A new trend that has gradually made its way into popularity is the trend of mini-figures - history - They are small, cute and inexpensive. They keep children happy and the mystery element allows for selling many units and keeps people coming back for more. Mini figures can be solid lumps of plastic or have limited articulation. One of the most famous examples of mini figures are the lego figures which are 1 1/2 inches and have articulated shoulders, heads and legs.
After some searching I found no tutorials on how to make minifigures so my initial thought was to sculpt by hand. I used air dry clay as one test and polymer as another. The airdry has a wire armiture to stop the neck snapping so easily.
Sculpting by hand would take hours of work and would be inefficident for mass production. Also the pieces art as durable in air dry clay and thus are not the best for children. I then realised that all dolls are made from moulds so I decided to make my own. Monster high dolls use 3 types of doll mould to achieve their line. The regular the little sister and the adult. Small adjustments like fins and ears are changed depending on the doll but the bases stay the same.
I decided to follow and only make 2 moulds out of the 2 part silicone mould putty. It set within half an hour and after I was able to put the clay into it and popped out a mini figure base. as you can see it had rough edges so that needed to be sanded and then painted with a base coat of white to allow for an even painting surface
these are two of my fully painted prototype figures. I really like the eye shape on both figures as well as the over all look of the figures. I feel like they look really unique compared to other mini figures on the market. in the future I would improve on how even the figures are sculpt wise so they would be smoother and also how ever the paint job was.
I also wanted to experiment with resin. I've heard resin has a plastic like quality and tho it is more expensive compared to clays I felt like it would be interesting to have a clear version of one of my characters with stars in it to reference the celestial circus. I thought it would be a cool figure to sell with the playset as a limited edition item. The resin was extremely hard to use and even using the exact measurements of the catalyst to base the mixture took 3 days to set and ended up being sticky on the outside. I covered it in cornflower to make it easier to handle however over the period of 2 weeks it has begun to bubble and smell even though it was sealed. this may be due to a faulty batch as my second set never hardened at all even with more catalyst. I would consider trying this again with a new batch as I loved the effect especially when a light is placed underneath it.
In conclusion, I am very happy with the outcome of the figures. In the future I'd like to add more varieties of the figures so I can include a mould of the mermaid character Nio-mee. I also think the way they stand could be improved possibly with small peg holes and peg-shaped stands that look alot like a penny so theyre small but help with rougher play; though the figures stand they are rather easy to knock over so I hope to improve upon that aspect.
Here are some mock ups I made of the other colour palettes of the characters. I took a picture of the base figure painted white and drew over them digitally. In the future I hope to create more of these figures using the styles I didn't make.