#gel10

[glamrock-lizardman]

So I wanted to make a post about the process of making this severed arm since I’ve gotten some people asking me about how I did it. I started with the bone for the nub of the arm. I sculpted it out of super sculpey (beige) which is a polymer clay that hardens after you put it in the oven. I painted those with simply acrylic paints and I did it in washes going from dark to light so the darkest paint would make its way into the cracks. I did the bone according to the area of the arm I knew it would be cut at and also the method in the film that the arm was cut (hacksaw leading to a clean cut but the bones being splintered). I glued them together since it’s the forearm there are two bones there. I then glued those to a stick I measured according to where the wrist would be. Next I had to cast my own arm and the cheapest and easiest way for me to do that was to mix up some alginate (Smooth-On Algisafe alginate) and dump it into a tube and stick my arm in. The photo with the purple stuff is what the alginate is. I wasn’t able to take many photos of this process since I obviously didn’t have enough hands. Alginate is water-based and can only be used once as it will break apart and also after half an hour it will start to shrink from losing water so it really has to be used right away. The cure time for it depends on the room temp but is usually around 8-12 minutes. For actually casting the arm from the mold I used Polytek gel10 silicone which I won so I don’t know how much it is but I do know silicone is very expensive so I was lucky to be given some by Polytek. I tinted it with silicone pigment I don’t remember what brand unfortunately. Silicone is very tricky to work with and easily inhibited and I could make a whole post on its own about silicone so if you need to use it and have questions feel free to just ask me. I poured the silicone in from high up and in a small stream so there wouldn’t be many air bubbles and when it’s only partially filled I rolled it around a bit to make sure all the fingers were filled before continuing to fill the mold. Then I put the bone and stick in and held it there as the silicone cured. I had some extra silicone left so I watched that as a gage to how long I had before needing to demold. I also used extra silicone to gore up the nub of the arm. For painting the arm I used alcohol paints (I have the paints I used pictures above). The problem with that is that the only thing that sticks to silicone is silicone so the best way to paint it would be tinted silicone and working quickly but it was a one day shoot for the short film I made this for so I just used alcohol paints. Because of this everyone just had to be careful with the arm because when handled too harshly the paint would rub off. For painting it I simply looked to my own arm for reference. That’s the basics of it!