Making a Female Game Character from Wax

Step 3 The Wax Stage

Once I molded the rough sculpy figure I then proceeded to cast it in a hard carving wax used primarily in the toy industry. Once the wax had cooled (usually takes about half and hour to an hour depending) I took the parts out of the mold and removed any access flashing or sprues and any other imperfections before starting the detail work.

As you can see this is the final wax figure in finished detail. This stage took a long time (roughly 2-3 weeks) when compared to the earlier rough in I did in super sculpy which only took a few days. The cargo pants took the longest time to sculpt believe it or not because there is so much going on with a simple pair of pants in terms of folds and stitching etc. Also I made them more fitting and less baggy for a sleeker look. I used fashion magazines for reference so I would make sure that my jeans would look more realistic.

All very time consuming to get right!

Toy wax is a fairly slow medium to work with which is why I only like to use it on smaller figures like this one. I usually never use toy wax on scales larger then 1:6th (12" tall) unless they are a small part of a large figure like the hands or some sort of accessory that would be suited for the medium.

You may notice I replaced the previous guns with the final ones I made by hand. I decided I wanted to make the guns look "spent" so I built them in the open position, ready for a new clip. I wanted it to look as though it took a lot of rounds for her to kill the werewolf. This action, together with the spent shell casing on the base, I thought would really help tell this story to the viewer.

I tend to think of sculpture very much like an actor that has to communicate a moment in time but cannot move or utter a sound. Almost like a static mime! I think an observer should be able to understand what is going on with the sculpture without necessarily knowing the subject matter or the history behind it.

Again, I feel it is very important that a sculpture work from various angles. Figurative sculpture, IMO, should be viewed in the round. I think it is important that an observer is able to turn the figure from various points of view and that at least 3 out of 4 views are pleasant to look at. To me, this makes for a well-composed piece. Of course this is not always possible but it is what I strive to do with my work when I think of posing a piece.

This is really where you have to plan a pose in your head before you begin, but at the same time, be flexible enough to make changes during the actual sculpting process because things sometimes look a lot different in the mind's eye then in real life.

As you can see in the photos, this is how far I took my clay before molding her and casting a wax copy to refine.

Because she is such a small piece at 9" tall approx., if I were to bring her to a stage where she was almost finished, the wax would shrink and distort the final figure making her look too skinny and unnatural. To avoid this distortion you have to cast the wax copy during a point in time where the figure is close to being "there" but has room for adjustments. It also helps if you sculpt your figure 3% larger to compensate as I tends to shrink from the sides and not in a uniform manner...

What you don't want to do in wax is make major pose changes: some minor ones are OK: In fact I changed the angle of her wrist during the wax stage with little effort. You may wonder what that red thing is sticking out of her shoulder. That is my armature! It happens on smaller figures sometimes that the armature pokes out here and there but it was not a big deal really because I knew that once cast in wax it would simply be an easy thing to fix as it simply shows up as a bump to be carved down...

Here are some intermediate shots of the wax. You will notice that in the final I drastically changed her pant style to be more like fitted cargo's as opposed to the more baggy look like in these photos. Also you may notice how you can see the drips of wax as I start to form the hands directly on the guns...

What I did was simply take a resin copy of the gun I made and attached it onto the wax, with my wax pen, using a little drop of wax, which acts almost like an adhesive when placed onto resin or plastic. Basically it ended up looking like the gun was attached to the stump of her wrist. Then, as you can see from the photos, I proceeded to make the fingers by laying down some lines of wax that gave the impression of the hands tendons coming from the wrist area. Then it is simply a matter of carving and refining with carving and loop tools to then add more wax where needed until it looks right.

As you can see from the frontal view the wax really polishes quite nicely! This is especially noticeable in the abdominal region. Having a smooth surface on such a scale is really important for the painting aspect during production as it will show any imperfections in the surface. On a figure like this, of a young girl, a rough surface can make her appear older then you may want...

You may be wondering what those little blue gobs are?

Simply they are "Sticky-Tac", the stuff you find in stationary stores used to put up posters on walls etc. It allows me to put my figure together in a non permanent fashion so I can make sure all the parts fit correctly. The break down of parts is very important for the production phase to go smoothly...