Carving the Weapons and Items

The next hurtle that I was interested in was to find a way to sculpt all of the cool weapons that the characters would be holding.

I had a problem. Sculpy clay, by its nature, is very "plaster-like" when hardened and was brittle. It was not able to stand up to being sculpted and hardened to less than 1/8" thickness and I broke several of the weapons in my first attempts before I realized that I could not use Sculpy.

I thought of shaping metals or plastics... and eventually found the best material. Simple casting resin. The stuff you get at a craft store and use to make stupid paperweights with bugs or coins in them. I poured out cakes of the resin and found that the hardened blocks could be ground and polished with a dremel tool and sandpaper with ease, yet was sturdy enough to hold up to the 1/8" thickness I desired. *Plus the end result were these "clear-plastic" looking swords and weapons, which I could sculpt clay hands onto to make the molds.

I apologize for the bad quality of some of the images, as my camera found it hard to auto-focus on the clear weapons. The focus laser was passing right through them.