Making Talos Awakes – Part 18 of 20
Mould making
We decided to make jacket moulds – a similar technique to Ray’s – for moulding the two halves of the figure of Talos in Talos Awakes. We made rubber moulds with fiberglass jackets as these are lighter and more resilient than plaster.
The moulds were made so that they could be positioned and clamped onto our gimbal, then spun in multiple directions to allow the wax to fill all of the detail.
Wax work
With a degree of trial and error we gauged the optimum amount of wax that would be needed for a hollow cast, and the optimum temperature for the wax. The molten wax was poured into the moulds, the feed was then sealed with a rubber plug and the waxes carefully spun until they had set and begun to cool.
After the waxes are fully set and taken out of the mould, we do a thorough inspection. If the cast is good we open up the waxes inside the waist line to gauge the thickness and adjust if required.
Surface seams from where the two halves of the mould meet are then painstakingly removed with extreme care to retain all the original surface detail and texture of the sculpture. Following this, any small imperfections in the wax casting are filled using a soft sculpting wax and dressed to match the original texture.
Treeing for casting
The next stage is to prepare the wax models for casting. This is a process called spruing. You create a structure vaguely resembling a tree that provides entry and exit paths. These allow molten metal to flow in while providing vents for the air to escape. With the models being rather un-uniform shapes it took some planning to figure out where to position these pathways.
The legs of Talos were quite straight forward. There is a big entry point for the metal on the inside of wax and also a single tie between the knee he will be kneeling on and the flat down foot, these areas are both practically invisible when the sculpture is assembled which allows us to use a big sprue to connect them. Only two sprues were required to allow the air to escape. One positioned on the top of the knee and one on the highest point of the underside of his foot.
His torso was a lot more time consuming in assembly. We start with the same style of metal entry point and one additional tie onto the alignment bar (the rectangular bar sticking out from the inside of his torso). After these were attached he could be delicately balanced and welded on top of the funnel. For additional metal flow and structural security we applied some further sprues with tapered ends onto his elbows. Now we needed to provide adequate air flow from his hands. With his left hand having all fingers slightly spread they have to be individually tied to a single air riser. We had to make sure to attach these sprues just on the inside of his finger tips to avoid any possibility of losing the detail of the finger nails. Fortunately his right hand acts like a single digit, enabling one vent to provide enough of an escape point for the air.
This setup lets us preserve as much detail as possible, while proving to cast successfully.
These sculptures were hand made by Raven Armoury in association with The Ray & Diana Harryhausen Foundation.
Based on effects characters created by Ray Harryhausen for a Charles H. Schneer Production.
TM & © Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
