Dragon sculpture.

You're right! I HAVE seen some "tissue" flames that look almost real until the fan is off. Good back lighting and I think wifey is on to something!

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Thanks bro. Yeah I’m getting excited because the mold is soo vlose to being finished and I can crack er open like a late christmas present ha ha.
 

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Screw the holidays, PROGRESS PICS!

I'm just messing with you man... Really anxious to see how your pulls go with that mold. That's one heck of an intense thing to cast. Really hoping it all works out for you. That thing will be BEAUTIFUL if y'all can pull of the latex/foam casts... Hell, I may even want to buy one for a wall mount, and that's saying something as I usually just admire the work of others from a screen.

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Screw the holidays, PROGRESS PICS!

I'm just messing with you man... Really anxious to see how your pulls go with that mold. That's one heck of an intense thing to cast. Really hoping it all works out for you. That thing will be BEAUTIFUL if y'all can pull of the latex/foam casts... Hell, I may even want to buy one for a wall mount, and that's saying something as I usually just admire the work of others from a screen.

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Oh sorry I haven’t updated this in a while. Been busy around here. Heres a video of us cracking open the mold:
 
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Oh WOW man! That's intense! That is going to be amazing in person! Get yourself a good clear coat on there cause everyone and their brother is going to want to "feel" it when you tell them what it's cast in.

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Thanks brother!. Yeah that silicone feels awesome and like real skin. Touching it does get addicting ha ha. Will post more pics and video when its all painted and assembled etc. Thanks soo much for the kind words and interest bud.
 
Howdy fellow RPF peeps!. Just figured I’d post a couple pics of the painting progress so far of the first one to come out of the mold. The silicone skin and siilicome painting is new to me but I am getting the hang of it and no hiccups so far. Let me know if you have any questions. I am also hoping some of you guys can help me zero in on what would be a fair price to charge for a finished custom painted head like this?. I really have no idea what to charge and have put an insane amount of hours in thus far. Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks for looking and I hope you guys dig it.
A10D8480-12F7-4900-859E-268CB509ED5D.jpegE9C50E38-975A-4B76-AE30-36F208C72F17.jpeg
 
Congratulations mate , she’s (?) Beautiful :love ! .

Thanks for posting that video , sooo cool ! .
Have no idea how much you should be selling this for - a serious amount of time , effort and talent , but when you finally decide , could you please come up with an overall price that’ll include postage & handling for international shipping too !?

:cheersGed
 
Congratulations mate , she’s (?) Beautiful :love ! .

Thanks for posting that video , sooo cool ! .
Have no idea how much you should be selling this for - a serious amount of time , effort and talent , but when you finally decide , could you please come up with an overall price that’ll include postage & handling for international shipping too !?

:cheersGed

Awe man you are too kind, thank you!. Yeah I will definitely update and come up with a price that is fair. It will all depend on how many I decide to make in total. It is still quite time consuming running through the mold and painting etc. Will keep you up to date.
 
:angelJust a quick follow up - would you even consider selling them as is , without paintwork , if that’d allow more interest regarding sales from potential customers on a budget ?

Would that even feasible for you in any way ?

Apologies in advance if it’s inappropriate in asking these , but like they say - ‘ you won’t know , if you don’t ask ‘ ;)

:cheersGed
 
:angelJust a quick follow up - would you even consider selling them as is , without paintwork , if that’d allow more interest regarding sales from potential customers on a budget ?

Would that even feasible for you in any way ?

Apologies in advance if it’s inappropriate in asking these , but like they say - ‘ you won’t know , if you don’t ask ‘ ;)

:cheersGed

Oh yeah for sure bud!, that is totally doable. I could fill the mold with a flexible 2 part poly foam or do the silicone Smooth-on dragon skin with a rigid poly foam core (which is what the current one I have made is made with). The silicone version is more expensive but “feels” more realistic. So yeah the sky is the limit and I totally understand the excitement and fun of painting it yourself. I’ll try figure out a cost and let you know.
 
You basically want to pay for your time and material doing the master sculpt. So imagine you have a run of 10 cast. Divide that original total by 10. This gives you a base price.

To that, calculate the material to do one cast and total time x your prop hour rate.

Should give you a total for raw cast.

If you paint, then it’s your time prepping, painting added to that!

:)
 
That being said, if that’s a hobby for you and you don’t need this to pay your bills, keep the price down, no need to repay for everything. For me, learning new materials and techniques is mostly why I try new stuff and if people want it, then I offer it for what it’s worth to me.

Learning is the most important thing for me and that’s also why I don’t take money up front either! It puts so much stress on the seller and twice as more on yourself! Not doing that allows you to take your time and do it at your own rythm and the important aspect of it is that no one will breath down your neck!

All that being said, I love your sculpt!! There’s two things I want taxidermy style : a t-rex and a dragon!!! :)
 
That being said, if that’s a hobby for you and you don’t need this to pay your bills, keep the price down, no need to repay for everything. For me, learning new materials and techniques is mostly why I try new stuff and if people want it, then I offer it for what it’s worth to me.

Learning is the most important thing for me and that’s also why I don’t take money up front either! It puts so much stress on the seller and twice as more on yourself! Not doing that allows you to take your time and do it at your own rythm and the important aspect of it is that no one will breath down your neck!

All that being said, I love your sculpt!! There’s two things I want taxidermy style : a t-rex and a dragon!!! :)

Awesome!, thanks soo much for all the wise insights and valuable input buddy!. Yeah I built it with the plan of selling a few of them. I think 10 like you mentioned is a decent round number and plenty of work to make me sick of it and wanting to move onto something else. I have well over 200 hours all said and done into this bad boy so far. I put parhaps a little too much time into details and went OCD a bit ha ha. I estimate that material cost alone so far is around $2,000 (Canadian). It took about 3 days to run the first one in the mold. I did not inject the mold, but rather brushed in a few layers of Smooth-on Dragon skin silicone, enough to fill out any possible mold lock spots for the next pass which was a rigid poly foam filler for the remainder. This gives it a realistic feel having a skin like feel on the surface with a rigid bone like understructure. I could also maybe do just a soft polyfoam run for a cheaper version, but it would be “squishy” to the touch without a firm frame inside but I will try one out and see how it goes. Maybe could add some wood pieces inside to support it before running foam or something. Anyways I was wondering, considering those factors what is the number that comes to your mind for a price?. My cost to run this one with silicone and foam and making the smoothcast horns and teeth I estimate to be about $300 in materials alone, not including labour. I am also planning on making more head mounts in the future, maybe a water dragon, forest dragon, fire dragon, albino perhaps etc. So the sky is the limit. Heck if things go well enough I may even make a full body as well. Boom! Ha ha, anyways, thanks again for the input bud.
 
Hey fellow canadian .. I'm from Montreal myself and I will have to agree, casting products are not cheap over here! Where are you located?

The way I see it, you put lots of time in your sculpt and it definitely shows in the amount of details and quality, but you probably did that for yourself first and foremost and not in the goal of raising the end product price. That being said, I'm not saying that it doesn't justify the price being higher on higher end products, just that this was you wanted the best replica possible that you were able to create! Sometime, we don't care so much about the timeframe, we just want to achieve the best we can! 90% of the works often gets done in 10% of the time, then, the remaining 10% takes an eternity to get us to that satisfaction point!

In any case, your best best is probably roto/sluch cast + expanding foam as a cheaper option .. since it's probably much faster as an option, that price will be able to come down I'm guessing. Most people don't have experience with silicone painting anyway but then, that's just my 0.02$. I would stay away from wood or anything too heavy and this will bring the shipping price higher and is kinda against what you're trying to achieve here.

I'm not familiar with dragon skin, the material and its price, so it's hard to put a price point on this. What I DO know is that it definitely cost a lot more AND looks and feels a lot more realistic in the end! Of course that brings a higher price. Depending on the demand, people will agree to either pay a lower price for normal resin cast or a richer one for more realism!

300$ in material alone seems very very high to me, but again, I don't know how dragon skin fares .. I would tend to think that it would be more around the 100$ max price-mark but again, as I said, never worked with that stuff. I have experience with smoothon 56D, 310, ONYX, epoxamite and platinum silicons for my molds. I also have never offered so big pieces so it's hard to put a price and I would be affraid to lowball your awesome end product!

I love your idea of having multiple dragons side by side .. but personally, what I would do is cast other lower jaws so that you could reuse the head but have different positions/poses for the lower jaw. It would definitely add diversities for a fraction of the cost and your potential clients would have the option to choose which one they want!
 
Hey ignore my comment on the jaw .. I thought the jaw was a second part but I just looked at the first post again and it's the tongue only that is separate! :)
 
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