Mould Making

I have decided to make The Man's shoes from latex and the hands for both characters from silicone. This will mean that the shoes will have more of a texture than the hands and the hands will be nice and flexible. To do this I will first have to make sculpts for both the shoes and hands.

First I had to sculpt the hands and shoes from plasticine.

I started by rough sketching the shoes I wanted to sculpt. By using some reference pictures from the internet I was able to decide on a design that I liked.

I added details like the area for the shoe laces...

...and the soles of the shoes.

To make the hands I sculpted around the hand armatures I had made. This meant that the K and S will be part of the mould.

These are the begins of my sculpts for The Man

Here are the begins of my sculpts for The Mechanic.

Then using the sculpts I made the moulds using plaster.

Here are my final shoe sculpts.

I first made walls for the mould using plastic board and a glue gun and lubricated the shoes, floor and shoes, with Vaseline, so that the Plasticine would easily come away from the set plaster.

I add the plaster into some water to make the mixture.

I then poured the paster into the walls over the shoes leaving some of the sculpts at the top free so I can push them out.

Here is the mould when it is dry.

I need to make two part moulds for the hands.

To make a two part mould I first needed a block of clay.

I embedded the hands half into the clay so that a mould will be made from the other half of the hands.

I made sure the clay was tight against the sculpts and made indents in the clay so that the two parts of the plaster mould would connect together easily.

I did the same for The Mechanic's hands.

I then put walls around the blocks of clay and again I lubricated the sculpts, clay and walls with Vaseline. 

I then poured plaster over the sculpts and clay to make the first half of the two part moulds.

Here is The Mechanic's hands once the plater was dry. I peeled off the clay and kept the sculpts in the plaster ready to make the second half of the mould.

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Thankfully before I made the 2nd part to the mould I remembered I had to make a pour hole for the silicone. I did this by attaching a funnel shaped piece of Plasticine to the edge of the sculpt and made sure the edge of it was flush with the plastic wall. I cleaned up the 1st half of the mould as much as I could and then lubricated it again with Vaseline so that the two parts of the mould would not stick together.

Here are the mould just after the plaster has been poured in.

Taking the moulds apart was a very tightening experience as my first attempts where fruitless and I could imagine myself having to go through the whole process again. But once I got a screwdriver between the two parts of each of them they came apart no problem which created an extraordinary sense of relief. 

Here are the finished moulds ready for the silicone.