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Hello good people!

Can anyone recommend a UK based casting company that would cast some of my own head sculpts for my personal use? Lately I've been sculpting some bits that would be compatible with my Imperial Guard - heads, torsos and legs so far, just to see what my skill level is but having purchased some rubber tipped sculpting tools recently I'm really starting to see a difference in what I can do than when I was using my old tools, especially when it comes to surface textures!

Now, there are some absolutely wonderful sculptors here on Dakka and some stuff just blows me away, no way could I hope to be anywhere near as good, but I've sculpted a IG head I'm pretty pleased with and would like to get it reproduced 20 or 30 times if the price was reasonable. Resin would be preferable but I suppose it would depend on the caster's capabilities and what would be most practical. I've done some home casting myself, small imprints and open casts and the like, but I think this would be a bit beyond me.

But anyway I have a pic, its a bit blurry I'm afraid, I've never been intimate with the functions of my camera.



Trust me though it does look better in real life, its still a work in progress, there'll be targeting gubbins on the left side of the helmet and I've still to finish up the back side, also the respirator looks slightly off to me and puffier than in real life which I think I'll have to fix. Yeah I know, gasmask guard, how original, but not having to sculpt a facial expression or five means it can be used over all of a platoon for every single guardsman. The design was actually influenced by an old Rogue Trader era trooper that I really loved from back in the day.

So guys if anyone can recommend a company they've used or know of I'd really appreciate your help and advice

Cheers!

Edit: took some slightly better pics but the light here is still pish-poor!

Well I don't know about companies but I make moulds of my own sculpts and for something like a head, it really is very simplistic to make a two part mould and looking at your sculpt (very nice by the way) I don't see any problems with undercuts or anything like that.

The way I would do it, would be to have a pour channel cut through the mould next to the head, come up to the head from underneath and then an air channel up from the neck. This way the resin pushes the air out ahead of it, up through the model part and reduces bubbles but really a good smack with your hand, and maybe a squeeze should be fine. You can try injecting the resin into the mould using a syringe, I only tried this technique recently and found it very useful.

Then you can cast several heads and make another mould of your resin casts to speed things up if you want to.

I can just teach you how if ya like.

 Gogsnik wrote:
Well I don't know about companies but I make moulds of my own sculpts and for something like a head, it really is very simplistic to make a two part mould and looking at your sculpt (very nice by the way) I don't see any problems with undercuts or anything like that.

The way I would do it, would be to have a pour channel cut through the mould next to the head, come up to the head from underneath and then an air channel up from the neck. This way the resin pushes the air out ahead of it, up through the model part and reduces bubbles but really a good smack with your hand, and maybe a squeeze should be fine. You can try injecting the resin into the mould using a syringe, I only tried this technique recently and found it very useful.

Then you can cast several heads and make another mould of your resin casts to speed things up if you want to.

This. That's what I did.