EK-0205: Part 1 The Clay

For the last few years I have made all of my favorite people gifts as a present under the "alias" the Agent of Xmas Chaos.  This year was...  chaotic... for me so I had to wash on my planned project of Zombified Pillow Pets.

I am the sort of person that needs projects to occupy my time, so I opted make presents for BIRTHDAYS.   As an pretty adept sculptor in my younger years, and a rabid Star Wars fanboy I decided to go with statues based on Star Wars characters.

My first venture, started on January 1 2011, stems from a conversation that I had with a friend a few months before she moved to Korea.  The piece, EK-0205 is a female Stormtrooper. 

EK started off as a wire frame "gesture sculpture" made out of galvanized steel cable.  I have always drawn and sculpted from the "inside out" and this seemed natural to me.

I make chain mail when I am really, really bored, so I am fairly adept at manipulating metal wire :)  I piped out this in about 3 hours (after starting over at least once).  The next morning I started filling in the frame with clay.

I felt that after such a long hiatus, I needed to start "from the basics", so I went with Crayola Air Dry clay from my locale Wal-Mart.  This is a decision that I came to regret to a certain extent later on.  If you like to detail as you progress, as I do, THIS IS NOT A VIABLE OPTION FOR YOU.  If, however, you like to slop on clay and carve detail later on when the clay is kind of dry, then, meh...

But it really wasn't that bad.

An image of the wire frame after the "fill in" process:

And some after a few layers of detail:

Now, I feel compelled to explain the helmet.  I mentioned that I sculpted in my younger years, and that I am a rabid Star Wars fanboy, right?  Well, I have made so many Stormtrooper/Darth Vader/Rebel Pilot helmets at so many different scales in my life that I simply didn't feel like it.

So I cheated.  I used a Stormtrooper helmet off of a bobble head that I bought years ago on clearance. 

I. Have. Many. I also intend to alter it, but more on that later.

Almost immediately, I knew that the finished product was NOT going to make it to Korea in one piece.  Since I had also decided early on in the project that I wanted to make this look like an action figure, I decide that I was also going to cast EK-0205 and make her in plastic resin.  This accomplished three goals.

1. EK would be sturdier, and would NOT vibrate apart in shipping.
2. When cast, I could "shift" the mold on the mold seams and create that ridge that all action figures have along where the mold seam was in the casting process
3. I could stretch the mold to make EK's head look a little more feminine.

 SO, back to the scuplting:

A few attempts at hands were promising, but the clay kept cracking and falling off.  Back to the bobble head!  Bonus, I liked the gun in her right hand way better than the one(s) that I made, because it gave the "slighty deformed" look that I was going for.