Anubis
Anubis was a project conceived and created in less than 2 months, and holds a special place of pride for me. He symbolises my development as a maker, as he is the accumulation and refinement of my skillset over the first two years of university. And since I still have the mould, I'm in the process of setting up the store to sell casts of him in various forms.
The purpose of pieces like this is to demonstrate a concept and use it as a reference when creating digital models. The texturing and shading is a key element, used to demonstrate the edges and surfaces that would be required on the digital model.
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Process
The project started by sketching out the design and refining that sketch, then doing a maquette. The maquette and sketches really helped out when drawing out the front and side views to make the armature and main sculpt.
I then started to make regular 2-part silicone mould by brushing on the silicone, but one of the key parts of that is having a thixotropic so the outer layers can be built up. Which of course I forgot to order, so the mould failed and I lost a week of work. But I'm glad I did, because it allowed me to make a matrix mould, which uses more silicone, but is a more resilient mould when done right.
Casting was fairly simple, just bushing in gelcoat, then polyester resin, then fibreglass-resin mix all over the inside and along the seam. Then pouring in 2-part expanding polyurethane foam to give the entire shell some toughness.
The ears were cast separately to avoid the issues that would come with a 3-part mould. They were just silicone box moulds with the gelcoat brushed in then polyester resin cast. Everything gets fitted back together after demoulding and a little bit of epoxy putty to fill gaps and then it's all primed an painted. Painting was done with an airbrush to get the flat colours, then using standard brushes to edge-highlight, dry-brush and washes to give depth and detail to the model.
A sidenote on mouldmaking
The mouldmaking process is an interesting one. The two-part silicone mould seems - on the surface - drastically simpler. And with more complex shapes, that may be perhaps true, but in the instance of this piece, while slightly more challenging, matrix moulding is just as easy. Properly neat and nice moulds are harder when they are matrix moulds than when they are just two-part moulds. The preparation before starting moulding is a much longer process than with more standard two-part moulds, since the entire surface of the silicone has to be sculpted ahead of time. And if you want a smooth surface with beautiful keys into the jacket, then you'll need to spend more time than you may expect. You will also use more silicone than you think, because you'll leave more space than you would put silicone on the sculpt.
So all in all - consider your time and budget. But if you can, matrix moulding is so much easier than you expect, and the product of that time is so much better.