Cait Sith Moogle Mount - Play Arts. My first steps on "custom" or handmade figures

Posted in Custom Workstation

Hello, I'm a big fan of Final Fantasy VII videogame since I started playing it on early 1997.
My very first figure was a Bandai extra knights Cloud Strife, that started to make me to buy figures to reach a insane amount today.
I allways had the same idea in mind, why all the collections miss some of the characters and since has passed so many time I decided to do the ones I must want myself.
I registered the page looking for ideas to see how to do better my custom figures to complete my collection, since I've seen many nice works.
All my respects to all and hope you can give me some tips and enjoy the same I'm doing making those.

To start I draw the model from the figure as the artist did and made a frontal view to work without prespective.



After that I did some lines to the drawing to think how to create a 3D volume to that shape and did this bones in clay.



I attached the bones to the silouethe to start filling with clay and give the volume.



With some patience I ended with half of the body.



After dry I started the back, same way with the "bones"



With the legs was a total pain, really hard to do a mirror of a piece.



The problem is that clay breaks really easy and took me many tries to rescue something, sanding the shape to give a better look was really hard for me, and I don't have more than my hands and a little cutter and a toothpick to do the details. Hope someone can tell what tools should I get to model better.

After some hours of trials and failures I did the shape of the ears and the chest hair, after that I used a green stuff "paint" that a friend told me to work with. It helped a bit to cover some defects, and also helps with making it a bit more strong for sanding.



Now I'm working on the hands and the wings.