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AarowSwift β Sly Cooper
Published: 2004-12-02 09:59:59 +0000 UTC; Views: 4755; Favourites: 31; Downloads: 862
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Description
This is a sculpture of Sly Cooper, the lead character from the excellent "Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus" and "Sly 2 Band of Thieves" videogames: created by Sucker Punch Productions for the PS2. I adore these games and recommend you look up info on them to see if they might be something you'd enjoy playing too.Anyway, this sculpture, like all of my sculptures, was made from "Crayola Model Magic". It's a great sculpting compound, however, it takes a little initial fiddling with to figure out how to use it. I painted it with acrylics then had a friend photograph it with a digital camera. The images needed a little touching up (horrible highlights due to the glossy nature of the paint, blah) but otherwise I think they came out pretty well. The sculpture looks much better in person, despite my awful painting (I really don't get along well with paints and brushes).
Enjoy!
~AJA
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Comments: 22
Thanks. Take note that with access to new camera I will probably replace this series of photos with better quality ones.
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I have mad love for your sculpting skills also if you use Fimo you dont have to paint it!
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Hmmmm...I wonder how a Neyla statue will look like! 
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This is FANTASTIC!! I just got into Sly Cooper a little while ago, and this is bloody brilliant! I've never personally used model magic, so I was going to ask what it's like. Is it harder to use than sculpey? (If you've ever used sculpey...) And is he pretty much solid or has he got tin foil and other bulking stuff inside him?
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Hi there, thanks for the kind words. The Sly Cooper games are great and they have a fantastic art style, don't they?
On Model Magic: I've never used sculpey but I have worked with earth clays; play doe; that oily play clay that never dries; fimo; and paperclay. Model Magic isn't like any of those. In short, it seems very hard to work with at first if you're used to working with clay or anything that is clay-like. Once you figure out the trick, however, you should find it a very easy medium to sculpt with.
The "problem" with Model Magic is its extreme softness. You'll work it into a shape you want, and then when you try to add details, you'll distort your original shape simply by handling it. The solution is to let it dry until it becomes more durable. Model Magic air dries (rather slowly). But the wet material will stick to the dry material easily. I think one of the compound's main ingredients is Elmer's school glue...at least, that's what it smells like
So - model the base shape you want, then set it aside to dry for a few hours. When it feels solid enough to be worked on further, add more wet material to it. Repeating this process is the basics for successfully sculpting in Model Magic.
Here are a few other quirks of the material:
Don't add a lot of water. A little rubbed on your hand to moisten up the surface of the clay is fine, but too much will just cause the material to start breaking down. Dried out Model Magic can't really be revived so keep unused clay out of the air. I wrap mine in plastic wrap. It should stay good for a month or two that way. Unopened packages should be fine for nearly a year.
It air dries. The surface will dry pretty quickly, but beyond that it dries quite slowly, especially if the piece is thick. Once completely dry, it'll still have a little softness to it, sort of like compressed Styrofoam.
It's light weight. This stuff weighs almost nothing, so I usually conceal a rock or some pennies inside the bottom of a sculpture if I'm not going to glue it to a base.
It sticks to itself. Wet clay will bond to itself with just a touch, and wet will bond to dry almost as easily.
That's all I can think of at the moment. I really like Model Magic and feel it's a medium worth exploring.
Now, as for the Sly sculpture, he's solid. I'd probably never use filler with Model Magic unless I was making something huge. I also don't use armatures. Just a few toothpicks here and there to align joins right for balance are all I use with Sly. He's now glued to a wooden base, but he stands beautifully on his own. Model Magic is pretty strong for its weight. I have a much older sculpture of a dinosaur character with long skinny legs, he also stands on his own and his legs didn't need any reinforcing. After I give him his long-overdue new paint job, I'll take some pictures and add him to my gallery.
Anyway, thanks for your interest. I've had requests to sculpt more Sly Cooper characters and I'm seriously considering doing so. It's a great cast from a great series of games.
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whoah, if you put that model on ebay you'd make a fortune!
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Awesome! I love to see one of Dimitri or Neyla ^v^
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holy shit you really hard made that him "hard or easy"????????
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Hi. It wasn't really difficult. I had a lot of source material to look at, including the model in the game (Sly 2) which helped a lot.
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Wow! That's amazing!
You're very talented in sculpting.^-^
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Aside from the painting thing which was mentioned, it looks as though you deleted out the original background in photoshop, which makes the edges look a little sloppy. I think the black is a good call, but try photographing your work on black velvet; it absorbs light well.
Also, if you're into Model Magic, I urge you to try Paperclay; it holds its shape way better and dries much stronger. What's cooler is that you can paint it with watercolors, gouache or gesso. Also... if you do use acrylics, you can cut back on gloss by applying 5 or so THIN layers of gesso first (like, watered down to the consistency of milk) and then add thin layers of acrylic.
*exhales* Was any of that helpful?
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Iβm not sure what you mean by sloppy edges. I painted out my bedroom (the background) very carefully. I guess Iβm just not seeing what youβre seeing. Iβd much rather have photographed it on a cloth backdrop as you recommend, but I simply donβt have any of that. Someday though, Iβll get to put together an actual studio.
Iβve never tried Paperclay and would like to give it a shot at some point. Could you recommend a good online store that carries it? In defense of Model Magic though, Iβve never had trouble with it keeping its shape, but as I said, you have to know how to work with its quirks. I like it because I can get as detailed as I want and I donβt mind its surface texture, which you can paint with any type of media. Again though, it wonβt have the smoothest surface. My biggest complaint is waiting for the material to dry while Iβm working on a model.
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Kudos to you and your model magic skills... I simply cannot control that stuff. Of course, I was using sculpey before I tried it, which is a totally different beast altogether.
As for those links for Paperclay; check out this site:
[link]
I hope you like Paperclay, if you try it. It sooooooooooooo seductive in it's paper-ness. And what I meant about your edges was that I could see the reflected light on your sculpt from your bedroom (on his forearms, on the edges) which didn't match the type of lighting in a black background. It stood out to me right away but I suppose not everyone notices it. And yeah, if you come across some velvet, go for it! I look forward to seeing more work from ya!
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Well, I'm still away for the holidays but now I can get online so I thought I'd add something here. Before I left for the holidays, I figured out what was wrong with Sly's hand. The finger closest to his thumb is curved towards the thumb (hold out your hand, you'll see that from the base of the thumb to the tip of the nearest finger is a straight line). This curve, I believe, is what's making his hand look odd. So, I'm going to break off that finger, replace it with a straight one, and repaint it. This is very easy to do with Model Magic. Also, since I'm going to hold onto this sculpture longer than I thought I would, I'm going to see about getting it a proper photo shoot.
~AJA
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Thanks for the update 
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Holed cows, this image(s) is really huge!
Okay that wasn't very helpfull, so I'll just wait for it to load then say something.
First the praise
Kudos to you for making something like this that can stand up on it's own volition. Lots of people have trouble with that.
The overall form is very good. (I personaly suck at sculpter and couldn't pull off something half this good.)
There's nice attention to detail for the most part
Now the little things that bugged me
This may just be attributed to the lighting you talked about, the painting looks a bit inconsistent.
The sculpter itself looks to have a few small rough spots, mostly around the hat and face.
And his left hand looks kind of strange, but I can't put my finger on it...Hands are hard to render well.
The bottom of his left pant leg seems to be defying gravity.
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Oh, by the way, if you think that image is huge, check out my "Every RPG Needs an Overworld" image.
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Well, thanks.
As for the painting being inconsistent, the rough spots are basically due to the porous nature of the modeling compound. Think of something that dries to the consistency of really solid Styrofoam. Other than that, I make no claims to being a great painter. As for the detail, that was dictated by the original character design. This is effectively 3D fan art with an attempt to replicate the established look as closely as possible. Actually...the smooth spots are probably my Photoshopping out the hideous spotlight glares, which were all over the place, and some digital camera artifacts.
His left hand looks fine...if viewed from the top or bottom and most other angles. But certain angles really do make it look kinda' funky. Mostly I feel his thumb doesn't look like a thumb if seen from the front...like in the first photo unfortunately.
As for his gravity defying pant leg, well ah, he's not wearing pants. Those are tufts of fur growing out over his boots and the source material I used for the sculpture showed them as curving to the sides.
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