disabled and tired

For once passing out helped ease the pain but again against better judgement I ended up testing the clay out. Anyway

Uber overcooked clay vs a fixed up one. Hack i ended up doing is making a paste using starch and white glue, then incorporating it into the overcooked stuff. I felt like I was working with rubbery dough..... Also Petroleum jelly. A lot more than I expected was involved (mainly to prevent it from sticking to ur hands like no tomorrow). The ball touching the spatula is what it looked like after around an hr or so of work.

This process continued until it was like ass o'clock in the morning (halfway i was like bruh can't we save this for future me to finish, but idk stubbornness/inertia won out); so at that point, I just made sure they wouldn't dry out (involved more of the paste + coconut oil), stuffed the balls into a silicone bag, and called it. I figured at this point, I could just work the clay as I use.

Here are the balls of clay i made sans one (we'll get back to that later) after a night of chilling in the fridge. I have no idea how the condensation happened tho bc I was raw dogging the chill and I have poor circulation lmaoo

So you would think I would just spend the next couple days chilling bc, u know, excruciating pain working rubber into something more pliable, but, once more, against my better judgement (r u seeing a pattern here), I decided eh, what the hell. My arms and hands don't feel as shit, so let's just do a test piece.

Yeah about that. We ended up doing more than one. Like. Several.

Basically trying to test a few things. How well they keep their shape, how well I can shape them, how easily they smooth out, how they look like when dried, how much watercolor paint i need incorporate for a solid color, if i can paint over them after they harden, etc.

So I found out the night prior adding some kind of liquid that isn't oil will soften them out to the point where you need to add more starch back in if you're not careful. I ended up settling for white vinegar bc apparently it helps preserve the clay idk rlly. But u gotta add it little bits at a time. Eventually I managed to work it to that teardrop shape that they emphasize a lot in videos

Never back down never what 😅😭

But the consistency for mine isn't the same as the videos (again I fucked up lots n used a different starch) bc theirs are pretty smooth and can turn into ball without creases (at least from what I've seen). It was hard to smooth out and even harder to attach pieces. The window to form stuff without creases is extremely tiny and it can only be a tiny bit damp. Otherwise, it turns into a sticky mess.

Honestly, a lot of the time I was working, I thought I was working with forbidden tapioca dough 😅 Part of me wanted to boil it and eat it in dessert lmaooo

It's drying as I'm typing this out, and yup sure enough, I'm seeing cracks. What I ended up making (the clay itself) is a huge pain in the ass to smooth out, too 😔 Honestly, idk what I can make with all this clay except for test pieces 😔

If it comes to it, I'll have to make thin sheets that covers the whole thing like fondant? Gotta be careful, too, when using aluminum foil as a skeleton bc if i cover it too thin, the aluminum will show 😔

Couldn't get it one to one with my concept sketch, but it is what it is. I've got shit depth perception 😅 I regret everything though... I decided to do each individual spike of his hair 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

Here are the concept sketches below. Very rough. Partial turnaround again. The figure and my rough breakdown of his katana are on different pages.

Need to wait for things to dry but I snuck in a pair of those tiny ass magnets (smaller than a pencil eraser) so his sword can attach to the body

Rip my lungs tho. i gave up wearing a mask 1/3 of the way in bc I needed 2 many sippy breaks 🫠 Used paper clay (less mulch-like than paper mache) tho so the dust was technically less fine? Fr don't be like me

Always wear the best and most proper PPE for the situation

I have so much respect for people who work in the 3D man. It's a different kind of labor frfr

Edit: bc I need to put this madness somewhere

Here is the hella simplified sheathed katana. It's in the process of drying right now, and if you know anything about working with clay, you know that if you're not careful, your pieces will warp if you do not set up supports to help keep its shape during the drying process. I needed something at a very specific height, so here I used a partially rolled up piece of scotch tape 😭😭😭