Mold-making and casting step-by-step THE COSMONAUT UNDEAD

First sketching out ideas and a concept painting.Sculpting the pieces with Sculpey, I fire them and continue to sculpt the hardened pieces - sanding and gessoing to fill in small crevices until the surface is fairly smooth. I sculpted and fired the pieces separately for ease of sanding and because I didn't have a mold plan yet. After attaching the head and arms by  "gluing" with more Sculpey - spraying gesso and giving it a final sanding pass. The surface is fairly rough but since this is my first mold I'm not worrying too much, I'll clean the flash and bumps on the final if need be.

I've seen some truly inspiring designs in the urban vinyl community plus some drool-inducing stuff from ThreeAToys sooooooo, decided to try to translate my own character design into a physical sculpture and learn a bit about making my own vinyl figure in the process.

As a concept artist I've always wanted to do maquette work so this is a bit of a jumpstart - doing a physical sculpture and taking it a step further by creating a reusable mold and casting it in hard plastic/vinyl. 

Starting conservatively, I decided to go with a pretty smooth cartoony cosmonaut character. I used Sculpey Original recipe 12 herbs and spices ( next time I'm going to use Premo which is firmer, original Sculpey gets pretty tacky when warm and conditioned).

I'm making the mold with "Oomoo 30" silicone rubber and Smooth-On hard white plastic casting material.

So.. I'm going to do a step-by-step of this project and future mold and casts.. Warts and all.

-Luke