Building out the profile....

Still looks ugly but the profile's starting to come together.

Okay, some sanding (but not enouch).

The Dremel is my friend. Basically made the eyes bigger and removed the eyebrows. The eyes will end up a little higher.



Kind of looks like Darth Casper the Friendly Sith Ghost!

It's difficult to work on the openings due to all the clay, so here "Casper" is going into a bucket of water. The initial air-hardening clay is water-based, and even though it is dry, it is porous. I hope that the clay will absorb water and become soft where I can remove it from the interior... and then the expoxy clay will remain, and the whole mask will be lighter.

It's not so much that it needs to be lighter because if this is successful, I'd mold this. However, it's just difficult lugging a bowling ball around when working on this!

Having worked on various Vader helmets has definitely been helpful, but I can't stress how many subtleties there are with the three dimensional prop. I hope I can observe them well.

Here are a few more shots. The exterior was sanded down a bit more.



Here, I've resculpted the eyes, nose, mouth and padded the right side of the skull to make it more symmetrical.

Again, nothing's final until... it's final. There is a LOT of adjusting that needs to be done. The good thing about padding things up is that I can sand things down.

No, I'm not using clay... I'm using batter. Can't you tell this is a Vader Cake?



Getting the eyes right is not going to be easy, but I've taken some essential first steps here. It will require sanding the outside and filing the inside.

Here's an angle that's flattering to the sculpture. Wow... I actually used the word "sculpture". I guess this is my very first!

All other angles suck. That's why I'm only posting the nice ones!

I envy those people with the skill to do this entirely out of an oil based clay. I've often dinged one area while trying to sculpt another area, and each time I fix what I dinged, I ding something else. It's much better for me to let this dry and harden, and then sand. Perhaps my method is a bit low tech, but that's what happens when you discover AquaMend hanging on the wall at Home Depot's paints section!

That's it for the night!

That's quite a project. I'd never attempt it so my hat's off to you. Good luck.

So after all that, I took it out for sanding.

Meet "Casper" the Friendly Ghost!



Friendliest Ghost You Know(TM)!

Pic of Casper: http://www.johnrozum.com/images/casper.jpg

So close... yet so far....



"What? Wh--who's there? Who said I need a nose job?"

Getting the proportions right is tricky, but has to be done before focusing on the details.



The silver lines show what I'm going to have to remove, modify, or re-establish.

I'm going to work on the left side of the skull first and get it right. If I pull it off, then I'll do my best to mirror it on the right.

This perspective is probably one of the most flattering. The rest are still quite ugly because it doesn't have tusk tubes yet. I didn't realize how important the tusk tubes were in completing his look.

As you can see, the left eye has been given much more attention, and it's coming together.

I've also begun to build out the rest of the skull and to thicken the sides.

That's starting to look pretty cool and I agree... the left side looks the best, so far. Impressive work!

Thank you! And here is today's sanding.



1. Sanded upper inner and lower inner eyelids. For some reason the eyes look narrow, but they're consistent in height with a DP. Might be an optical illusion.

2. Filed some placeholder rectangles in the bridge of the nose.

3. On the left side, lowered the cheek corner

4. Sanded mouth and nose walls

5. Filed away the chin triangle. It's a placeholder for now. Actual size and dimensions, etc. TBD (to be determined). I can't stress how helpful it is to have a hole in the mask you can use to pick the mask up -- especially when your epoxy clay work on the eyes and mouth are still uncured and you do don't want to disturb that work!

6. Sanded cheek sides on both sides

7. Prepared right eye for additional clay by removing old structures

8. Milled a "whisker" on left side of the face (hard to see in this photo).