Hey so I made a clay sculpture of Drakath for the AQW Anything-Goes Contest.
The ensuing tale of adventure, love, and disasters under the cut!!!!! Warning: VERY LONG
I like making "merch" of things that don't actually have merch, not even fan-made ones! But I'm very lazy. I always wanted to make a little sculpture of Drakath, ever since I learned how to make stuff with clay (aka December of last year), so seeing the contest announcement was what motivated me to make this.
For this post, I am going to assume that you (the reader) don't know anything about clay stuff, because I certainly don't lol
I used a ton of oven-bake clay and used foil to bulk it out. It was what I had on hand + I had already used it before… exactly three times. For projects that were not nearly this scale (again, barely 4 months since I started). So, suffice to say, I was way under prepared and out of my depth, but I am nothing if not dedicated.
A day after the contest announcement, I got to work. I started with the head and torso, since I thought it would be a good base to build off of.
Looks a little smaller than the final product. Hmm… I would've honestly been happy with just a small bust of Drakath on my shelf-- but obviously I had bigger dreams.
Next is the lower torso and legs so I can have him stand.
Chunky. Now's a good time to mention that the work was done on my computer desk. I don't have a proper workspace for this lol
He doesn't stand very well, so I have to lean him on stuff whenever I have to go to bed. Hopefully he'll be able to stand when I flesh it out a little more. I was planning to make the boot details over the legs to make it kinda layered.
I had to rework the chest plate at one point, but smooshed the other details in the process. The legs and lower torso kept shifting too. Should be fine in the long run...
Next was the arms and hands. I wanted to give him big claw hands hence the hand as big as his head in the picture below.
I had a hard time attaching the arms to the elbow and the elbow joint to the torso. The elbow joint (foil ball) was added after I remembered that they existed lol. Anyway, there's no easy way for me to wrap foil without peeling the clay off and I didn't have anything on hand that could help me attach them together while still being oven-safe. I thought of making a hole in the torso where the arms/elbows would go but that didn't come to pass and you'll see why.
Frankly, I had much bigger issues. You might have guessed based off of my very subtle hints (or if you knew anything about clay), but the figure had a lot of structural problems. There was the aforementioned shifting of the legs and torso due to the clay surface being too thick. Unhardened clay can't hold itself for that long so it kept sinking and every time I grabbed the figure to adjust something, the surface would shift. I would get frustrated and manhandle it which caused some of the loose foil to shift as well.
The arms were especially bad since the lower arm kept falling off of the upper arm, not just due to the clay being unable to support it but the foil parts being only loosely tied together. The upper and lowers arms (along with the upper and lower legs) were combined by wrapping a foil piece where the joint would be. This would let me adjust the pose better but, again, horrible for actually keeping the arms from falling apart.
So, how was I going to fix it?
Scratch everything I said earlier. I remade it.
That's right. Around 2 to 3 weeks in, I decided that I needed a do-over.
So what's different? Well, I obviously needed more foil… but we also have armature wire! It's basically a flexible wire used specifically for projects like these. I desperately needed this because there's only so much foil can support, but opted not because I didn't have any on hand. Well, one trip to a crafts store later…
The skeleton on the left of the photo didn't actually get used, since I already redid the torso at this point (before I bought the wire) because yea of course.
I used it for the limbs, though! I wrapped a cut piece of wire with foil, left a bit of wire sticking out, and attempted to jam the wire into the torso. I wrapped the joints to secure since, yeah, this isn't the stablest way compared to the wire skeleton. But it worked!
Wish I got armature wire much sooner. I thought about it when I began but no...
I also made wire frames for the bigger armor pieces like the shoulder pads and a new chest plate.
I also finally had a pose in mind (came to me in the shower the day I redid this). However, it required a prop. I avoided making his sword all this time because I knew it would be a pain, but there it is! I didn't even use this specific foil sword. I had to redo it because I couldn't get the correct shape.
And hey look! He can stand on his own! Kinda. I had to put two foil rocks on his heels to make him stand.
Nothing to say here other this looks like a weird cyclops.
By the way, I'm pretty sure the size of the figure doubled when I redid it. It's a miracle I even made it in time...
Because of the sword being planted into the ground, I needed a base. So, here comes the big foil hamburger patty!!
Also around this time I had to open a new pack of clay because I ran out of the other one. I bought one from the store and, later, two more online because I knew I would run out. The new packs of clay were the same brand but were of different lines. I had no idea what the difference was at the time, but the one I used to (re-)make the sword was a Sculpey III, which was a lot harder to mold and smooth compared to whatever I used earlier. I eventually gave up and left the sword looking like the above. Guess his sword has a lot scratches!
I also added some environmental details around the base. Not because the figure started falling over for whatever reason overnight despite it being perfectly fine days prior, noooo siiiir..........
Anyway, I found out that you can bake them multiple times and have it be fine so I did that. So that it could stop falling over.
My dad walked in and thought I was baking dinner.
Unfortunately, my rocks did not win. They could not get him to stand up straight. It's harder to see in the final photos, but he is tilted back considerably.
Next is the armor pieces which I thought would be easy now that the base was stable but no……
Actually making the pieces was easy enough that I could make them in the afternoon after work. Attaching them to the figure was a whole ordeal. The chest plate in particular kept sliding down in a way that looked kinda silly. I was already low on time at this point so I wasn't able to secure it before baking so it's lower than it should be.
Now, I was going to take a picture of the final bake in the oven (after it was done because when I did it the first time it was smoking a little??) and go "always wanted to do this to him" but I didn't get a picture because everything but the chest piece kept falling off in the oven after 2-3 minutes. I had an adhesive (also Sculpey) that activates in the oven but yea no that wasn't working. Eventually, I gave up and started hot gluing the thing together.
ALSO as I was writing this I realized that I could've just. baked the pieces on their own and hot glued them on. Save myself the trouble. I just really wanted to use what I recently learned about doing multiple bakes :(
The hot glue wasn't particularly stable either but it eventually got the job done after several tries.
Time to paint! I kept worrying that the head would fall off because it was actually pretty loose; loose enough to move when I nudge it. Probably due to me not baking it for too long due to the armor pieces falling off. The neck wasn't very stable. Thankfully it didn't, but yes the armor pieces were falling off while I was painting thanks for asking.
If you compare the two images above images you can see his left shoulder pad's position shift since I had to glue it back on. It was only ever the left one. His right never fell off.
This picture made me realize that the underside of his hair wasn't painted lol
A little upset that I didn't take as much pictures as I did before the redo but I was on a time crunch.
Next is a face!
I was originally going to make stickers for the face so it would look a lot cleaner, but I never got around to it. This was made with Cricut pens I had lying around. I was also going to add wings but never did because yea that's too hard.
also also one of the first plans I made when I set out to do this was to take a bunch funny pictures outside. Like in the grass next to flowers or on a dinner date because that would be hilarious but it was cloudy and raining when I got home today and it would've been at 6pm, mere hours from the due date, so bummer.
Closing thoughts: Unfortunately, I can see that I was punching above my own weight here. Once again, I was way out of my depth and did not know what I was doing. If I ever did this again I would probably, like, watch tutorial videos lol, never watched a single one during this whole thing even though I knew I should've. Would definitely use more armature wire, actual godsend, saved the project.
Despite all the struggles I had so much fun with this. I never post anything lengthy like this because I'm quite shy (if you can believe it after reading this...) but I wanted to share :)
Would I ever do this again? Yes absolutely. I keep thinking about making another one but smaller (LIKE I ORIGINALLY INTENDED....) so that I can keep him around in my bag like a good luck charm or maybe a purse dog.
good luck to the rest of the contestants!