materials: polymer clay, acrylic paint, neodymium magnet + one coat of triple thick (unpictured)
process notes + commentary under the cut!
well first of all i just have to say that these guys? were made in a frantic three hours the morning before the party i was bringing them to. kind of a win for me (guy who watched an entire episode of yyyjh 1 about it). but the stress levels until about 1h in and the forms were set were kind of ... high.
process notes:
i didn't do the shape designs from scratch this time because uhhh. i would have died. luckily many people out there make frog and snake-shaped items and i could just scroll until i found something that hit the cute/realistic balance i wanted on body shape design and recreate that
the snake was actually harder bc the wiggles kept bunching up in visually unpleasant ways in the inner curve. and wow. did you know that a snake can be so wide in some parts and so narrow in other parts??????? new information to me. super happy w the tail wiggle tho hehe :)
let this be a lesson to me ... to confirm colors and patterns with the creature owner. because ohh man. the colors? were true to the pictures i was sent which were taken in darkness, but didn't match the guy at all in daylight. but having never seen these animals before? i couldn't tell at all.
it's on my worklist to remake the frog because the color difference is a bit egregious and i'm too proud to be like "sure pass him off as night!frog" when i could just. do another guy in a couple hours. i also didn't realize until i started that i had no images from the back of this frog. my guess based only on side view pics was actually pretty amazingly close, maybe 80%? but like. my pride ... hashtag #mypride...
i did the base animals in clay that matched the lightest color that appeared on each animal: the frog base is that pale green-grey that you see on his back, and the snake base is that peachy color in the middle of the "peanuts" on his pattern. this worked great. i don't know if i would have thought to do this if i was planning it all out beforehand but yayyy the power of flow state.
painting is getting easier! i finally understood the "paint from the lightest color" adage. it feels a bit ... late to have connected those dots considering how many years of art classes my parents sent me to as a kid various things but well! better late than never!!! genuinely this was sooo enjoyable to do.
the paint process was actually the part with the most learning in this. this was first time i did a base coat in a light color not to tie the underlying colors together (as my scenic artist instructor says to do) but to feel out the "shapes" and relative positioning of everything. that worked great! and then i just put on progressively darker colors (until the frog's light-grey speckles).
commentary, notes, and some extra process pics under the cut!
process notes and commentary:
i seriously owe my LIFE to the retire white woman polymer clay bloggers who have their own blogs and dedicate their waking hours to things like testing out the transparency of "transparent" polymer clays. in this case, i searched "shimmer green polymer clay" and was immediately given the recipe shown in blocks in the first pic. incredible.
second pic under the cut is a little test manta ray i did in about 15min to get a sense of process, which turned out to be: wings and body in one piece, just flatten the wings out and then round, shape, and taper the body by hand. roll the tail out, create the curl, and then attach it (standard needle tool smoothing). then roll a small ball of clay, cut in half, and shape and attach the ... whatever the mouth things are. eyes are just two balls of black clay (again, roll a ball and halve it for evenness) set into a ball tool pressed divot into the body.
i actually didn't remember there were multiple types of rays until i was doing research for this guy. thank god for people out there who illustrate and have already made 3d "cuteified" versions of animals. weirdly manta rays are really popular and bat rays barely show up. crazy considering how cute bat rays are???
i used the same process for the actual green manta ray as above, just went a little more carefully and marked the eyes with the tip of a needle tool to gauge symmetry first. pretty cute and straightforward, i'm really happy with how flatly and evenly the magnet sits in the ray body -- i bought a new loop/cutter tool with a flat base that is exactly perfect for the size of neodynium magnets i have so i just use that now, much less need to hack away at the bottom and edges with a xacto knife after baking hahahaha.
These tiny mossball kitties come from the same ponds and streams as koi dogs, and are often found rolling around with baby guppies. They may be small, but each one packs a big personality!
Some of these are already sold, but others will be part of a pondful of meowrimos at Anthrocon, July 3-5!
Traditional Chinese cloth tiger in Dragon Boat Festival style. It has the Five Poisons embroidered on it — it's a charm for health and protection, to keep away bad things. (cr 嘹爪嘞LYOZALLY)
What is your product photography set up like? Also, sorry if you’ve answered this before, but what’s your general process for creating a sculpture? I love your art and I’m planning on getting some on the 22nd!!!!
Thanks for the questions and I’m so happy to hear you’re excited for the next update!!
For my product photography set up, I have a homemade light box. I cut large windows into the sides of a cardboard box and covered the windows with thin quilt batting to diffuse the light and prevent harsh shadows. The white background is a piece of poster board. I placed it so it curves upward from the bottom to the top which makes it so there’s no distracting divide between the floor and background. Here’s a picture below. (It’s also several years old which is why it looks beat up, but it still works just fine)
As for my sculpting process, it really depends on the piece. Many small pieces start with just a ball of clay that I carefully pinch and pull in different directions to form the limbs, head, and tail. I then add on little details like ears, wings, and horns once I’ve smoothed and shaped the piece. Sometimes I also choose to add the tail on separately if it is a more delicate shape. And for larger sculptures I make a hollow egg shape for the body and sculpt the limbs, tail, and head separately. I then score and slip the parts where I want those pieces to connect with the body and smooth them together.
It’s the year of the horse and I’ve always been a horse girl at heart, so I’m finally taking advantage of the excuse to fill the world with fat little horses! These felted friends are about the size (and shape!) of an apple, and if you happen to have any apples to share I’m sure they’d help you out!
This piece and four others will be available at Furry Weekend Atlanta May 8-10!
Beautiful and kind, check. Looks like butter, sure.
But let's not overlook the elegant engineering of the soap dish itself: that graceful stem is positioned to let water drain out of the dish, avoiding the issue of "soap soup" that most soap dishes accumulate.
Kitties dont relly have Breeds like doggies do but they have special types like Weird Baby, Angry Head, Sleeper Fatty, Yappy Meower, Orange, Sweetie Playful, and The Creep. If you collect them all, well. You will probably have too many kitties.
