Press Molds for Puppet Heads

Submitted by Mike Brent

Here's a tutorial originally posted by Jason Spyda Adams (son of legendary comic book artist Neal Adams) over at the Sculptors Forum (you need a free registration to read the forum). He uses it for making heads for action figures, but I thought it would be great for making puppet heads, for instance if you want to make multiple copies of a head in plasticene for modifying into replacement heads, or you could even make whole bodies this way if you're doing simple claymation figures. This would ensure that each time you have to re-create your puppet it would look the same again. I asked Jason if I could transfer this over here, and he gave me permission. Here's his description followed by pics he took:

"I sculpted a basic head with no defined features and I made a squeeze mold. That way I don't have to worry about the sizes being different and I can get right down to the important details."

"What I do is sculpt the basic head and cook it. Then I hit it with some mold release and mix up some apoxie clay. I build up half the mold and make sure there are key locks in it. When that hardens, I hit it with mold release again and press in apoxie clay for the second half of the mold. Then I have a stone solid mold when it cures. I can squeeze out a thousand if i want."

"Before I put clay into it, I spray in mold release. I mush up some premo clay until it is soft and press it inside each half of the mold."

"I put in a wodden stick for the mego heads but you don't have to use a stick at all. Then I just squish the two halves together and pop it out."

"Since they come out soft, you can also change each one's details so they all look different."