While casting bodies I am dabbling in making some figures for a slotracer who is just decorating his track. He needs track marshals and – he is a biker himself – a female biker for a bike I have sold to him.
I do not like the standard figures in their boring poses you can see on almost any track, the typical China clones. So I take standard figures and transform them – change poses, clothes if wanted or necessary, hairstyle and whatever.
Of course I also use the China clones. They are smaller than 43rd scale – something around 45th to 48th – but this is not apparent when they stand farther away from the drivers´/ visitors´ side of the track, in the background. They are easy to work on, because they are from Styrene.
The more visible figures in the foreground, which attract attention first, should be real scale if possible.
The problem is that there are not so many really well made figures in this scale available, and almost all of them are cast from white metal and thus quite expensive.
So the only way is to buy one of each figure you need, and make copies from resin and alter / modify them then. This way you can create almost anything you want.
I have already shown examples of my modifications of China clones as well as real scale figures.
Meanwhile at least two persons sell resin copies of those metal figures in the internet – in my opinion this is very unfair on the creators of these figures.
I needed a sitting girl.
So I chose this well known sitting girl made by DENIZEN. ( Here you see a not so well cast and not cleaned yet example ).
Well, one of my attitudes is : There is almost no waste when I am at the workbench.
What I cut off here, might be reused there…And it is very often !
Just when I cast figures. Sometimes shoes/feet or hands/ complete arms or whatever are missing because I was too impatient and did not push resin into the tiny cavities before pouring in the rest of the resin.
Throw them away ? Why ?
Therefore this poor girl
became the basis for a biker girl.
Now, what had to be done ?
- Changing the sitting pose into a half sitting / half standing on the bike
- Replacing arm and hand
- Replacing feet and give them the typical position when standing on the toes because the legs are a bit short for the bike.
- As you see the arm was replaced by a typical sculptor´s material – a piece of wire.
I might have added some 2K putty now, but I am sometimes impatient, so I used the good old “superglue - baking powder - methodâ€. I applied a tiny amount of superglue to the wire and poured baking powder over it. This was repeated until the arm was thicker than it would have to be. It took two, three minutes ( whereas 2k sculpting putty would have taken a few hours to harden ).
- Then I cut into the rear sides of the legs´ joints, heated them with the thinnest nozzle ( 3 mm) of my heat gun and bent them into their new position. The upper body was also set a bit more upright.
- The cuts were also closed and strengthened with superglue and baking powder.
- Then all the seams were cleaned with diamond burrs and the minidrill, the girl´s cap was removed and changed into hair ( it will be reworked a bit yet ) and voila, the girl can sit on her bike.
- Finally a racer ´s head was donated and hollowed and became the girl´s helmet.
Well, the camera is incorruptible and sees / shows a lot more than we would see if we held the figure in our hands…But after being primed and painted I am sure it will be a nice girl.
Just as in real life – color covers a lot…;-)
Let me tell you - it is a lot of fun working on figures, no matter if converting or complete sculpting.
You create "life" on your track, not standard. You have your ones and own people.
See these DENIZEN girls. The basis was the girl(s) on the left. By simply cutting off and reposing one arm ( and filling a tiny bit...) you get any variety of pole holding grid girls.
Next will be the track marshals and the man with the checkered flag.
I hope the text is not too long or boring.
Roland
