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Putting It All Together

12/30/2016

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Sans Souci Studios resin head with DVC teeth nose and tongue added

​My own resin base! My own sculpt, my own mold, my own cast! So excited I can't stand it! One day I'd dearly love to make my own teeth, tongues and noses too, but for this time around at least I'm using DVC parts. (Click here to read more about moldmaking and here for casting the base.) Putting it all together, though, definitely gave me ideas about how I'd sculpt a head differently the next time.

Left, eyes, teeth and nose glued into the base. The DVC teeth took a little fiddling to get them to work with my head. I wound up dremelling off part of the front of the upper part of the jawset, so that the teeth wouldn't sit too far back in the head, and dremelling off much of the back of the lower jawset, so the teeth could fit into the head at all. Fortunately the base colored DVC jawsets are solid color all the way through, so this little bit of surgery didn't show as much as it could have. (Needless to say I did this before I painted the teeth!)


​​I also wanted the teeth to sit up much higher in the lower jaw than they did in my first head, as they kinda disappeared into lips and fur after I got it assembled. I played a lot with layers of Foamies underneath the teeth to get them exactly where I wanted them, and so far I'm happy with how they look.
Sans Souci Studios resin head with DVC parts, eyelids and lips added


Left, eyelids added. I love the moment afterwards when the eyes become follow me eyes! It's as if the mask has magically come to life.

 


As with the previous head, I've been referring to the DVC tutorials online as I work on this head, and much to my confusion they've started redoing that series- when I did the first mask, the lips were applied last, after the airbrushing, and now they're applied early in the process, along with the eyelids. Maybe they were done last in the first series so that airbrush overspray wouldn't get on them, but that's easy enough to paint over with black paint. In any case it was a pain to apply them with fur already there, and so far I like this way better.
​
Sans Souci Studios resin head with a crooked jaw
Sans Souci Studios resin head with a crooked jaw
​I also learned the hard way it's best to cut the cast up right before assembling it. I was so excited to get a good cast I couldn't wait to open the eyes up and hinge the jaw, and then I let the head sit, and sit, and sit.... and the jaw warped, shifting to one side. Now the head has an expression kinda like this: :-/ Nothing that can't be fixed with a Dremel and some epoxy, but still, something I'd rather avoid in the future.
planning for straightening jaw on resin head
Planning for straightening lower jaw on resin head
Above, working out how to resculpt the jaw to make it look straighter. I often take a photo of an area I'm working on, print it out and draw on it, to help visualize what I should do. In the printout /drawing to the right, I've decided to dremel off the lip outside of the thick blue line. Another point for adding the lip early on- it gave me a way to tweak the jaw I wouldn't have had otherwise.
Silly picture of Sans Souci Studios resin head with DVC parts
(And... one day I went down into the basement to work, and I found my daughter had gotten into my packing peanuts....)
Sans Souci Studios resin head with straightened jaw
Sans  Souci Studios resin head with straightened jaw
Above, the lower jaw resculpted and straightened out a bit. I think it looks much better. Neatening up the edge of the lower lip helped a bit too.
silly picture of chiffon in tear ducts of Sans Souci Studios resin head
Above, chiffon added to one tear duct but not yet the other, as modelled by my packing peanut loving daughter. Freaky deaky!
checking vision in Sans Souci Studios resin head
Above, straps and padding added, checking the vision through the tear ducts. I like the rather naturalistic angle of the nose. Right, hubby is DONE with trying the mask on to see how it works, and he is REALLY DONE with getting sh*t about how silly his hair looks after he takes it off!!
grouchy husband with Sans Souci Studios resin head
​Two takeaways for the next resin base sculpt:

First, make sure the areas in which the eyes will be glued are as flat as possible and in the exact same plane with each other. Any crookedness or unnevenness in these areas will be greatly exaggerated when the resin eyes are in place, and gives the mask a rather wall-eyed, inbred expression. Next base sculpt, I think I'll use metal or rigid plastic discs of the correct size to mark out these areas and leave them there while moldmaking, to make sure those areas don't squish out of shape. I was able to glue the eyes into this base to my satisfaction using bits of resin and hot glue to level them out, but care taken with the next sculpt could definitely make the process a lot easier. 

Second, sculpt the next head so that it can easily take a nose with a flat back. DVC noses, and I suspect any other noses that are cast separately and glued on to a base later, have flat backs. I suspect they are made in one piece molds, the backs of which are open so that the casting material can be poured in, which then levels out as it sets. When I removed the nose on this base to accommodate the DVC nose, I was left with an awkwardly shaped hole into which to glue it. I re-sculpted the area a bit with epoxy so that the nose would fit (the thick black band behind the nose in the pics is epoxy for the most part) and so all is well that ends well, but again, this is something to take into consideration for future head sculpts.

Next, ears!!

​
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Painting Resin Teeth

12/10/2016

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 For my last head, I was in so much noobie awe of my resin jawset from DVC that I was afraid to alter it in any way, shape or form. By the time I was ready to make this head, I had seen how cool jawsets could look when painted, and especially since I love to play with color, I wanted to give it a whirl. Here is the tutorial I used to paint my teeth.
Color ideas for resin jawset
So I ordered the same jawset from DVC that I had the last time, the pink/white semi realistic large K9 jawset, and dremelled it down to make it fit my own resin head. I shortened the front of the upper jaw, as otherwise the teeth would sit too far back in the head, and narrowed the back of the lower jaw as otherwise it wouldn't fit in the head at all. Fortunately the color is solid all the way through these jawsets so the dremelling didn't show as much as it might have otherwise.

Left, my handy dandy color notebook, and below, my reference photos. I played with colors until I was satisfied with how they looked with the jawset- my intention wasn't to paint over the entire jawset, just to add some accents and shadings. (One thing to keep in mind- acrylic paint darkens slightly as it dies.) The colors I ultimately settled on were a mix of titanium white, quinacridone crimson, and just a teeny smidge of yellow ochre for the pink parts of the gums, and a mix of burnt sienna, carbon black and titanium white for the brown parts. For the teeth I settled on titanium white and yellow ochre, using more white toward the tips of the teeth and more ochre at the bases, to paint the "tartar buildup" there. 
 
Painted resin dreamvision creations jawset
Painted and glossed dreamvision creations resin jawset
Above, top, the painted jawset before gloss acrylic sealer was applied, and bottom, after. (Oooo, shiny!!)

Public Service Announcement- when spraying sealer, make sure the little arrow on the trigger thingy is pointing TOWARDS the object you're spraying! In what might have  been my biggest "D'OH!" moment ever I sprayed myself in the face with the sealer, coating my $400 progressive glasses with a fine and very tough mist. My noble husband rode to the rescue and spent a half an hour in the basement gently cleaning the lenses with mineral spirits, and amazingly enough, was able to salvage them. Thank goodness I was wearing the glasses and didn't spray myself directly in the eyes!!!
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    I make masks. Because art is more fun when you put it on your head.

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