Silicon test

I have done a couple of silicon tests to make sure the moulds work and also to work out how to correctly do the silicon as last time I cast a puppet in silicon it didn't work. This could have been because I didn't mix it properly or I added in too much oil paint.

My clear silicon tests worked perfectly. One of the moulds didn't fill the whole way when I poured it in from the end, I think this is because the silicon is really thick and didn't run down into the hand and instead just got blocked in the pouring hole that I made. The second mould, however, worked really well. This one I just filled each half until they were slightly too full and then just squeezed them together. The silicon dried really quickly and this silicon hand was evenly filled out. The only problem with this one was that it was quite bubbly but I think the bubbles won't be too noticeable when the silicon is coloured. 

I also tried a coloured one where I mixed oil paints into the silicon. According to the guys at Animation Toolkit, the oil paints should be about 10% of the amount of silicon so I had to mix a really tiny amount of oil paint into it. What I found with this was that the silicon got very gloopy and set really quickly which meant it didn't pour as well as the clear silicon and I thought I had done it wrong, but it set just the same as the clear silicon so I think it will work fine as long as I pour it really quickly into the moulds.