Hello! This is Ramanan. In this blog, I'm gonna be sharing all the craziness that I went through on sculpting a 100 figurine target!
Sparks to sculpt
Well, I think it was 2017, around Diwali, I bought some sculpting tools and random polymer clay which I didn't have any idea how to use. I was fascinated with the sculpting videos that I saw on YouTube back then. And I was a die hard fan of action figures in my childhood days, hence I really wanted to master clay figurines.
The figurine you see below was the first one I ever tried to sculpt in 2017. It had Aluminium wire in it, no foil, no baseplate and I never baked it.
2. The come back in 2020
The tools remained in a mug for more than 2 years; as I kept looking at it with random thoughts that never helped me to sculpt until January 2020. Yes! It was a new year and it was suppose to be a happening year for me.
After a lot of research on youtube and google, I gathered few more materials like baseplates, aluminium foil, copper wire and screws. It was the time when I was saturated with paintings and sketches, and it was the determination vibes towards sculpting.
The first proper figurine took me 2 days to sculpt. And I used a pair of thin nails to keep the armature fixed. There were no foil in the first few figurines.
3. The Lockdown madness
Right after making a few sculptures came the pandemic and lockdown. I had to kill time by sculpting all day. It turned out to be the best time to master a new medium.
Except for the catch that I did not have the means to bake the figurines until they eased the curfew. Due to that very reason, I was skeptical of the durability and perfection in the work. So I was not sure how proper my sculpture was until I got an OTG when they let the malls to open.
4. Mistakes found and corrected
I had mixed two different brands of clay for certain figurines, and those figurines had some hair-line cracks on them.
And some of the baseplates were still having sap in them, they kind of frothed out while baking. Worst part is they get hard when cooled down. Means, I gotta sand down the hardened sap froth.
I had used electrical wires, LEDs, plastic, wiring tapes, twigs, paper, foamboard, cloth and lot of random stuff as props and décor for the figurines. I couldn't bake them due to these stuff that can catch fire or meltdown while getting baked.
5. Physical fitness
Sculpting is definitely a cool skill to master; but it is also physically exhausting. My beginning days took almost 9 to 11 hours to sculpt one figurine.
Body parts that gets damaged- elbows, neck, collar bone, trap muscles, shoulders, wrists and rarely back muscle.
The wrists are the worse affected areas. There were so many nights where I had to wrap my wrist with a towel like a crepe band, to try getting some sleep. I couldn't get a proper wrist support strap kinda thing, cuz it was still a lockdown for sport equipment stores.
6. Mental breakdowns
Though it was so satisfying to see a completed figurine, it is not that easy to stay focused for a long period to just do one work all day. There is always this anxiety, that I'm not working on other mediums like I used to.
And of course I had no idea if people would even buy figurines. There were no portrait orders, no sales, just sculpting all day.
There were so lot of times that I felt I'm wasting my time with sculpting.
7. Bird figurines
Amidst all this chaos, my creative river of thoughts gave me the perfect armature idea for sculpting birds!
It was actually a craftsome experience to start making birds. It opened new areas to explore with polymer clay, and made it all exciting again.
8. Recording and voice-over videos
I made a very few time-lapse of my sculpting works, because I was not comfortable enough to mind the camera and also focus on the work. More over, my hands are always sticky with clay all over; so imagine handling a camera or mobile while sculpting.
And since it took hours to sculpt, the footage and data space was huge.
Yet, I got a special mobile mount that I could attach to my work table and record without interference. It was a position that let me sculpt freely and also take a peek at the camera without much physical movements.
I did the voice-overs at the noon or around 7 in the evening, cuz this is Chennai, and it has loud streets and filled with crows. Those were the only timelines I could voice-over without much interference,
9. Social media partiality
While making my early figurines, I did get some genuine response from my followers and social media users in general.
But it all kept decreasing in the long run. I'd make reels, stories, carousels, videos and people just stopped responding out of nowhere.
This slowed down the whole journey of sculpting. As in, even the figurines that were sculpted too good got only less than 20 likes; my sculpting videos had very poor views.
I sculpted only 1 to 3 per week after that, which worsened my already existing anxiety of making less art. 10 hour work that gave me a bad wrist pain all night, and not having a decent reach or appreciation, kind of took a toll in the motivation to sculpt. (This problem still exists)
10. Custom orders & evolving as an Artist
My first order was a miniature pet dog for a cake décor, from a friend. From then on, I did quite a few custom figurines. Some of the orders done are of the pics below.
I had to do some research to know the market value of these figurines and come up with a price chart. Prices were determined on the size, complexity and time duration given.
Figurines gave me a better understanding of anatomy and posing. I no longer needed so many reference pics to make a sculpture. Infact, I got ready to design my own characters to sculpt. After 2 years and 6 months, having sculpted 100 figurines, sculpting became the medium that I consider to be my highly valued hand skill.
Now, I intend to sculpt at least once every week, or even twice. That way, I can have 50-100 figurines done in a year. I don't worry about its rate of sales, I want to sculpt because I find it amusing even after a 100 figurines. There is still more to explore in this medium. It has become a skill for life. I will continue to improvise and make more masterclass figurines in the coming days.
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