Carcosa Project: The Little Maggot Man

 Here's a quick walk-through on yet another puppet for the Carcosa film project. This one was very simply made, and it might be something in here you can pick up on if you're a puppet-maker yourself. I now almost exclusively use Monster Clay for my puppet sculptures. I've grown accustomed to the relative firmness of this material, and I find that I can work it just the way I want to. A little bit of heat from my heat gun gets the clay soft enough to knead it into the basic shape it should be to get started on the detailing. I sculpted the body for this puppet rather quickly and at a slightly smaller scale than usual. Since this creature didn't have to move neither head nor body I could get away with a simple construction and a one-piece semi-rigid torso.

To cast this sculpture I needed a two-part mold, and I decided to split the mold along one of the segmented portions of the creature's body. The clay wall split ended up just above where the body is tapering off, so I had no undercuts.

To make sure as much of the sculpted detail as possible got into the mold, the first layer of dental plaster was brushed on with a soft, broad brush. The rest of the plaster was mixed rather thickly and ladled on with a spatula.

Here's the bottom section with a pair of improvised clay "legs" added to the torso, just so there would be two funnels where I could pour in the latex.

The whole mold has now set up, been split apart and the two sections of the torso have been cast in latex tinted white, using latex tints from Monster Makers.

Before joining the two halves of the torso I've added jointed legs and two thin metal wires to create small tentacled arms. All limbs were covered with soft string and  thin polyurethane foam to build up bulk and shapes.

And here's the finished critter. The toes are built up with cotton and latex, as is that curiously familiar worm-like appendage between his legs. Washes of purple, blue and red acrylic airbrush colors added the final touch, along with Glossy Accents scrapbooking liquid plastic around the mouth area to simulate glistening moisture.