HOW TO DIY LOW-COST MR. GORILLA PAWNS
First, with a cutter I obtained a rough human figure from a plastic dowel (here on 1 € cent for reference)
Then i made it more precise, but still with a tough, squared, hardcore look. Keep in mind that in this photos Mr.Gorilla looks big and dangerous, but he’s really as big a the head of a Lego. Less then 10 millibananas, to be precise.
The next step was painting it with common construction silicon, letting it dry, then painting it again with a generous dose of it, to make a cylindric soft mould.
Just like this. It’s great because even when the pawn is very small, like in this case, it’s easy to just turn inside out like a sock the soft sylicon, and take out the pawn without damaging the details. When the original pawn is made of plastic, chalk or professional resin it works really well, but with other materials you should beware that the common sylicon could stick.
Then you should try if your mold works. Especially before you buy some expensive resin (that will be necessary later), it’s convenient to use plaster or chalk. You can find it some quick-drying varieties in art stores, costing just at few euros per kg.
Of course, you’ll make mistakes, as you can see. It’s not easy to avoid air bubbles that will ruin the result. You need some practice, and patience.
But once you have several good clones of the original pawn, you can “industrialize” the production with a multiple mold
Like this. You glue them in a row, using a toothpick to keep them together (this will be necessary to have a entrance point from which you’ll pour resin, and another from which air will come out).
Then you’ll bury them horizontally in a nice sylicon grave, until half their size.
When the sylicon is dry, glue another toothpick to the pawns’ shoulders to provide another exit for the air. Paint the sylicon base with a vaselin cream (i used shoe polisher) to prevent the two parts of the mould from sticking together. Then generously cover this grave with more sylicon.
Once it’s all dry, you’ll take out the original pawns and the toothpicks and have a mold in two parts, ready to be filled with modeling resin that will give you interesting results, quickly.
Of course, the pawns included in your copy will be industrially made, more detailed and atoxic.
Still, do me a favour and don’t smoke them… 