon, is the packaging for the kits. Guess it’s time to go shopping for boxes and bubble wrap!