Is that the Six Million Dollar Man's boss?

Yes it is! It's Oscar Goldman! Head of OSI. He was sculpted in the same fashion as the first two heads. Beginning with a core of aluminum foil and working outward with translucent Sculpey. I feel better and better about each heads likeness. What sets Oscar off is his handmade glasses.

 Raw Sculpt (Pre-ears/Hair)

They are soldered together from .020 guage Copper wire and set him off perfectly. I do have to make on final paint pass over him to just tweak his skin tone and hair, and I need to fabircate the lenses for his glasses, but I think this one is a winner!

The Six Million Dollar Sculpt PART 2

In spite of all the sanding you do when you're working with the now baked Sculpey, you are bound to miss lots of little nubs and imperfections present in the sculpt. Therefore it is helpful to shoot a coat of primer over the head in order to highlight these flaws.

I like to start with a simple coat of a single color. I airbrush a coat of Tamiya Flat Flesh acrylic. Once it is dry you can then examine the surface. 

Using progressively finer grained sandpaper I work down the surfaces to be nice and smooth. Meanwhile alternating with my Dremel tool using grinding bits and sanding wheels to get in the nooks and cranny's and remove burrs left over from sculpting. Also I take this opportunity to sharpen any areas like the edges of lips and eyelids. 

 Once the sculpt has been sanded down to my satisfaction I use a pad of synthetic steel wool to burnish the surface smooth as possible and then a cloth, usually old t-shirt material, to finally polish the surface of the head.

It is important to wash your hands frequently in these final stages so as not to have any grease from your hands present on the Sculpey, this can cause paint adhesion problems later on.

Once satisfied with the smoothness I mix together the basic flesh tones that I am looking for and airbrush first a light overall flesh tone, then a highlighting one. The highlights go on the elevated surfaces of the face, bridge of the nose, forehead, chin, cheekbones etc. The figure at this point looks very pale and lifeless but toning the skin will come later.

Next I mix for brush painting a dark brown/red color to sink into the deep parts of the face- eyelids, inner ears, nostrils, lips, and deep skin folds.

I also begin painting in the eyes. I use Model Master Acrylic sand for the whites of the eyes since the whites are REALLY off white. I then apply the colored parts of the eye by making the dark ring around the iris, then the iris color, finally the pupil.
I decided not to paint a tiny white catch light on this eye and instead sealed them up with a heavy coat of gloss clear. This gives them a much better, more realistic look.

 The lips are picked out in a darker flesh color, but not in broad flat tones the darker color is used to paint in ridges vertically along the length of the lips. I also add in the eyebrows at this stage. It's beginning to look more and more human.

Once the detail brush painting is done, its time to bust the airbrush back out. This time I mix a very thins blend of gloss clear orange and gloss clear red.
 This will be used as a filter to spray over the surface and darken the skin as one see's fit, much like applying a spray tan. This also helps to smooth and blend together the brush painted detailing.

The final thing to be added in is Steve's hair. It is based in a lightened brown tone. Once that dries, the hair is brushed with golden yellow to highlight the strands and then I bring back the sand color to add some high points here and there throughout the head. Finally a dark brown is brought back in as a wash to add into some of the crevasses and deepen the hair.

All in all I think the sculpt turned out pretty damn good and the paint came out great. Now he just needs a body and some clothing. There will definitely be more to come!

Where am I gonna find a blue leisure suit in 1/6th scale?

The Six Million Dollar Sculpt

After sculpting my own head and working out the trial and error of the process, I busted out the Sculpey once more in order to work on a famous head. I wanted mostly to see if the first sculpt was actual skill or lightning in a bottle.

I chose a fairly benign subject to test it out on, Lee Majors as Steve Austin the Six Million Dollar Man.

I began with a working drawing, which while it may not look exactly like him, functions as a blueprint. This allows me to breakdown all the planes of his face and the major surfaces and shapes, well before scupting them. I worked from photographs and DVD stills to generate this drawing.

I also utilized copious amounts of photographs from any which angle I could get, in order to fully realize his facial features.  

 The entire head is sculpted in Translucent Sculpey. i find it works much more smoothly and bakes much more easily than standard white. Although there are still some things I would prefer to use the white for.

 During the initial sculpting the head is made with a core of Aluminum foil rolled into a roughly head shaped ball. This not only uses less sculpey, but makes it more firm and reduces the baking time.

The eyeballs are formed by first plugging two 4 mm metal craft beads into the eye sockets then sculpting the lids around them. 4 mm is a standard reference size for human eyeballs in 1/6th scale which is the size in which this head was sculpted.

When it came time to sculpt the hair I was lucky enough to have been watching the show on TV so I got pretty good looks at his hair and the way it lays over his head as I was sculpting.

 Details like eyebrows, fine eye wrinkles, forehead creasing sideburns and hair strands were left till just before I shoved him into the oven. Once hardened and left to sit overnight I sanded down the entire surface and polished it as smooth as possible to prep it for painting.

PAINTING COMING UP IN THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR SCULPT PART 2!