Holy crap.

One more "Then and Now"

Definitely looking much better!

I forgot, did you want to do this on your own or would you appreciate feedback and suggestions, or, is it too soon in the sculpt?

NHM,

Send me a PM for now. It's still early stage. I have to do a lot of work to it.

Of course, point out the not-so-obvious.

Things like "there aren't any tusk tubes" are already accounted for.

Very nice!

Thanks, guys!

So, got a mirror out and started to watch for symmetry while looking in the mirror. It's amazing what a mirror will show that the human eye fails to detect.



The eyes still need a bit of work but I've finally gotten them to a rough state to where a little tweaking will make them look similar.

Also worked on making the face more symmetrical.

I spent a while trying to reduce the overall weight but failed miserably. I managed to Dremel out the buldges to the left (as you face it) sidewall. Now instead of being thick and hugely bumpy, it's just thick.

The goal isn't to make this wearable, but to save some money on postage when I send this out to get it cast.

Also worked on the neck (right side, as you look at it) and ground that down to make both sides of the head more symmetrical.

Final shot for today:



Middle frown "bone" was also sanded a bit.

NHM: Yes, the left cheek corner will eventually be raised. I still have a lot of sanding to these areas to do before I raise them.

That is very cool Mac....very cool.

Something was fundamentally wrong with "Casper". It looked great if the camera was angled upwards in that idealized shot of Vader we've come to know and love. However, if I tilted his head downwards, something looked off.

It turns out it was two things. The cheek lines were too low, the nose was too high, and the jawline needed to be bulked out.



"This is after my trip to the dentist, for eating too much candy!"

By this time I had already soaked and scraped off all the air-drying clay on the inside. Unfortunately with the air-drying clay gone, it left various flaws in Casper, with respect to the eyes and the neck. Now will have been the second time I've had to patch this neck area.

The black marker lines give me a better sense of what I have to reshape and remove.

24 hours later... ding... ding... ding... DING!

The following takes place between 10 a.m.... and 11 a.m.



Creating exact symmetry is difficult, even with a mirror. You might nail it at one angle. Then tilt it vertically -- forward or backward -- and you get a whole different set of issues.

So a lot has happened here. I've sanded the swollen sides down. These sides are important to me because the tusk tubes are eventually going to have to be put in there, and they need have a certain effect from different camera angles.

The cheek lines are wrong and need correcting; they're not symmetrical and the curve needs adjusting.

You've noticed that I've milled out the whiskers. I did this on my "Darth Ugly" so I could access the mouth's side walls better with the sander. I can sculpt the whiskers back in later.

The eyes are starting to look more symmetrical than ever before. Ironically, when it comes to sharpening eyebrows, I had initially thought it was adding Aquamend and making the eyebrows more pronounced. I may have been wrong, because doing so basically makes the eyebrows stick out moreso than the prop. What I did instead was sand the eyebrows down, then sand back the skull area around the eyebrows to re-contour them.

When I'm done, this won't have a Auto-CAD-level perfection, but there will be a lot of hints of handwork.

So why did I go through all that trouble just now? It is for this camera angle:



Now that he's looking down, Vader looks much more believable. Just imagine the tusk tubes, which wil be added later!

May I give a suggestion about the upper cheek curvature now???