So for those of you who saw or participated in our Heroes and Villains sale you saw the debut of our second sculpt, Pantera. I know I mentioned working some stuff out with the new sculpt to try to make the process more efficient. I was pumped about the sculpt and excited to make more, however, this design just turned out to be mindnumbingly frustrating. I'm hoping to describe what I went through here for those who are interested in how this particular sculpt was cast, and possibly some things to think about when sculpting caps in general.
Basically, I ran with a jungle panther theme when I had this concept in mind. I was so excited when I finally finished it thinking about all the color possibilities. Then came the molding and casting process.. Which is where the issues began. The leaves ringing the mid section of the base, which I was able to mold easily enough, soon became problematic. From the first master mold, I noticed some difficulty in removing the final cap once it cured. Fine. Whatever, I'll use a little bit more release. Which was all fine and dandy, until after like 3 casts, my mold tears. Alright.. I guess maybe its time to try to switch to a different silicone type, maybe bump up the quality? Well, after waiting for an order of Mold star and hoping for the best, two casts in, same problem. The leaf portion of the mold tears, bits of silicone sticking to the final caps. I remade the molds a half dozen times. Same issue time and time again, no matter how I pulled the cap out or how much release I used. I even tried switching to a different mold release. No luck.
I got to a point where I just couldn't keep remaking the molds. It honestly just made me not want to cast any caps, which sucks. So I'm moving on. The labor of pained love that went into this cap design will be the last for this sculpt. Perhaps I'll revisit the concept in the future at some point, but for now, I'm going to focus on bringing some new sculpts out and the TMX stem design thats been in the works. I'll try and get some photos up soon to show what I mentioned here. Thanks for reading
