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I haven’t done the finishing touches yet, but I can always do them later. I’m really happy with how this turned out. I didn’t really ration my time well, though. I was rushing a ton at the end. I even got out a huge fan to dry my foundation quickly so I could start putting the arm on it earlier. I had a lot to do this day, way more than I wanted. I thought putting it all together would be easy, but it was far from it. I found that the hand extended way farther than I thought it would, but I made a small adjustment to how the fingers would be posed. I failed to get a picture of it, but I also had to make some last minute adjustments to the arm before attaching. It was going higher than I wanted, even with the diagonal cut, which mad it so that the finger could not extend below the foundation like I wanted. I changed the cut up a bit and lower the wrist closer to the background. I had some space to fill at the top left, and I intended to do grass. However, this proved to be too difficult for me so I scrapped the idea and did something else. The grass was meant to symbolize sports, more specifically soccer, because they were and are a huge part of my life. I then had an epiphany and thought of using the imprint of my actual soccer cleat that I was wearing when I broke my arm. I slathered slip all over the area and then stamped my cleat on it. That was a disaster. The imprint didn't stay at all. Maybe I should have waited for the slip to dry a bit before? I didn't have much time, though. So I went with plan B. This option is way worse looking than I had imagined. I am extremely happy with the idea, but I feel the execution is horrible. I very much dislike how it looks. I grabbed some soft clay and rolled it out. I probably should have made it thinner, but i g

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Here I’ve put everything on the foundation in the places I wanted. I needed to have some supports so that it wouldn’t fall apart while drying, but I think the structural integrity will hold after it dries.

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I had a ton of trouble doing this again. I don’t know why, but I am incredibly bad at rolling out a slab with the dimensions I want. I completely messed up my very first foundation, and I did it again with my first attempt at this one. I was successful eventually, though, and I am content with how it turned out. I feel confident this will not break.

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These two fingers are intended to be different from the other three. The ring and pinky finger will be robotic to match the theme I am going for. I cut up the finger into several parts and I made the joints look like robot equivalents. I am also very happy with how these turned out. I matched a reference image I found which was exactly what I was looking for.

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Using the method Mr. Stout taught me, I was able to make serviceable fingers. They actually look like fingers more or less which is great. The nail was a bit more tricky than I thought because I didn't have the exact right tool, but I made do with what I had. I am very happy with how these two turned out.

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Another image of the seam forming between the rails and the slab. This only seems to occur at the corners which leads me to believe that the only reason this is happening is because of the movement. Every time the piece is moved, the corners bend upwards slightly, and in the same exact spot is where the cracks form. I personally am not devastated by needing to redo this part. I think my first background was terrible anyway so now I have a chance to create a new one where I will feel more confident about it staying together.

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This is a picture of one of the corners of my background. This corner is not made up of the rails, but the slab. One day I noticed a sizable crack around the corner. The entire corner could be removed if the crack continued. I decided to take matters into my own hands and continue the crack to remove the corner. I then attempted to reconnect the corner with the rest of the slab using slip. I scored each piece and applied the slip. Unfortunately, the slab is fairly thin so there was not much surface area for the pieces to attached to each other. But, they did connect and stayed connected for multiple days. However, after being moved a few times, the corner started to develop another, but much smaller, crack. I feel like this will be a relatively simple fix, but I am concerned for the longevity of this area.

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Another place where the seam between the rails did not hold up after constant movement.

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This is a closer look at the seam between two rails. They looked perfect for a week after I attached them, but now they are broken. I think this may be mostly due to the foundation constantly being moved. I don't have much space in my setup so I move my pieces temporarily and then move them back. This foundation was the main piece that was moved almost every single day.

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I think I now want to redo my entire foundation. As seen here, there are cracks at the points where the rails were joined. Even besides that, I don't think this is a very good background in general. It is just barely 12" and very thin. I struggled a lot to make this slab and the rails, and it shows. I feel like now, being more experienced, I can do a much better job.

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Here you can see that the corner is slightly bent upwards. I know this can very easily be fixed, but when I do so, the seam between the slab and the rail opens. It becomes very noticeable. I have even reapplied slip to these cracks, but it always opened again.

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I have begun to take on the challenge of the hand. I had watched a few videos on it, but they always went so quickly and/or used tools I did not have access to nor did I know how to use. Mr. Stout has his beginner method so I am doing that. I made a wedge, like a slice of a cheese wheel to start. I had to make it big enough and thick enough to be bigger than my whole hand. It’s much easier to carve away than to add clay. When I was satisfied with the wedge, which took awhile, I traced my hand. I don't care that the edges of the wedge look bad because I am not using the very edges anyway. I am more tracing for proportions rather than shape. I can fix that all later. I then cut straight down on the tracing and got this hand. It is extremely block-like and thick, but it’s a good start. I think it will look good after I make things more rounded and start to work on the details. After or during that, I will need to pose the hand in a particular way. The palm won't be contorted that much, but the fingers will be very bent. Not like a fist, but similar. They are supposed to be kind of clawing at the background when it is finished.

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I have finally succeeded in creating the arm and putting the robot parts inside. I forgot to take pictures for awhile, but it wasn’t anything interesting. I spent probably 3 or 4 days just hollowing out the arm. There was so much more clay than I anticipated. In addition, I needed to carve out enough space to fit the robot parts. I ended up needing to both reduce the size of the robot parts and hollow out the arm even more. I cut out small windows to look into the arm so that the robot parts will be visible. I was careful to make sure there were no very thick parts where the rods were touching the arm, so I think it’ll be ok. I had to even hollow out some of the very thin rods, but I was able to have them keep their shape and size. The robot parts look just ok right now, but after they’re painted and everything I think it’ll look really good. It’s hard to convey a metal rod with clay. How do you convey something that has no texture and have it look different form everything else? After getting the arm all put together, I made a diagonal cut on the bottom. This is where the arm will attach to the background. I want the arm to kind of come out of the background. This is partially just to hide the “severed” part of the arm.

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I intend to have robot parts in the arm that resemble the arm from Terminator. They look like pistons with a smaller cylinder going into a larger cylinder. Luckily I only intend to have part of this visible so I can take a few shortcuts while keeping it looking nice. Unfortunately I am having a lot of trouble with this task. I thought rolling out cylinders of various sizes and lengths would be easy, but it is not. It’s hard to keep consistent sizes while keeping it from become an oval. I have already failed to make suitable rods a ton of times. I am not even exactly sure how many rods I need, but I am going to start with 3, 2 of which are made of two parts. I predict this will take a few days to get right.

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Here is where I started to get the general shape of the arm. it took a very long time to get the correct size cylinder. It was much more clay than I originally thought. I kept having to add more and more clay to the piece I was using so that the arm would be big enough. I want it to be a left arm so I shaped it as such with the muscles and indent for the inside of the elbow on the correct side. It mostly just looks like a stump, but I have some more shaping to do. I also need to hollow it out which shouldn’t be too bad. I hope it maintains its shape after it’s hollowed out.

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This day I had rolled out my last long rail and I began connecting the rails to the slab with slip. Everything fit well, but some of the rails weren't the same height. I used one of the tools to make them all the same and I started to smooth the sides. They still look a bit wavy so I need to fix the rails a bit. Other than that, my foundation is complete.

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This day I had finished rolling out my slab and making some rails. I still needed to smooth out my slab and rails, and I still needed to make another rail. My previous long rails were too short and messy so I had to redo them, but I only had enough clay for one rail at the time.