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GeekVarietyDotCom — Casting Custom Figures
Published: 2012-02-25 00:18:22 +0000 UTC; Views: 624; Favourites: 3; Downloads: 4
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Today saw me finally pulling out the silicon I bought before christmas and putting it to use.I decided to finally take a stab at casting one of my custom bodies that I created for use within the Justice League Unlimited line of figures.
Been wanting to do this for a while but was lacking some of the things I needed but decided to say to hell with it and go ahead and do this the old fashioned dirty way and just make it happen haha!
Top Photo is a custom body I made from an existing basic JLU female body. The body is about 3/8 inch taller than a normal JLU body. It can be used with basic female arms and still looks proportionally correct.
Second Photo is the first part of the molding process. Creating a two part mold which I will pour from the top, the top being where the neck is on the figure.
Third Photo is where I just finished pouring the second half of the mold. Will wake up tomorrow and hopefully this worked out okay and I can start pouring resin and actually making figures with the mold.
So far so good, depending on how this turns out I may start working on some more castings tomorrow of some heads I made to use with the JLU line.
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Comments: 10
How well did this turn out? Did your two halves seal together and form one solid mold? I tried this and that's what happened... as silicone, even hardened, will bond to other silicone pieces.
I've been casting small non-intricate parts (heads, hands, forearms, backpacks, and other stuff) for a while just using a solid one part mold... you could probably pull that off with this body if you haven't already.
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I went with a two part mold on this one and I probably could have just gone with a single piece but as part of the learning process I wanted to try and make a two part mold work.
It came out really well and I've made about 10 bodies so far from the mold. I've molded roughly 20 pieces at this point and I've had pretty good success.
I will say that I cant wait to get a compressor so I can pressurize my molds to get air bubbles out cause so far I have a handful of molds that have massive amounts of bubbles on the faces of the heads I cast so I am going forward going to pressurize the molds. I have a pot just no compressor.
Also I found using a lot of thinner on the silicone helps get a lot of the bubbles out cause its well thinner and it releases the air bubbles much easier and also if you tap the mold on the table it helps get the bubbles to rise.
Why types of things are you molding? What figure lines I mean?
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I've molded stuff mainly for the 1:18th gi-joe and star wars lines.
something i've done in the past to get the bubbles out is use a vibrating sander and just set it on my table while the silicone is curing. the vibrations help the silicone to settle and the bubbles to rise. Any motor that vibrates the table, or surface you have your molds setting on should work. It's not as good as a pressure pot, but it works.
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THAT IS AN AWESOME IDEA! Good call sir, I have just the thing actually that would work for that. Got and old dremel motor that still works that would totally work for that.
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Don't mention it. It's little tricks like that which wind up really making a difference.
Have you ever casted any figures with articulation?
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Haven't tried any articulation yet and probably wont cause personally I tend to like static figures and more and more I'm moving toward sculpting statues and things of that nature.
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Interesting... I got into customizing to do exactly the opposite. To give hasbro's nearly static star wars figure more points of articulation. I've become obsessed with super articulating my figures, mainly using gi-joe parts.
the only body parts I've been able to replicate in the moldings though have been parts that are pegged or swivel only joints (hands and heads mainly).
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Dont get me wrong I like articulation but I started getting back into custom work hardcore about two years ago with the JLU line cause I really love the Timm-verse style and it was a good fit for my style of personal work.
Working within that line I started to get bored with the static poses so I started doing the posed figures like the ones in my gallery and more and more I find myself wanting to do more statue type work.
I've been sculpting since I was a kid so it just kinda felt natural, it had been nearly 10 years since I had done any sculpting so I've been getting slowly back into it and I find myself more drawn to posed statue type stuff.
Also its a pain in the ass trying to paint joints and have the paint stay haha!
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you do have a point about painting joints!
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haha yeah, its like i hate painting enough as it is but when you gotta do joints, ugh! 
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