ML011 - Standin' Dan
There is a tried-and-true method for sculpting objects at any scale: you create a negative of the object and pour a cast of it. It works for just about anything so long as the material you are making the sculpture out of converts from a liquid to a solid during production. This method can also get extremely expensive at scale. By the time you hit objects of humanoid size, the clay, silicone, containment structure, and casting materials start costing thousands of dollars. As a not-independently-wealthy creative type who does this stuff on the side rather than professionally, my recreational budget cannot handle price tags like that.
But I still want to make some really big stuff in the near future. So what you do?
Standin’ Dan is what you do. Standin’ Dan is the first in a proof-of-concept series to see if I can eschew the negative mold component and just create a project out of final materials without losing too much detail or structural integrity in the process. Dill and I learned numerous things in the couple of hours we spent dumping poorly mixed hybrid cement onto a wooden skeleton.
Lessons Learned
- Hydrocal and Ultracal can be combined and abused in just about any way without losing their fundamental useful properties.
- Hydrocal will not fracture at scales under 12 inches, regardless of how it is chiseled.
- A grout sponge will clean cement from side of a 5-gallon bucket.
- Hydrocal does not cling to wood.
- Wood stain clings to everything.
- The Last Supper was painted onto wet plaster. This is the principle behind the Fresco painting style.
- I haven’t gotten any faster at editing video.
Are these all useful facts? No. Are they things we could’ve looked up before we started? Maybe. Was it worth spending two hours and some scrap materials from around the garage to find them out? Yup. Check out the video to see these discoveries in action.
