Epilepticsquirl's Sculpture Contest Entry - Hobbes!

Howdy folks and welcome to my contest entry!

I decided to sculpt one of my favorite comic characters of all time, Hobbes from Calvin & Hobbes!

A little background of my sculpting ability: I have none. While i've been known to pickup a pencil or model something in 3D, I've never touched a piece of clay before in my life. Not even as a kid; always went straight to the brushes.

With that being said I decided to do some research and settled on Super Sculpey as my clay of choice.

A trip to Pearl's and I had my supplies. I also picked up whatever sculpting tools I had thought I've seen other people use. I know the wire thingie's and the pokie thingie are staples in everyone's arsenal. I've seen the wood thingie's elsewhere and figured why the hell not.

I picked a cartoon character because I felt it gave a lot of leeway when sculpting something. Fortunately there's a never ending supply of reference photos available so a quick internet search gave me the collage I needed to work on. I've seen other people have a wall of reference photos so I figured I might as well have at least on sheet of paper with a couple of photos.

In any case, here's where I'm at with a couple of hours of work into it. The goal is to have him with his huge smile that he has, usually after pouncing on Calvin or nailing a smooch from Suzy. Kinda like this one:


And then maybe have his classic dancing pose! I hope I can pull that off!
Anyway, here's his head:



His eyes are looking weird to me, I dunno, could be because they're not painted yet. Let me know what you think and how I should improve upon it; specifically his chin, that looks funky to.

Thanks guys/gals

You know that you can smooth out all the lines with the help of Lighter fluid? Just put 1 drop on a brush and brush it on. The sculpy will temporarily change color to a more whiteish color. You better try on a piece of scrap sculpey before using on your own sculpt.
Let the fluid evaporate before using any kind of flame or heat on the sculpey...you do not wanna burn the sculpey.

Make hobby's body in parts, before you do the final assembly of him. That way you can do detailed work on parts that could be hard to not mess up if doing everything at one time.

Neat thanks! I'll have to give that a try when I'm more comfortable with the final sculpt.

When the world ends and I am ruler I shall show you leniency!

epilepticsquirl said:

---

When the world ends and I am ruler I shall show you leniency!

Thats good to know
Just remember to try the fluid on a test piece before using it on your final sculpt. It can take away details that you wanna keep if you are not careful.

Can't wait for this! Love Calvin And Hobbes!

i dont know if this will work with sculpy but i find rubbers clay shapers to be very helpful with smoothing out curves. i mostly used them for things like lips and eyes.

Contec said:

---

Thats good to know
Just remember to try the fluid on a test piece before using it on your final sculpt. It can take away details that you wanna keep if you are not careful.

Will do! Thanks.

Crank729 said:

---

Can't wait for this! Love Calvin And Hobbes!

I know me too! Like many others I grew up reading Calvin & Hobbes.

fleefromme said:

---

i dont know if this will work with sculpy but i find rubbers clay shapers to be very helpful with smoothing out curves. i mostly used them for things like lips and eyes.

You're talking about those rubber nib tools right? I saw those at the store but I couldn't justify buying one just to test the waters.



I stopped by Home Depot today and found this piece of copper wire on clearance. Go me!
I figured it'd make for some decent armature wire for hobbes's dancing pose.



Just a quick question though, how should I go about mounting the wire to the base? Also, once I sculpt it on the armature wire which is attached to the base that doesn't become it's new permanent home does it? Sorry for the noob questions, still very new at this.

Cheers!

If you're building a character armature, use a baseboard (particle board or melamine) and screw in a dowel as a support post. Build your wire body and connect it to the support post and sculpt away. You can then disconnect it from the support post and use it as you like. For doing character poses, i like to use 12g aluminum wire and spin it together to create the body and extremities. You can do the same with the copper since it is a soft metal.

epilepticsquirl said:

---

You're talking about those rubber nib tools right? I saw those at the store but I couldn't justify buying one just to test the waters.

Don't buy them right now, You can make your own tool.

From top to bottom

A acrylic plastic rod from a toy that my parrots broke. Good for rolling small sculpey pieces flat.

A Embossing Stylus for Scrapbooking. It got two diffrent sizes of balls at the end and it works great when i want something to be pushed into it self.

Two Knitting tools The bottom one is one of many diffrent sizes. Good for small details.

This one is a homemade tool made from a tiny piece of copper wire and a piece of Pop rivit. They are attached to a "handle" made from cenit clay. You would be able to make tool with the Sculpey as well.

The last tool is made from a Pen with two pieces of Pop rivits stuck into both top and bottom. The rivit i have grinded into an angle.. This is the tool that i uses the most.

epilepticsquirl said:

---

Just a quick question though, how should I go about mounting the wire to the base? Also, once I sculpt it on the armature wire which is attached to the base that doesn't become it's new permanent home does it? Sorry for the noob questions, still very new at this.
Cheers!

Drill a hole in the base and stick the wire into it. Or you could drill down a screw into the base that you then wrap the wire around. You can always cut the wire of the base when you are finished.

I wish i'd known about that parrot toy probably cheaper than the 8.00 acrylic rod i bought at the craft shop which doesn't work any better than the 3.00 wooden rolling pin i got at walmart.

Thanks for showing all those tools Contec! May I as what the embossing and rivet tools are generally used for? I see a lot of sculptors use those a lot and curious as to what details they're used for.

In any case, I ended up drilling a hole and hot gluing the piece of wire onto a scrap piece of wood. Here's what i've come up with so far!



Still a lot more to do! But a lot of fun at the same time, I feel like a kid again!

epilepticsquirl said:

---

Thanks for showing all those tools Contec! May I as what the embossing and rivet tools are generally used for? I see a lot of sculptors use those a lot and curious as to what details they're used for.

On this sculpt i used the embossing tool to make all the texture on the head.


For the other tool you should check out Youtube videos of sculpting.
It's called a Clay shaper.
Painting Miniatures Video Guide Conversions - YouTube

Aw cool, thanks for the tips and the links man.

Here's what i've done for tonight. I'm not sure what I should do about his stripes; should I try and sculpt something in or just wait for the paint? I'm leaning more towards just painting them on but I'm open for suggestions. I think his stripes are the last thing I need to add now that I think about it.



Open to suggestions! Thanks

if you wanted to texture the stripes i'd practice on scrap material but given how he's usually drawn i think that waiting to paint would work better.

I saw the title and thought, "This probably isn't the Watterson Hobbes, it's probably some other character I'm not familiar with." Then I opened the thread and saw the Hobbes, and was very happy.

Wes R said:

---

if you wanted to texture the stripes i'd practice on scrap material but given how he's usually drawn i think that waiting to paint would work better.

I tried it on a scrap piece of clay and I think i'll just bake it and color it. Not going to bother risking it.

cokebabies said:

---

I saw the title and thought, "This probably isn't the Watterson Hobbes, it's probably some other character I'm not familiar with." Then I opened the thread and saw the Hobbes, and was very happy.

He's the only Hobbe's I'll ever know!

Here's some pics of the final sculpt that I submitted for my entry. Thanks for the encouragement everyone, couldn't have done this without it!

Voting is now open!

2012-04 - Sculpting Contest - the RPF Gallery