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Sculpture

MODS NEEDED

All the parts came out pretty good. I assembled them into an arm and a leg and began posing them. The hinge joints (elbow and knee) were too loose and wouldn’t hold a pose. I contemplated some solutions for that problem and will experiment with them soon. The main problem I found though was when the arm or the leg was held out horizontal completely extended, the magnet ball joint would not hold the limb up. I decided to use bigger magnets in the pelvis for the leg. Rather than building an entirely new pelvis, I widened the magnet sockets with a dremel tool. I’ll have to make a new mold for the pelvis and the femur (upper leg bone). The foot needs a deeper socket for the ankle magnet so I will probably make a new mold for it as well.

I’m not sure what to do about the arm. The bigger magnets won’t fit in the scapula unless I remove a huge section of the rib cage. The muscles may provide enough tension to keep the arm from sagging when extended, but I was really hoping for a skeleton whose joints would be strong enough on their own. More thought will be needed.

The new silicone will arrive tomorrow evening and I will get back to making molds. I thought about taking a break for awhile but then I remembered that the resin has a short shelf life and needs to be used up probably within the next couple weeks. So I will keep the momentum going on getting these molds finished.

By Cody Deegan

Cody Deegan is a life-long artist versed in drawing, painting, sculpting, and design. He studied filmmaking and character animation at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles as well as figurative oil painting at the Gage Academy of Art in Seattle.

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