Eye forms for Silicone Busts

In our most recent tutorial we covered the process of making eye forms in resin. This is an important step in creating silicone busts or prop heads with open eyes. We started with a glass alligator eye. We molded the eye form with PlatSil FS-20. FS-20 was chosen for speed as it is a 25 minute demold. The original Eye form was released with Eject-it 33. We then cast TC-800 casting resin into the mold to produce hard plastic eye forms that could be embedded in our Monster Clay sculpture.

The Monster Clay sculpt was originally poured from a PlatSil Gel-25 lifecast. For more about silicone lifecasting visit our advanced lifecasting video page. I used Cutting Edge tools to sculpt the majority of the texture.

I followed Stuart Bray's Reptilian texture video to re-sculpt the lifecast.

 With the eye forms in place, the Monster Clay sculpture was molded. This was a quick mold for just 2 or 3 casts so we used Hydrocal instead of resin. The resulting Hydrocal mold now has the negative eye form shape allowing the eyeforms to be re-inserted during the casting process.

Once the Gel-10 skin was cast, PolyFoam F-5 was poured behind the skin. When demolded the eyeforms stayed with the silicone head. The eye forms can now be popped out and the nice, glass eyes inserted after painting. We painted our reptillian head with more Gel-10 (pigmented with silicone pigments) thinned with Naptha.

If the eye forms are properly oriented in the mold, the resulting sockets allow the glass or acrylic eyes to have proper placement in the finished cast. Here's a video of the eye form process: