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TF2 Heavy Sculpture
NotASenator
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Registered User regular
So, I put up a 10 inch sculpture in the Solid Saints auction, the subject of which would be chosen by the winning bidder.
Mr. Delish came through with an amazing $200 bid, and selected the Heavy from TF2. It was made clear that although it should be like the image below, the weapon should be Sasha, not Natascha.
I just finished up the first stage of the armature and wanted to have a thread to keep everyone up to date on the progress. This is being done in Super Sculpey Firm, and then will have a brush on mold applied and be cast in resin and painted.
I took a nice wood shelf and sawed it in half to make my base and dropped a 3/8th threaded bolt through it with nuts on either side to hold it steady. I have these little plastic drawers that I keep my sculpting supplies in, so I took two of them and put them under the board to prop it up, and attached vices on either side to hold it firmly in place.
Then I used 1/4 inch aluminum armature wire to form the basis of the skeleton, and 1/16th wire to bind up the joints.
Next I'm going to use an epoxy to solidify those areas to keep it from moving around, and then I'll use aluminum foil to bulk out the shape.
Mr. Delish came through with an amazing $200 bid, and selected the Heavy from TF2. It was made clear that although it should be like the image below, the weapon should be Sasha, not Natascha.
I just finished up the first stage of the armature and wanted to have a thread to keep everyone up to date on the progress. This is being done in Super Sculpey Firm, and then will have a brush on mold applied and be cast in resin and painted.
I took a nice wood shelf and sawed it in half to make my base and dropped a 3/8th threaded bolt through it with nuts on either side to hold it steady. I have these little plastic drawers that I keep my sculpting supplies in, so I took two of them and put them under the board to prop it up, and attached vices on either side to hold it firmly in place.
Then I used 1/4 inch aluminum armature wire to form the basis of the skeleton, and 1/16th wire to bind up the joints.
Next I'm going to use an epoxy to solidify those areas to keep it from moving around, and then I'll use aluminum foil to bulk out the shape.
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I used to do figures from pure wire when I was younger. I shall be watching.
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Hahahaha, I KNOW that, I'm just kidding around! And NaS knows that too!
EDIT: (I actually saw this thread on my iPhone, so I didn't pay any mind to the name. Figured it was a new guy.)
So, with the armature basically ready, I want to have a guide to make sure the positioning of the upper body is pretty good. With my blown up reference hanging up, I cut the top of a motherboard box off to make my guide with.
Knowing that the belt line is 4 inches from the bottom, I was able to resize this image and print it out to scale. I'm going to cut it out and trace the outline on my cardboard piece.
Maybe I should just tape this down and ship that. It will save me time.
So here's my guide up against the armature. This will let me adjust the arms a bit to get them in the right place.
As tight as the wire is wrapped, it still has some flex and motion to it, so I'm going to secure it really well.
The first thing I do is take this two-part epoxy and get a bunch of it in the gaps. You squeeze both plungers to push the two parts into the little plastic tray, then you mix it up with the little provided popsicle stick and then apply to all the little gaps in your wire.
This stuff is like SuperGlue x 10, so be careful with it. Make sure you hold it over the plastic tray when you snip the edges and whenever the cap isn't on, because if this gets on any metal (or skin) it's binding it.
I gave it about an hour to set, but it takes a full 24-hours to completely harden. It doesn't really matter, the point of this is just to hold it firm while we put the plumber's epoxy putty on there.
The first rule of this crap is don't try to take it with you on a flight in the US. It looks like a stick of something explosive.
It's made up of two parts, and when mixed together, it begins hardening quickly until it's like steel. I had to throw a small bit out because I mixed too much and it was hardening before I could even smush it onto the armature.
The second rule is that you shouldn't use your bare hands. They say on the packaging just to mash it up in your palm and then wash your hands afterwards, but I would use a glove, and one you don't mind losing, because the grey activator will get all over it.
Take just a small amount and mash it up until the color is uniform. It's tough to work with, but make sure you get it all grey throughout. Just don't take too long, if you spend any more than a minute or two on it, it will start hardening up. In this case, it's better to work with smaller portions so you don't waste any.
Once it is grey, start pushing it into your joints. The goal here is to get it covering everything to form a nice solid piece so that it can't move. It will also make your armature that much more stable.
This is after apply the putty:
No more than 15 minutes later, it was already rock hard. At this point applying any pressure on any of the sections could cause the middle of the spine to bend, but nothing else.
I also went here and adjusted the arms some to better fit in the cutout.
Now, with sculpey, you never want to bake more than a few inches, or it won't cook all the way through and you'll get cracking. Not to mention the fact that this shit is expensive, so it's better to use as little as possible. To bulk out the character, I'm going to use standard issue aluminum foil. Just smash it on there to fill out the character some, everyone once in a while wrapping some wire around it to hold it all in place.
Sorry, these photos were a bit blurry, autofocus wins again.
I refer often to my guide to make sure I'm going in the right direction, even early on.
and here it is getting closer, with some of the wire holding it in place.
On of the other things to mention is the importance of adjusting your perspective. I've got this all on a TV dinner stand thing, which means it is really easy to turn the whole thing around, but also the connection to the bolt in the wood rotates around too, so I swing the model from side to side. You can actually see some marks on the wood from me doing that. You want to keep moving the model around throughout the process, as you are working on a 3D object and it will get viewed from all sides. I have a tendency to neglect the back, and end up with this fat in front and skinny in back guys, so I tend to be extra vigilant about that.
The next installment will have me finishing up the foil build-up and start preparing and applying sculpey, but I've still got a lot of photos to go through.
I'm gonna wet myself waiting!
I can't take credit for it, I picked up all my tips online, but that's the idea.
I can tell
this looks like your making it for secret santa
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dude ain't even on the list, dogg
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But in case you aren't, NAS said in the OP that he agreed to do it for the Solid Saints auction in SE++!
it seems like a hell of a time investment, I gotta say! looking good though, already definitely recognisable as a heavy pose
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