Sunday 20 January 2013

Latex Casting

Shoes


I begun the latex casting by firstly bulking out the armatures of my feet with styrofoam as shown above. This helped give me more of a solid object to animate with once the latex was placed around the foam. I began applying latex to my mould starting with the brown bulk of the shoe, I kept within the lines painting in two layers. I then painted the black into the mould to give the impression of the shoes sole once again two layers where applied. Finally I painted the green in to the mould, at this stage I could use the green mixture to make the latex as thick as I wanted. The final outcome can be seen below.  



Arms and Hands

A similar process was taken on my arms and hands, I bulked out the main section of the arm with styrofoam and wrapped the fingers with plumbing tape so that the armatures would sit in the cast tightly. As shown below




A closer look at how I bulked
out the hands and the arms.  Click the images.

The armatures were then pushed into my mould, which had been painted with several layers of latex.


Closer inspection of the hands and the arm in the cast . Click the images. the K&S was used as a fixture point to keep the arm in place. I then painted latex around the split line of the two sides of the cast and pressed them together with a clamp.

My final hands with one half of the cast removed.




Unfortunately the right arms split line did not fuse together. I concluded that it was a result of two things I did wrong; firstly  not enough latex was applied around the seem and secondly the styrofoam used to bulk out the arm was to thick, resulting in the mess you see below. I cast a second arm which came out fine.


I trimmed away and excess latex with a pair of tiny scissors.


The final hands front and back.