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No-Sign-of-Sanity — Quickie Face Tutorial
Published: 2006-11-08 07:51:52 +0000 UTC; Views: 63643; Favourites: 406; Downloads: 3531
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Description
**This is an animated .gif so you must "FULL VIEW" it to see what the hell I'm talking about!!!**This is just a quick sculpting tutorial I threw together to preach about the wonders of Super Sculpey and heat guns. Super Sculpey is a heat-activated polymer clay that stays soft and workable until you bake it in your home oven. But by using a heat gun you can sculpt features and quickly "flash" bake them on the spot without having to constantly run back and forth to the kitchen.
So when doing really fine detail work, it really helps to be able to quickly bake certain features so you can work right next to them and not have to worry about mushing them on accident. So here I go thru a few stages of blocking in the features of a face and I'm using a heat gun to set those features in between each step to lock in the details.
1.) The basic shape of the eyes is done and the top row of teeth is sculpted. Then I hit it with the heat gun.
2.) The lower row of teeth is sculpted, and then I hit it with the heat gun.
3.) The lower eyelids are sculpted, and then I hit it with the heat gun.
4.) The upper eyelids, the brow structure and the top of the head are all sculpted and detailed, then heat-gunned
5.) The lips are sculpted and the jaw and neck are given some detail and then the whole piece is thrown in the oven for a full bake.
While this isn't the most intricate tutorial ever made, hopefully it'll help pull back the curtain about my process of sculpting details.
Oh by the way, this piece is 1/8th scale so this head is just barely bigger than a quarter coin. I'll share more of this piece as it draws closer to completion.
Hope this helps guys!
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Comments: 175
Where can I get a heat gun? '.' That whole worry of squishing is a huge problem for me
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Any hardware store like Lowes, Osh, or Home Depot should sell them (they are generally used for stripping paint or wallpaper) or you can get one online at Amazon.
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Oh cool! Thanks c:
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This is really helpful, I've been planning to grab some Sculpey and try my hand at sculpting for the first time. Thanks!
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WOW!! this is amazing!!!
Thanks for the tut
does anyone know what type of clay this is? (ikpolymer but like.. anything similar i can buy at a craft store)
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So, I watched this tutorial a few times, read the description ... and then I hit it with the heat gun.
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thanks for tutorial man, it's so helpful for beginner like me
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Super sculpey polymer clay
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Super Sculpey polymer clay.
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Thanks a lot for share this great info with us. You are a master!! 
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your work is giving me the motivation to sculpt more. I got only one figurine done [link]
And I got some design waiting to be done...I really got to be more serious.
Good job for all your sculptures. They are amazing.
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dang! nice tutorial.. ill probably heat it in oven instead of using heatgun.. my statue is close to finish..
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Awesome advice on the hear gun. Question, you still bake the whole thing later, right? Assuming that you do, the parts that you flash bake don't end up burning?
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Yes I still fully bake everything in an oven at a later point. You can bake and rebake sculpey several times and so long as you don't bake it for too long at anything over 250 degrees it'll be just fine. I like to do a final bake at 275 degrees for about 30-45 min (depending on the thickness of the sculpture) just to make sure that everything it fully baked and has reached its maximum strength hardness.
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I was wondering if you were going to reply. Thanks for the info.
I've been making maquettes for myself lately as reference stuff when drawing, and I expect to be making more, so I wanted to know a bit about how you make such amazingly detailed stuff (though I doubt that I'll make anything nearly so detailed).
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About how long do you keep the heat gun on the sculpture? Thanks a lot for the pointers.
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Ok nevermind. I just read through all the copmments and found my answer. Plus I picked up a few more things I hadn't even thought to ask yet. Thanks a whole bunch for imparting your considerable wisdom on us.
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What exactly is a heat gun and where would I be able to find one? Or is it possible to make your own?
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A heat gun is just like blowdryer on steroids. It's something that is generally used to strip paint from metal surfaces. Most hardware stores carry them and you can even get them from amazon.com
You can use a blowdryer instead but it will probably take a lot longer to get the sculpey up to a temperature where it will actually bake.
Hope that helps!
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Is there a particular brand of heat gun that you recommend?
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Not really they are all pretty much the same. Just make sure you get one with that either has two heat settings, or variable heat settings... although I think they all pretty much have one or the other these days.
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Thanks for the response. I wasn't sure you'd answer since I noticed there haven't been any new comments since last year but I'm new to DA so I just discovered your tutorial, which is great by the way.
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Found my answer to this too.
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Hmm, so that's the secret! Thank you for sharing it.
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a pound of super sculpy...is around 4-6 -10bucks you say
yet a little tiny brick of regular colour sculpy goes for like...3 bucks on its own...
where the fuck are you from man?
lololol
shit i want those deals.
and i go to micheals to...bah!
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A pound of Super sculpey was that cheap 2 years ago when I wrote that yeah. Oil prices have totally put an end to that though. SS is about 13 bucks here where I live now and after those 40% off coupons from Micheal's it cost about $7.80. Blame high oil prices and the weak dollar.
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aaaah fuck alright thanks man.
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slick! ive been putting off buying a heat gun. it gets a little tricky working details when everything is soft. ill give this a shot. thanks
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I'm sorry if this was already answered, but about how long do you hit it with the heat gun?
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Oh lord, this is magnificent. I've always wondered if there was an alternative to the constant oven sitting, a heat gun is brilliant! Plus this is a lovely sculpture to give us a glimpse into it's making.
Thankyou for this one!
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Clever. aw, too bad my heat gun exploded.
You are right though, Super Sculpey is incredible. Way more convient than regular clay.
Anyways, singing your praises!
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Is a "heat gun" a hair dryer? I use a hair dryer sometimes(but my SSculpey pieces are quite small and thin)? Are the heat guns very expensive? I just don't know what you are talking about. But thanks for the tips and as always, your stuff rocks!
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A heat gun is kinda like a hair dryer on steroids. They are generally used to strip paint off of walls and can get much hotter than a standard blow dryer reaching temps of over 1000 degrees F. They cost anywhere from $25-$150 depending on how fancy you want to get. You should be fine getting one of the low end guns around $30-$40 if you want to use it only for baking sculpey. Here's a link to a decent heat gun at amazon.com so you can see what I'm talking about. [link]
Hope that helps!
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I didn't realize the heat gun was specific enough to sculpt like this. Looks fantastic, you have some amazing sculptures in your gallery!
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Thank you very much! Yes heat guns are very useful tools but they have a very steep learning curve. It's all too easy to completely ruin a sculpture if you are careless with the heat gun so if you choose to use one be sure to practice baking small test pieces before you try working on an actual sculpture.
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I'm living in a dorm and have no access to a stove, so for the past year I really haven't sculpted anything and it's driving me nuts. Maybe a heat gun is the answer, despite the learning curve? (it would also solve a lot of my accidental-smushing problems)
I have a question though, how important is the environment where you are working? I don't want to burn the building down or burn the furniture
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Unfortunately heat guns really are no substitute for a full bake in a real oven. Anything thicker than about 1/8th of an inch really can't be baked properly with a heat gun. So you'll end up with a sculpture that is cooked on the outside and raw on the inside which will eventually lead to it severely cracking and falling apart. Plus the tips of heat guns stay incredibly hot for about 20 minutes, so you have to be super careful where you set them down as to not damage or set fire to any of your stuff.
Maybe you might consider working with Magic-sculp or Ave Apoxie instead of Sculpey? Those products don't need to be baked and self-cure in about 3 hours, with about an hour’s work of working time. SO you can mix up a little sculpt a section with it, then mix some more and sculpt some more etc. It's a slower build-up process than working with sculpey but you can still get the same end results. Plus you can smooth both products with a brush dipped in water. The Gore Group used both of those products heavily when making all of their incredible sculptures for Sideshow Collectibles, so once you used to working with them you can get really beautiful professional results like they do without baking anything.
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