Fictive marsupial dinner

A concept photo shoot playing with the disgusting and the beautiful...the edible and the inedible...what is food and what is other

Fictitious marsupial creature with hair

The creature I've been working on has changed yet again after I spent last night punching hair into it. The hair has added another element to this fictitious marsupial and has made the creature seem a little more real: being somewhere between a blind mole-rat, weasel and possum. The intent was to create a fictional carnivourous burrowing marsupial, which I could later use in a photoshoot.











I learned a a number of things from making this small creature:

Chavant clay for smaller parts is useful as it is harder and retains its shape, but is harder to get detail and texture into.

Smaller creatures are not necessarily easier to make: they become more fiddly to sculpt, more difficult to make moulds than larger pieces, tricker to place pour holes in moulds and are challenging to assemble.

I learned how to create mechanical bonds between silicone and other substances.

After seaming mould lines the silicone can be smoothed with IPA and then a dulling agent can be brushed over the surface when the silicone has cured. I still have some way to go with seaming but I improved with this piece somewhat.

Hand painting silicone pieces can achieve some effects but I need to learn how to airbrush with thinned down silicone paints.

I could have made this creature with a solid silicone core rather than a jelly wax core. I also could have run another two batches of silicone down the mould lines when sealing the two halves, as this could have been a little thicker. A solid silicone core would have negated this problem entirely.

Hair punching takes time and patience.

Making creatures takes time. In many ways because this was small with lots of moulds it probably took a similar amount of time as what it would take to make something much larger.

Fictitious marsupial creature hand painted

Yesterday I surprised myself and managed to get this little critter painted. As always I learned something from painting this creature and while I think hand painting silicone with silicone paints is a poor cousin to airbrushing with thinned down paints I'm relatively pleased with how the painting I did changed the appearance of this fictive marsupial. I also discovered a way to dull down silicone paints which come up a bit too glossy when hand painted. Here are a few shots of the creature after painting and before I attempt hair punching:

Fictitious marsupial creature seamed, assembled and patched

After some work over the last two days I've finally just finished assembly and patching of seams of my fictitious carnivourous marsupial. One word describes the seaming, assembly and patching of this creature: fiddly. Very fiddly. Not unenjoyably so, but a challenge. I've improved my silicone seaming greatly, but still have much room for improvement.

She still isn't painted yet but I thought I'd do a bit of a photo update and show the work in progress before hand painting using silicone paints and punching in a 'crest' of hair along the back. Although I possibly could do an experiment with airbrushing thinned down silicone paints if I bought another airbrush to fit our existing compressor.

I decided to photograph the creature on a non-stick baking tray as it had a bit of an autopsy look to it.

Side front:



Facing up, the creature on its back:



Side back:



Close up rear:




Close up front:



Hope you like it.

Fictitious marsupial creature build

Over the past few months I've been working on creating a small fictitious marsupial in silicone. I liked the idea of photographing the finished piece as a 'found' dead animal in the Australian bush. Sort of like creating a fake animal discovery. I also had the idea of creating a tunneling carnivorous creature, something like a cross between a blind mole rat and a carnivorous possum. I also wanted it to be a bit ambiguous as to if it was an adult specimen or juvenile. This blog does not feature the completed piece, but shows the work in progress.

The sculpt was done in chavant clay on several aluminium armatures. I chose chavant clay rather than plasticine as it is a bit harder and you can sort of carve it a bit unlike plasticine. I also made 12 long claws out of resin to fit the sculpture. Previously my family had reared a baby wombat who had amazing long claws, so this figured somewhat in this. Here is the creature partially assembled in clay:



After sculpting I then had to make a number of moulds for each separate piece of the creature. This creature has a total of seven different moulds. Five of the moulds I made in silicone, one in fibreglass and one in stone. Here is a shot of the creature with the mould wall and another shot with half the fibreglass mould made:





Here are the seven moulds in total that I needed to make to construct the creature:



Sculpting the creature took me a couple of weeks of sporadic work, making the moulds took me another week, and then running it with silicone and then cleaning up the seams has taken me another couple of days. I suspect assembling, painting and hair punching may take another couple of weeks of on and off work. Here is a picture of the six individual parts of the creature:



With the 12 claws in silicone it has a total of 18 pieces. With hindsight it would have been easier to make a slightly bigger creature as the pour holes for the moulds had to be pretty small and this posed a few difficulties getting the silicone to run into them. Hope you like her thus far. I will update again once I've fully assembled, painted and punched hair into the creature.