Hellboy Corpse Locator - First Finished Piece

The original item was cast up in polyester resin, gilded with Rub 'n Buff and weathered with pigmented plaster. Leaving me with my first finished piece.

Completed: 10-Feb-2012

I was very happy with my first attempt but over the coming months I made almost 15 of these and I'd like to think each one was a little better.

The following posts are an amalgamation of various different build ups, logically ordered. Most of it is written as a tutorial.

The Build Up 

Originally posted: 25-Jun-2012

This is one full kit of parts

The main pieces are cast in polyurethane resin, and the dome cast in a clear polyester resin.





First up is pretty standard clean up, removing flash and filling in lil' bubbles.

Occasionally one or two of the tiny thorns won't be properly formed, so they'll need fixing. This is much less of a problem with new kits, since I changed the mould.
You can use bondo, but given how small they are I prefer to use milliput, which is how I sculpted the original.

Also the side of the compass at the top of the mould is prone to sub surface bubbles, you can just paint over them but, for a long lasting paint job, I prefer to open them up and fill them with bondo. 

When cleaning up the seam on the lid don't go overboard sanding it completely smooth, there is supposed to be a linear texture running round the edge, so don't go taking it all off.

The same can be said for building this up in general. Don't go OTT trying to smooth things out like you might on other builds. Any texture you leave looks great when you dry brush it with gold, and just looks a bit off and fake if you try to make it perfectly smooth.