Paint custom

[Xerain]

As I have used Sculpey, I can actually answer your question!

Sculpey III is for kids to make beads and crappy science fair models with. It should be avoided at all costs. Slightly more seriously, it's OK for when you are going to be making things out of solid shapes without need for adding detail, and when the final product will be strictly decorative.

Now you mentioned Super Sculpey, which is a much much MUCH better way to go. Super Sculpey can hold a lot of detail, and there are a lot of well developed techniques for working with it. However all sculpting mediums have their strengths and weaknesses. For super Sculpey, if you bake it properly, which is not as easy as it sounds, it is surprisingly strong while holding all it's detail. However, as it has to be baked... yeah you're gonna melt a shinki arm ring. Ultimately I would say super Sculpey would be the way to go for doing a head sculpt, given that it doesn't dry out and can be smoothed with lighter fluid, etc. It seems better for stuff like that than making small accessories or adding onto existing objects.

For doing that we have Epoxy putties. The Aves and Milliput were already mentioned. Also worth noting is Green Stuff which is rapidly gaining a small following. If you've ever seen Reaper's Miniatures, they're pretty much all initially made with Green Stuff. Epoxy putties also can be added onto plastic. They can be used to make repairs and fix imperfections. They can be used for modifying an existing part, or building form scratch. Since they air dry once mixed there is no fear of melting your original base part... however since they air dry you only have a finite amount of time to get your sculpt right....

I should also mention Sculpey Premo, which is supposed to be somewhere between Sculpey III and Super Sculpey, but closer to quality to Super Sculpey. Because of this a brick of Super Sculpey is often mixed with some white and black Premo in order to create a Gray Sculpting Compound instead of the original fleshy color.

And so now I will tell you the techniques I have learned in my experiments with Super Sculpey and shinki parts.
The solution to not making your arm ring is.....
Make a new one from Super Sculpey and work with that. I have discovered that a certain Alan Wrench is exact perfect fit for the hexagon inside a shinki arm ring. I don't remember the measurement off hand, but if you have a set of Alan Wrenches you can just size them up to a shinki arm ring till you find the perfect fit I speak of. Then realize Alan Wrenches are metal. So I basically made a stand for it out of tin foil (later replaced with one made from Sculpey) so that I can bake parts on it like roasting them on a spit.

So you can actually use it as a sculpting based and have the hole be the right shape. Of course you need to keep it thin enough to fit properly on a shinki arm. My current method is to make a small sphere, bake or heat gun it, then take it off and cut and sand it down to size. It's kind of tedious and annoying, but it does work after a couple attempts. I'm currently considering a way to make a sort of mold out of the Alan Wrench to speed this part up.

Once you have a base ring you can use liquid Sculpey to help bond the Super Sculpey to the ring you make. So I guess it's time to show you the results of this method:



Note that this is actually made from Orange Fimo, which is of comparable quality to Sculpey Premo, but by a different company. I couldn't find Premo in the right color and the Fimo was on sale at the time.

Also, wow, old pictures are old. I couldn't find them because they are from 2007 already and I was looking in 2008. This is from before I even had my own camera.

[Treadshot A1]

Have we mentioned 'neutralizing' yet?

By that, i mean remembering to always add a coat of light gray before applying white? We all know how bad applying white can get. I personally use Astronomican Gray to neutralize colours, from Citadel's Foundation line. Anything from Foundation generally covers anything in one coat.

Of course, this is only necessary for applying white, though any light colour over a dark one may need this as well, e.g. Yellow over black, light blue over black, you get the idea.

I suppose the one exception to this rule would be red. Sometimes, it just needs to be done. Don't know why, but i remember my old art teacher saying there was no red paint, it was either based off of blue or yellow paint, and somehow made red. *shrugs*

[aclee82]

Don't know why, but i remember my old art teacher saying there was no red paint, it was either based off of blue or yellow paint, and somehow made red. *shrugs*

OK how the hell does that work?

[Treadshot A1]

*shrugs* I have no idea how. That's all i remember my art teacher saying way back when. I'm pretty sure he said something about there being no naturally red paint. Though how any paint can be natural is beyond me.

Maybe it's just me, but i do often see blue streaks in my red paint if i don't neutralize first, and i wasn't painting over blue.

Either way, just neutralize first if you're using red over a darker colour. Oh yeah, forgot to mention that silver works just as well for neutralizing, especially if you paint a clear colour over that.

*Anyone who feels like explaining the red paint, feel free to chime in, coz i'm at a loss as to why*

[Caterwaul]

Of course, this is only necessary for applying white, though any light colour over a dark one may need this as well, e.g. Yellow over black, light blue over black, you get the idea.

I suppose the one exception to this rule would be red. Sometimes, it just needs to be done.

*twitch* Painting red over black primer disabuses me of the notion that you dont need an underlying lighter color. I still have nightmares from my blood bowl team of Red over black. Something like 8-9 layers of thinned out red and there were STILL black streaks showing underneath. >.<

[Treadshot A1]

That's one of the reasons i don't like to paint with red. I really find it annoying sometimes. I generally use Clear Red paint, over a base coat of metallic silver. A lot less annoying.

[rantinan]

Ah red over black. izza nightmare. i have actually had quite some success in the past with getting a very nice result by drybrushing red over black, but 1) YMMV, i got some horrible results too. 2) the black must be absolutely dry. 3) the surface must have some texture to it.
Also I won't use greenstuff. Its a LOT more toxic than the other two epoxy putties I mentioned, to the point where if i have a nick or two in my fingers that shit burns. As always, your milage may vary etc etc,