Making a Female Game Character from Wax

Step 4 The Base

At this stage it was time for me to make the base and tie in the sculpture as a whole. I think a base is an integral part of any sculpture, whether fine art or commercial, so it shouldn't be just something that is slapped on or overlooked. It can be a very useful narrative tool!

I find a base can make the difference between a good sculpture and an excellent one. In this case I wanted to make sure that it told a story in a clear fashion. Another consideration is that I didn't want the base to interfere with the figure or be overly complex especially for reproduction purposes. Granted I will never let production technicalities get in the way of the art aspect of the work, or let it interfere with making a better sculpture, however, it is a good idea to think of these aspects as well. You should always consider how something is going to be made and try to work that into your final piece to make your life easier and allow for better reproduction.

My friend Puro Cervantes actually sculpted the rough-in for the head of the creature in super sculpy, to help me save some time, and I then refined it in wax to what you see here. I also added the ears and horns as well as added the shell casings and the clips to emphasize the action that took place.

I wanted this to be an aftermath shot rather than an "in-action"" type of pose because I wanted to make sure she had a bit of sex appeal as well as let the observer imagine what had occurred rather then me feeding it to them. The best horror movies are the ones where you don't see the creature and your imagination does the work for you. I was attempting to apply a similar notion to this piece&

You can see from these pictures that the figure is a tinted resin casting. I waited to do the base until the figure was complete because the base, IMO, should be a supporting cast member to the star (the figure) so it should be made after rather then trying to make the figure work for the base, I made the base work for the figure to enhance it and showcase the figure in its best light not detract from the figure. The resin casting simply assures that I won't mess it up as wax is quite fragile. The worst thing would be to have your labour of love fall over and break into a million pieces just before the deadline!

The base was actually a lot of fun to make because of all the skin textures and mayhem. Its quite easy to make skin textures with toy wax as all you have to do is scribe lines with a fine metal tool in a criss-cross hatching type motion...