I'd been meaning to try this for a little while; I had a bag of quick setting alginate left over from my Fine Art course, and wanted to see if it would be any good for mould making, so giving it a go on one of my old model heads, see what level of detail we get and how it'll react. It was simply a case of mixing it with the water pretty quickly, then slopping it over the model.

Unfortunately, as you can see, it was a bit too thick in some parts and thin in others, causing it to fail when removing the model. Detail-wise though it looks promising! Stay tuned.

Adding the skin layer of flesh coloured latex into the mould, and building the feet 'bones' with bolts in for tie downs, and flexible sole for greater movement possibilities. The extra sponge is to pad out the foot so that it won't be solid latex and should hopefully make it a bit easier to bend and move around:

 Putting them in situation and pouring the latex in and around them, I'm guessing it's going to take the good part of a dry all the way through, possibly more, so I'll leave them there for now and move onto something else...



Digging out the old hand cast from before and it's in perfectly good condition to get a few more hands tried out. The Aluminium wire ones turned out to be too firm so trying a slightly thinner one, and will see how that goes once it's all layered up and looking nice:


 I need a new cast for feet that will hopefully get a few dozen uses out of it, so the first step was to make some soft, unbaked sculpey feet, and get them in a container just the right size (as I had no potter's clay to make a mould), then smother them in a thin layer of vaseline (as a release agent). Next, mix up the plaster of paris, and (stirring it slowly and gently to keep the air bubbles out) and pour into the mould at leave to set. I also added a pair of wire handles into the plaster to allow myself something to grip when trying to remove it from the tupperware mould.




Next step, getting the feet armatures baked and putting them in the moulds with the latex...

  

Laying out the components on a scale diagram to get the size right.

Adding fastenings and the solid sculpey parts to hold it all together, making sure to all suitable room for screws and movable joints:

After baking, bulking out the body parts with foam, leaving solid areas for moving and posing the puppet (something firm to grip onto when animating):

Thin latex bandage to smooth ou the underlying foam and give a bit more shape to the body and its limbs:


Neck fastening screw hole (top) and rig mount (bottom), and the body with its first layer of latex on.

  

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