Silicone Mold problem - Avatar Neytiri

samimustonensamimustonen ✭
in Sculpture

Hi,


I'm about to make silicone a mold from my sculpt. However I have troubles in making silicone mold (Rebound 25) from my sculpture (Chavant NSP) and I basically can't proceed any further at the moment.

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Silicone works like a charm, no issues with that. The problem is the hair/braids, see picture below.

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Luckily I tested just small portion of the braids first. Silicone is getting literally into all cavities and underneath the braids and so when I'm trying to get mold off braids come along and silicone mold is looking just crazy, see picture below.

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So my question is: any ideas how to get clean mold and little as possible damage the original sculpture?


At the moment I don't use any mold releases, just thinking if spraying some would help a little?


One option I'm thinking would be to thicken already the first coat of Rebound 25 for the braids so that it would not get to all holes.


Also, If there would be some material that i could apply on top of the braids and then rub almost all off, so that the material would get off from top of the surface but would stay into cavities (sort of like dry brushing) and underneath braids so that silicone then wouldn't. Any ideas for such a material?


Thank you very much,

Sami Mustonen
+358408273728
www.samimustonen.com

Comments

  • Chris EllerbyChris Ellerby Admin
    Hi Sami,

    First, you kinda have to expect the sculpt to get damaged or at least partially destroyed during the mold making process.

    The challenge you are running into is there are undercuts behind the braids.  That is typically addressed during the sculpting process, to make sure everything is solid.  

    Here's what I would do.

    Try heating up some of the clay and brushing it over the braids to fill in the gaps that the silicone would find its way into.

    You could then re-sculpt the details and clean things back up.

    Another option would be to spray a few layers of Krylon Crystal Clear to seal up the braids and help prevent the silicone from getting behind the braids.  But that will only fill small gaps, so you may still need to clay in some of the larger gaps.

    After that, you should hopefully not have too many areas that the silicone leaks into, and you can trim those out of the mold.

    Hope that helps!

    /Chris
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