During the sculpting stages I had the maquette to work from, by measuring from a centre line and the individual features I enlarged them by three to achieve the desired size of Ponyo.
Head
Due to the size of the head being unusually proportioned I initially underestimated how much clay was needed until I had emptied two pots of monster clay onto the armature and realised there was not much left. However I did overcome this by padding the armature out more with tinfoil. Because Ponyo doesn't have a normal human head there are curves in different places and so when sculpting these it was difficult to determine if it was the right angle.
When sculpting the texture I used lot of reference images of children's skin texture as well as looking at my own to compare. This helped a lot to get the right level of detail for example the pores, lines and lip creases.
Foot
When sculpting the foot I was quite confident using a pre drawn stencil of the foot that I made to make sure that the toes were exact so I could sculpt in between the lines without always relying on measurements. I also only needed to sculpt just one foot as they are both identical.
Creating the texture was the most challenging yet rewarding process of sculpting the foot, I had learnt a technique while watching a face skin texture tutorial that was initially used for goose bumps but found that if I adapted it slightly that it would work for a frog skin texture all over the foot. Using a few different thicknesses of needles I created holes at an angle which made a slight lip, then made a monster clay slip using small pieces of monster clay and lighter fluid and brushing that over the holes in the other direction it creates a bumpy effect by getting caught in the lip of the holes.
Arms
The arms were very similar to the foot however they needed to be sculpted onto the frame as they are holding a bucket. I found it quite challenging to keep the arms in place in the correct position without allowing the bucket to fall. I came across some hurdles on the way as the arms managed to fall apart a few times due to the heat and the sun, this was my mistake however as I didn't use and armature all the way from the upper arm the the fingers which made the wrist joint the most weak component. With many trips to the fridge I was able to work on the arms whilst keeping them cool and hard at the same time.
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