Print with your hands- SCULPT!
(But seriously playing around with 3D printers is fun- I just don’t need more things to distract me these days- see the Lego post in the next week!)
So every Christmas I sculpt a new Claynimal (or sculpey) critter for my kiddo, and since this past year she’s been pretty into Saber-tooth Tigers (or Smilodons because of their big toothy grins). This year she knew right off which box it was because I was constantly saying, “Be careful with that one!”
In years past when I did them for nieces and nephews (and I’ve been making them for about 20 years or so), they would be somewhat small but they’ve grown in size -sometimes quite a lot. (You can see my video building a T-rex a couple years ago on my Youtube channel here.) So for the 2022 Saber-tooth, I wanted it to be a little smaller but still have some fun details.
I started with the wire frame to get a sense of the size but knowing the clay bulks it out, I tried to keep the ‘skeleton’ smallish to reign in the bigness. I use a lighter gauge wire now to bulk out the body first with the armature instead of old-school soldering wire I used to use (and if you get soldering wire- get the lead free kind). Generally I just recommend lighter wire for smaller figures- even thinner than what I use would be ideal for lots of wrapping!
These figures are fun but they also stress me out a bit because it’s always the end of the semester, amidst the holiday rush, and they have a very specific deadline. But they always manage to come together.
The Saber-tooth particularly came together quicker than I had expected- maybe it’s all the Lego builds I’ve been doing lately? I did a lot of pre-thinking of the various parts and how to glob together the various shapes. One of the tricks using light and dark colors is working light to dark, and making sure to wash your hands between colors with degreasing detergent since it’s easy to contaminate colors- especially the bright yellow I was using.
I was pretty happy with how the lil’ Smilodon came out at the end of the day, and I don’t know how it did since we were still reeling that night with finding out we had a positive COVID case in the house! Still I managed to finish bulking it out, and we did manage to carve out pretty fun, if not a little isolated, holiday times.
Plus it was exciting that our kiddo got her own oven baked clay animal kit from family in Colorado. It was one of the first ‘toys’ she wanted to crack open and she spent the better part of the day reading every single step-by-step direction in the handbook!
