Ivar / Hellboy Matrix Mold 2
Mold making 1 - cryptic cardboard base: 
Ivar / Hellboy Matrix Mold 3 Mold making 2 - preparations for the first plaster side. The next step is to use some more clay and to cover up the whole sculpt. This clay will be replaced with silicone later, it will become the one half of the silicone mold. So, the layer of clay should be not very thin and also not very thick. I think I used maybe too much clay here, could've got away with less silicone later... Ivar / Hellboy Matrix Mold 4 Mold making 3 - first plaster side. Ivar / Hellboy Matrix Mold 5 Mold making 4 - second clay side. Finished side 2. The paper towel tube will become the hole in the plaster cover to pour silicone in: Ivar / Hellboy Matrix Mold 6 Mold making 5 - second plaster side. ...and after some clean up: Very important thing is to use some vaseline (or similar agent) on the areas where two plaster sides will touch each other before making the second plaster side. (It's the area with round sockets on the next pictures.) Without it there will be one monolithic plaster shell which is impossible to open. I used some and with the help of screwdriver it opened easily! Here is one finished plaster side after I removed all the now unnecessary clay from the inside: it's clever to measure how much clay went for filling the mold, the same amount of silicon is later needed. Ivar / Hellboy Matrix Mold 7 Mold making 6 - preparations for the first half of the silicone mold. This cling film use is not mandatory, it was something I liked to do. Sometimes it's not as easy to remove the sculpt, sometimes the cleaning up is not a problem. So it depends. Here the sculpt is back in the mold, the cling is invisible and the silicone-to-be is almost defined: I haven't written about the most important aspect here - how exactly my sculpt was separated to two mold's sides. I wanted the front of the Hellboy and two sides of the base to be on one side of the mold, the backside of the Hellboy and another two sides of the base in another. That's the reason why this mold is somehow askew... There should be smallest under-cuts possible on the mold and of course the mold must be such that it's possible to remove the cast from it. It's different every time. And now the final addition - a groove around the sculpt. It helps to synchronize two silicone mold sides, it also helps to keep casting material inside the silicone mold. Ivar / Hellboy Matrix Mold 8 It was funny to read that my tutorial is more complicated than what they teach in American college... Mold making 7 - first silicone side Note the small hole inside the plaster on the next photograph - I drilled it so the air had another place to come out of the mold. When I saw the silicone coming through it, I knew this part of the mold is filled with silicone. On the next day: After some clean-up, one side of the mold is ready! Ivar / Hellboy Matrix Mold 9 As it was the first time for me to try mold making and as I tried to document the whole process with my camera, I was trying to make it as clean and perfect as I could. Don't think my next mold will look as good... 
Mold making 8 - second silicone side I repaired the plaster sides a little after the clean up, as there were some cracks inside and also the opening with screwdriver left some disintegrating marks to the mold's borders. Again - it's very important to cover the already finished silicone mold with vaseline! Not the whole mold of course, but the visible area between plaster and the sculpt. Very thin layer is all what is needed. Without it there is only one way to open the mold and to get the sculpt out - exacto knife. So, it's very important to seal the mold very thightly. I couldn't find plaster bandages, maybe I just didn't look around enough. So I used simple masking tape in several layers. And I'm happy that it worked! Some of the silicone came through from between the plaster sides but it didn't came through the paper tape.
Ivar / Hellboy Matrix Mold 10 Mold making 9 - matrix mold is ready.
Ivar / Hellboy Matrix Mold 11 Mold making 10 - the diagram.
Ivar / Hellboy Matrix Mold 12 have some problems with casting - I just don't have decent resin. I tried one my friend is using when making canoes, but the smell was just awful, it looked ugly and it looks like it didn't cure correctly, at least the surface looked strange. Mold is open: The first copy and the white Cernit clay original. It's interesting how differently they photograph:
Ivar / Hellboy Matrix Mold 13 It took me several months to work on it, I made it on my spare time. In fact, I think base took more time than actual bust... What to do:
1: make a sculpt 2: make a mold to take several copies of the sculpt. 3:The reason I made matrix mould where plaster surrounds silicone is simple - silicone is expensive and soft, so plaster helps to save materials and hold the form. Ivar / Hellboy Matrix Mold 15 And - at last, some progress with resin! Now it's time for putty, primer and color...
Ivar (Tools) I have a 12-part steel sculpting tool set I got from Ebay. But I still love the old Soviet era manicure tools I found at home when I first tried polymer clay and was looking around for some tools. They are lightweight and very nice to use. Only thing I did with them - I modified this green tool's other end to look like ski, it's good for cleaning up sharp lines. That's it for Ivar! I decided to re-post this thread because it is such a great presentation on this subject I didn't wan't to take the chance just posting a link and haveing it go bad after a while like so many others do from old threads.....Some of the other stuff Ivar has posted is missing but this one was pretty complete I think 1 or 2 pics missing, but he took so many that it is still good. Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 7 guests
