Have been a bit swamped so haven't been updating my blog for the last couple weeks but am finally updating it on my progress now!
I haven't progresses with my blender work as I was finding it tricky and wanted a break from it, so instead have been working on my face armature and hair experiments. For the face armature I had to sculpt a face, I chose to make a bear's head instead of a human's because I thought having a snout would make my first attempt easier to get through.
Overall my sculpt is successful, you can tell it's a bear, but I struggled with getting the full effect of the shape of the head and around the eyes.
I then made a plaster cast of the sculpt, I did several steps wrong but really enjoyed the process anyway, and would love to do another at some point just to see the difference between a rough first attempt and a smoother second attempt.
My first mistake was putting the sculpt in the centre of the cast, as I should have had the neck at the edge, allowing me to pry open the cast after the second half of plaster dried on. I also shouldn't have baked the clay sculpt as it meant the solid clay stuck to the plaster and wasn't easy to get out, even with vaseline on one side. I ended up using a drill to make a prying point to get the cast apart and a drill with a smaller drill bit to dislodge the baked clay from the plaster. After that there were several drill holes in the mould so I had to mix more plaster and smooth out the affected areas again, which I managed a lot more successfully no one side than the other.
My next step for this experiment is to create the wire skull and make the silicone skin. I have never used silicone before so it will be a learning experience similar to that of the plaster mould, I'm sure, but I am hoping not too much will go wrong as it's quite expensive and have a lot less of it than I do plaster.
For my hair experiments I used watered down PVA and Latex, both tested on a wig sample and some wool. Neither of these really worked and I think the methods are most likely used for model making more than animation, as they kept their positioning afterwards but were not easily manipulated.
I am aware that I'll be needing to go back into my replacement faces soon, so did a little paper cut-out test of the lip-syncing I had animated digitally before to see what amount of face sections I would need eventually.
It was then time for the formative in week 6 so I put together a powerpoint of all I had done over the semester so far.
The formative felt like it went well, and it was pointed out that if I felt swamped at any point I could simply drop the hair out of my experiments as it is not exactly an aspect of expression.
Moving forward I hope to complete my face armature puppet head soon so that it is ready to animate, and to have tried out more blender, as face replacements are something I'm very keen to try out.
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