Looking for information on how to create or modify O scale figures. Articles, etc. or better yet, someone that can custom make figures for me.
Looking to create figures that resemble some reality TV stars for scenes on my layout. Considering the size body type and clothing probably more important than actual facial features - excepts for beards .
Any help or info appreciated. Thanks
Other than using wood, clay or some other carvable substance, I don't know how you'd do it. It would be difficult to make something that small that truly resembles a specific personality.
I make "generic" figures out of hot glue. There's 2 ways I've had success with. The best looking ones I made were done by pressing commercially made figures into Sculpey oven bake clay to make a pair of molds (front and back). I bake the clay and when it cools I fill the molds with hot glue. It's difficult to remove the "glue people" without damaging the mold once the clay gets baked. Often bits of clay come off onto the molded glue figure and also there's always excess glue where you don't want it. But hot glue is soft and easy to trim. I can also pull it very hard and stretch it trying to release it from the clay and it always snaps back to the shape I molded it to be. After trimming I hot glue the 2 halves together and then paint them. Acrylics, enamels, just about anything works.
The other way I make people, or "glueples" as I call them, is to squeeze the hot glue out of the gun onto a sheet of tempered glass (my desk top) in the shape of body parts. This works better for sitters then it does for standers. 2 short lines of glue become legs. A large drop becomes a head. (I put these guys and gals on my Disneyland layout so shorts and t-shirts are about all they ever wear.) When they all cool, I scrape them off the glass with a #11 blade and assemble and paint as desired.
If you took the mold process a step further, you could create flexible resin molds and make the figures out of the oven bake clay instead of glue. You could also invest in a vaccuform machine. No matter how you do it you have to have a great original to get great copies to customize.
Becky
Trains, trains, wonderful trains. The more you get, the more you toot!
Don't you DARE model the "Real Housewives of New Jersey"!
The old fashioned way to make them is to find someone who sculpts to make them out of a clay or plastic compound.
The modern way to make custom figures is to have somebody digitally sculpt them using computer programs, then have them produced by a 3D printer.
Watch my videos on-line at https://www.youtube.com/user/AndrewNeilFalconer
Actually, the old fashioned way was (and still is) to get your hands on generic styrene figures (Plasticville, Bachman, and the company who made the basic circus crowd figures), a jewelers saw, some jewelers files, a razor blade, very fine sand paper, some styrene solvent, some squadron green putty, and sheets of .005 and .010 styrene and play mad surgeon.
Arms, legs, torso, and heads are easily repositioned and fused in place. Dresses, coats, and other garments are easily rough cut out of .005 styrene and then, with a single drop of solvent draped over the figure. Body fat, long dresses, etc. can be built up using squadron green putty in a matrix of .010 styrene hoops rough cut using a razor blade
This is the sort of thing you can do
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