Making An Army: Teddy
March 18, 2021
The Evolution of My Minature Bear Figures
The Evolution of My Minature Bear Figures
It wasn't a terribly tough process taking the idea in my head and sculpting it with the clay. After the bake, I sanded with 120 grit to 800, preparing it for the silicone mold. I don't have a degasser so I use Smooth-On's Oomoo 25 for the silicone. The higher you pour from in a slow thin stream, the more aire bubble can escape and give a bubble-free mold. For the resin I used Smooth-Cast 300.
So I took my figures to a few different toy sellers and while most were quick to accept the idea, one high-named store was quick to point out my flaws. I was bummed at first, but I slept on it for a few weeks, pride aside, I took the store's advice and made some changes.
So here you will see I filled in divits, corrected the positioning of the ears, removed undercuts, and branded the bear with an official Smirks Crown Stamp. For this go around I took a stab at using Ave's Apoxie Sculpt to finish the protoype. It took some getting used to, but it sands sooo smooth, maybe my new go to for sculpts.
My biggest issue came with the humidity in my house vs what the silicone would normally set to. Instead of the normal 15 minute pot life, I only had 5-10 minutes. I problem-solved it better to mix a small batch first and brush on the silicone in areas most likely for bubbles, then do a larger pour. Took about five tries and repositioning of the pour spout before machine-like quality was achieved. I'm very proud how these come out of the mold.
Going into the paint process, following the signature color scheme, I blocked off the areas I did not want painted with masking tape. After a couple test runs, I found airbrushing the base coat made the miniature look and feel more uniform. When I tried using spray paint, it had bumpy areas and unwantingly filled in some areas of details.
After I painted the base coat, I removed the masked areas and painted the areas with a paint brush...
I made this around the Notorious BIG birthday month, so I decided to Smirk it out with the Classic Coogi and Brooklyn Nets appropriated design. Here, I present to you the Bearite Bearite Biggie Bear!
I hope you enjoyed the process as much as I did and learned something new and helpful along way.