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Making an armature

Since the topic of building an armature came up on the recent Super Sculpey thread, I took a series of photos as I worked on the armature for "Witchcraft".

You can see the first half here:
http://www.rainydaypaperback.com/files/images/artwork/sculpture/tutorial/tutorial.htm

It's a two character sculpt. The half I uploaded photos of so far is the non-morphic hyena. The other half is the morphic leopard. Leopard is done, but haven't had a chance to upload photos yet. I should get the other half up this week, assuming I am not swamped by work.

If its unclear what I did between pictures, feel free to ask!

A note to people using materials that require baking: I use a sculpting material that does NOT require baking. I like to use styrofoam for part of bulk because its carvable. If you'll be heating your sculpture, you should not use styrofoam because some foams will offgas toxic fumes when heated. Yum! Do not kill yourself. Make sure all your materials in your armature can be safely heated to your baking temperature without catching on fire or causing a deadly chemical reaction. If you aren't sure, don't put it in.

LOL doughnuts!

When I'm using super sculpey, instead of using foam as you did (mm toxic fumes) I use wire and masking tape.

Works like a charm.

Then I cover it in foil. I like using the masking tape ON TOP of the foil! That's cool

Yeah, putting the masking tape on top seems to give it a little bit better grip on the armature. It also gives it a more natural rounding to it. Tape tends to want to bend and stay taut. Foil wants to fold and give way unless you've really crushed it down hard. The paper skin tends to keep it from depressing unexpectedly when you're apply material. You can still crush it down if you need, but it takes little more force so you won't accidentally do so.

Anyway, got the second half up which has a biped. It also shows how I make hands. I even left in the pictures where I screwed up the engineering briefly because it was educational. Remember kids, determine which foot will be the load bearing one before sculpting! If it'll stand up on its own once you've built the armature, 90% of the time it'll do so once you have the sculpting on too!

The other 10% is to account for top heavy stuff. Build accordingly! Bring the center of gravity down as low as possible. If it messes with your design, cheat and stick something heavy in the feet. I have a jar of steel ball bearings for just this purpose.

I'll eventually put up picture of the actual sculpting part, but I'll start a second page. The armature page may take a bit to load on dialup because its image heavy.