I had to take a break from making my armature so I could finish my essay on time. I also had to finalise a story and script it for the FYP. As all my scripts were running too long I decided in the end to make a Trailer/Promo for the original story about King John's castle. So at the moment I;m storyboarding that. I suppose I can post the story when the storyboard is ready - just to give it some context. In the meantime I finished working on the hands for the armature.

 

The initial step was to form the fingers and thumb from 1mm aluminium wire

 

I then set them in place using epoxy resin. I added some 2mm wire so it could be joined to the arm. Ideally the fingers and thumb wire should extend through to the forearm but as usual there is a shortage of wire.

 

I had to add more resin to neaten the palms after trimming the excess wires

 

The next step was to glue on some thin foam - I used bandage underwrap. I had to make several attempts with different glues as nothing was working. In the end some PVA glue worked nut it had to be left overnight to dry.

 

The material was then trimmed as tightly to the wire as possible.

 

After adding some acrylic paint to liquid latex (to make a flesh colour) I had to apply several layers. I started leaving each layer overnight to dry but this is time consuming. In the end I started drying the layers with a hair dryer.

 

This is just giving an idea of the scale

 

When I mixed the latex with paint I was including the white (latex) as a colour. I had forgotten that latex dries to a brown colour after several layers. So what was a nice flesh tone when I mixed it turned into a bright orange. Still, it's better to make mistakes now and do things right when it matters.

 

This way of making hands means that the digits are good and flexible, although I did notice that the more layers I added, the stubbier they became.

 

There is a bubble of air trapped at the side of this hand which will probably burst after some manipulation, so that's something to be careful of.

 

Placed against the armature of the boy the hands are way too big. As I won't be using this armature in the FYP it's o.k. but I think I'm going to have to build fairly big characters for this size of hand to suit. I think next time I'll make the fingers longer and try to keep them thinner. I also noticed that the light reflects a lot on the latex so I'll have to sort that out too. I'm happy with the result though as it's easier to manipulate - and keep in position - than plasticine.

 

 

I'm toying with the idea of making a plaster nould of some plasticine hands, and casting them with latex. The trouble is that such small thin fingers will be hard to make a clean mould of. Still it's worth trying though as it might work out.