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Welcome to Sculpture Studios. In this video we're creating a sculpture of a samurai warrior. The figure's going to be made by hand, he's going to be one of a kind, and he's going to be created from polystyrene and strengthened with glass fibre. The overall finish at the end will be achieved using a theatrical dry brush technique over all of the detail, and he's going to be made to resemble bronze. We're basing this figure on a small bronze maquette that we have here in the studio, and he's going to be scaled up from around 10 inches tall up to 2 metres tall. He's going to be 1.4 metres in width and 1 metre in depth. We're going to be replicating this model as closely as possible. We're going to be recreating all the armour, every fold in the fabric, and all of the different intricacies, so that everything's a true test of detail. We begin by cutting our large 8 by 4 by 2 foot billets of polystyrene down to manageable size pieces, and working from the floor upwards, we mark out a footprint for the base section. We've taken little peripheral references from all sides, and we've projected these outlines onto our large blocks, and this will give us a rough shape to make our initial cuts. This is going to be a classic case of Aidan working by eye, and working from a reference. It's always more beneficial to work from a 3D model, as opposed to just pictures, as you can get a full 360 degree scope to translate straight up to a larger scale. Once the initial cuts have been made, using our handheld hot wires, Aidan's going to be using a range of tools, from saws, nail brushes, wire brushes, sandpapers and stonemason rifflers, to create the shape and to accentuate all the detail. With this sculpture, the main aspects that we need to capture, is the dynamic nature of the pose, the tension running through the body, and that sense of movement and flow throughout the whole piece. A little samurai warrior, a nice little figure. We're going to carve it life-size, and then fiberglass it, and bronze it up to look exactly like that, if possible. And we've got about two, three weeks to do it, so we'll see how we get on. This is the very beginning stages of it. Konnichiwa Aidan. What are your thoughts so far? I don't know, I keep getting interrupted, don't I? Slam dunk! With polystyrene carving, you really need to commit to the job, and simply go for it. But you also need to remember, that unlike using a medium such as clay, where you can add and take away the material to your heart's content, it's much trickier to add the poly back on, once it's been taken away. But using our PU expanding foam, which is the yellow that you can see here, that we adhere our blocks together with, we can add pieces of polystyrene back on. As well as joining the blocks and adding pieces back on, you can actually carve the PU foam itself, if you feel the sculpture needs a little something extra, without needing to add a big lump. With the carving of the body complete, we're going over with our sticky back tinfoil now, and this protects the polystyrene from the glass fibre and resin that's going on top. Alternatively, if you don't have access to this kind of material, you can also use multiple layers of a PVA glue, and providing that you cover everything, this should provide an effective barrier. When it comes to protecting the polystyrene, the main thing is that every square inch is covered, so that no resin can burn through the poly. When creating a blanket coat of glass fibre, the important thing is that the form underneath is really accentuated in the carving, as the blanket glass fibre is going to somewhat soften the form. All the fibre glassing's finished, and now the lads are going over with our secret concoction of black resin filler 258-B, isn't that right Liam? That's right. Jess has been creating a few moulds with silicon rubber, and using a fast cast material, she's been replicating all these pieces of armour, and will gradually get a build up in layers, until we've achieved all the detail, and until we've got everything spot on. Er, can somebody just give us a hand to stick this on please? Is there anyone at all? That's it, yeah, just hold it nicely, no, around. Sorry. Yeah, sorry, no, no, yeah, around, somewhere around there. Where'd it go? Cheers. For the sash around his waist, what we've actually done is got cloth that we can wrap around him, and then impregnate the fabric with resin afterwards. This will seep into the material, solidify it, and this way we can create a natural looking knot. For some of the detail where parts are being replicated many many times over, we've created little silicon rubber moulds to pour the fast cast plastic into. As for the other areas where parts are only going to be one off, we use a more cost effective plaster of Paris to create what's known as a waste mould. Remember, none of these pieces are bought off the shelf, and everything's carved here in the studio and modelled by hand. We use bonding agents to adhere all the pieces to the main body, and then make sure that everything's nice and neat, and it's all cleaned up on the job afterwards. Once we're happy with all the detailing, the whole sculpture's given a black base paint first, and this provides a nice dark layer to work up the bronze look on top of. Using a dry brush technique, Aidan's just hitting the very top of the detail to give it that textured metal effect. For areas like the samurai shirt, this is going to have a tinge of a coppery bronze green, and other areas are going to be painted red to match the smaller model. This is one of those jobs that's a perfect combination of model making and sculpture. It's a nice bit of carving for Aidan at the start, what he loves doing best, and a real bit of detail work at the end for a beautiful finish. It's also nice to have something to reference the sculpture to. We do work to many concept designs nowadays, where the final product is often a collaboration of ideas or things that have been fused together from various influences, but here we have a model that we're simply replicating and blowing up in scale. Not much room for interpretation, and you can see what it's supposed to be and exactly how it should turn out from day one. It's sometimes nice to have that exact goal in front of you to begin with, and that discipline to follow and to work to. We had a private commission for this job, and in terms of the final resting place, we're actually looking into the possibility of a potential theme park installation, but we'll have to wait and find out if that goes ahead. For now, we hope you enjoyed the carving process and the model making from start to finish, and regardless of where this may or may not end up, it's a brilliant addition to our YouTube channel, and hopefully an interesting project for our viewers. Please feel free to leave any comments below, as they're always appreciated, and hit the subscribe button for our latest videos. You can like Sculpture Studios on Facebook, and follow AtAidanHines on Twitter, and for more of our work, visit SculptureStudios.co.uk Thank you very much for watching.