How to Create a Designer Toy - Part 1 of 2

1. Introduction: Hello. In this class, I will show you the whole process of creating a designer toy sculpture. I will show you how I sketch my character and what I have in mind when I'm designing a character that will be molded and cast it to create reproductions. I will also show you the whole process of sculpting the head, the body, and the accessories. Finally, I'll show you how I paint it. By the end of the class, you'll know everything you need to know to create your own designer toy. If you're interested in making reproductions of your toy in partner of this class, I will show you how to create the mold and cast your toy using resin. Join me and let's start making sculptures. 2. Supplies and Class Project: This is a list of supplies you will need to follow this class. I will provide this as a PDF so also you can download it. For sculpting, you'd need; wire, aluminum foil paper, polymer clay, or any other type of clay that you want to use for sculpting, I will be using Super Sculpey for this class. Clay modeling tools, you can buy a basic set and you can also use other tools for sculpting and creating textures like color shapers, paper clips, wire sponges, pens, and whatever you can come up with. Rubbing alcohol, it can be 99 percent or 70 percent. An old soft brush for using the alcohol with, and an optional roller pin. For baking it, you would need a toaster oven depending on the clay you are using. Some are air dry clays and they don't need an oven. Depending on what clay you're using, there's safety precautions you need to follow and you can't use the oven you have at home. Please read your instructions carefully, and you will need a baking sheet. For sketching, you need a paper, pencil, eraser, or whatever you prefer to sketch with. For preparing the surface and fixing imperfections, you need soft sounding paper or moto tool with different bits, I'm using a Dremel rotary tool. This is optional. For painting, I like to use nitrile gloves and I'm using acrylic paints. You need white or black acrylic paints for the base coat and old flat acrylic brush in difference sizes if you're following my same technique, don't use expensive ones because they're going to get ruined if you use a dry brush technique. If you want to paint just solid colors, you'll just need one, that's all for the base color, and then you need round brushes that are good in different sizes. Those ones won't suffer so much damage because you're not using them as a dry brush. Fine number zero round brush for adding details, paper towels and water-based acrylic varnish, if you want to varnish after you're done. I use Liquitex Satin Varnish. The varnish, you just add a very thin layer at the end with a brush. If you want to add eyes that are not made of clay, you can buy clear glass cabochon and paint them yourself as I did, or you combine glass eyes or doll eyes. If you look online, there's a bunch of different options. For the class project, I would like to see what toy idea you come up with. It would be great to see the complete toy, but it can also be just the sketches. I'll be choosing from all the project entries during October 2017, and somebody will get a reproduction of this toy, something very similar to it, so start sharing with me because I love seeing what you create. If you have any questions, please post them in the discussion area of the class. If you post them in your projects, sometimes I don't see them as past, so make sure you post them there. 3. Sketching and Composition: The first thing we need to start designing our toy is to have an idea and create a sketch. First, I'm going to show you how mold works in case you're going to make a mold of your toy, because you have to have this in mind while designing. This is the mold area, and this is your figure. Liquid resin will come from the top, so it will start filling up like this. If you create a shape like the nose like these it will start filling out like this, and the liquid will start going up. There won't be a lot of bubbles entrapped, they will be able to go out like this. That's okay to do. But if you create a figure like this say it's elephant, this is what's called an undercut. It means that the liquid will start going up like this, but here the bubbles won't be able to escape through here. The bubbles will start going up and you'll end up with a huge bubble up here. To release that air bubble you would need a vent here. You will need to puncture your mold to create an airvent right here which makes it more complicated, and you will still might have air bubbles being trapped. The same thing with the bottom. You can make little ears or horns like this, and the air will escape this ear to the top. But if you create something with a very thin opening, air will be trapped on the bottom because it won't have a place to escape. Same thing with horns or antlers where it's very complicated, you'll end up with a lot of little bubbles everywhere. You have to think about that when you're designing your toy Same thing with the arms, if it's something like these then you'll probably end up with big bubbles at the end. When I'm designing something, for a molding I make arms like this so I won't have so much struggle. I'm going to plan my character, I will start with a very loose sketch. This does not have to be pretty, it just has to guide you when you're building your toy. Something you're making, a bear, so I'll make the head, and since I'm going to mold it I'm going to make the ears wide enough for it to not have bubbles there. I'll make the big eyes here. I think it will have a big nose. I'm just indicating some shapes here so I know what I'm going to do. This is going to be the snout, that's going to be raised. Please be creative and don't copy exactly what I do with my toy. It's so-called to be able to bring your creations to life, and have them in your hand, so make something that inspires you and you love. You can make animals, you can make monsters, you can make objects, plants, whatever you want. I would love to see all these come to life in the Project Gallery. When I'm designing the hands I'm thinking about the mold thing, and not making deep undercuts. I'm adding little details. Little details is what brings the character to life. I want to add some clothes to this guy, maybe give him a chemono. It's also great when you make up a story in your head, because then the character has a reason to be dressed like these, or be in a certain pose, or have something in its hand. Again, since we're making a one-piece mold it makes it a bit more limited in what we can do. If you're not making a mold you can just go crazy and create whatever you want. You can go to my website and see the big warrior toy I created and that one was not for mold making, so it has it's extremities or separated on everything. In my sketch I don't want to make it a very perfect, but I do want to make some areas darker so it starts to pop out and I start to see if it's working or not. After I have my solid shape and cloth I start thinking about what details I can add with the pen, so here, I'm drawing some basic flowers for the chemono. The sketch will be my guide during the whole process, so it's very handy thinking about these things beforehand. But also don't make it restrict you. It's very different drawing on a piece of paper than creating a 3D object. If you see something's not working or it's very hard to make, just change itt This is your guide but don't let it restrict you. You could create the four views of the toy, like how it will look on the sides on the back and that's usually how it goes if your manufacturing your toy with a company. But I think just looking at it from the front and the back is enough for me. I will just replicate the same shape on the back, and just start adding the details as how they would look in the back. This color for the chemono would be like this on the back, the tail will be furry, and the back is going to be very simple. I just want to add a bit of the flowers for the chemono. 4. The Head: The first thing we're going to create is the head. I will start with a base of aluminum foil balls. They have been crunched into a ball for the head and a ball for the body. I make them small because they will grow with this sculpey. This is the super sculpey. It comes like this. It comes with five layers like these. I call them edges. If it's the first time you're going to make a toy, I like to peel off one whole page and start with it and that way you'll know how much you use for toy. For this toy, I used one whole page. This doesn't dry, it comes in a box. It's called super sculpey. There's different types of polymer clays. I just love this one. It comes with a flesh tone color for dolls. But since we're going to paint it, it doesn't matter what color you use. Or you could use the colors you want because they also solid in colors, but that one's called sculpey, not super sculpey. The great thing is, it doesn't dry, you have to mold it and then bake it. I just start off up this and I start needing it. This is how hard it is. Look. I don't know if you can see, but it's pretty hard, I'm pulling hard. It is a bit firm, but it doesn't take much to make it softer. This how hard you need to push on it. It also starts getting a bit softer with your warm hands. I'll just need a bit. We're going to start covering our ball. It doesn't have to be perfect, because we're going to add more layers later. The idea is to cover it up. I just start adding more and more pieces. You can roll them around a bit and that will make them fuse. The head doesn't need to be a super perfect ball. My balls are never perfect when I rolled them like this. Now, you can start scraping it with your fingers softly so that the bends are gone and it fuses altogether. Now we're going to give it that flat area. That's going to be the neck, so you just press it against your table. That's how it would go on the body. Now, I'm going to use these to make a puncture in the middle. That's where our wire will go. It doesn't matter if this appears, because I just want to indicate it now. Now I'm going to create a little ball for this now. Just press it on there. It looks very big, but the head will be bigger, so think about that when you're adding your nose. I just start blending in with my fingers. This is the best way I have found for blending in. Your fingers are the best, it creates a super smooth surface. But you just have to be patient with this. You can move it around as you please. If you don't like it, you can take it off. It's great because you can do it until it's perfect, and it won't get hard until you bake it. Now eyes, you can use marbles as eyes, or any other type of bead. You can also buy eyes on Amazon or on a toy store that are like glass eyes. They come painted already. Or I buy the glass cover chunks and you can either paste something that you paint on the back or you can paint them yourself. This is how I abide them, this is how I paint them. I use acrylics to paint them. Think about what you want to give your toy as eyes. Or you can also just make a little ball and place it there, made out of the same sculpey. For my design process, I want to have two eyes. I use a transparent once because the paint on the other ones might peel off a bit, so this why I'm not bringing my eyes. I will use these as positioning to know where they will go and see how they look? I will just poke them in there and move them around until I'm happy with them. Remember they're not going to be poking out like this. We're going to add some more sculpey around. I think that's okay and we're going to start building around them. I will start adding around them and since the head is wider, I also needed to be bigger in the back, so I will add more to the back also. You need to be patient. This is a time where you might want to give up because it's looking so ugly, but I promise if you keep going it will get better. Once you start adding the features, you'll see it's better. This tool has a rounded ball. You can find them on Amazon or a craft source. I use them to blend the areas where my finger doesn't have fit or where it's not so comfortable to do it with my finger. I will just start rubbing here around for the surfaces to blend and then use my finger. I will keep on smoothing their ahead. I'm now fast-forwarding these, because there's going to be a lot of smoothing, so remember to be patient with your toy. I'll keep pressing, so I keep my bottom up my head flat. Now I'll show you an idea I had because taking the eyes out like these makes my nail, make it bent in the eye. So I created this tool. It's made with the same superscalar p and this is a glass eye and I just put some superscalar p in the back and bake it. Now I have an eye stamp. That's exactly the same and I don't have to ruin my head. I just stamp in there and swirl it around. You have to do this constantly because the play will be moving around. You need to make sure that your eyes will feed after baking. I will keep smoothing. If you're just going to create an original line, you're not planning on casting it, I will just put my eyes definite eyes. I'll put them in right now and I will work with them in there and I will not remove them at all. If there are glass eyes, you can put them in the oven. You could also put the eyes in there and then make a mold, but then your reproductions wouldn't have the space to add last eyes. I really like how mine look with the glass eyes. Again, smoothing and smoothing. When I'm smoothing does it out here, I'm trying to create a shape that I like. I'm always having in mind creating shapes that I like. I Like how that looks on the side. I'm always looking at it from different angles, so make sure it looks okay. Always be checking on each side, making sure it's okay. Again, use the eye. Every time you put it in there, you'll see it doesn't fit as easily because everything has moved. That's something you're going to have to keep doing a lot. I'm going to create these little snakes, wrap them around the eyes and make the eye sockets like eyebrows. I will just start smoothing in, so it attaches to the head. Since these are smaller areas, you can use a tool to smooth them in there. This one is very good for bonding it, really fast. I can't stress this enough because I know that feeling. Even if I've done other toys and I see how they look like in the end, I always get the same feeling. It's not going to work. Especially if it's your first time, don't give up on it. Work on it. It will look better. Your ability will also get better as you make more things. Don't expect the first one to be perfect. But know that you have to put in the time to really work on it. I give a lot of attention to the eye area because I think it's like the most prominent things in my toys. You'll see me really, really working on them to make them look similar. It don't have to be perfectly the same. Because if you just want to have like a perfect toy, just design it in 3D. I love this hand made non-symmetric colleague correct things. I recommend you cut your nails really short for this because it'll be easier to do it small nails. This is a tool I found works so great. It's a paper clip. You combine these tools also. But the paper clip I think gives me like a really good hold on it. I don't know. I like holding my tools really close to the bottom. It's the same with pencils and brushes. I found these to work great. It smooths everything really easilly. This is something you can do also like grab a tool that you don't use, hold on the back, just add a little bit of clay and bake that in the oven. There you have your own tool and you can even create different shapes and different points for it. That way you can use it like this and not by holding it. I'll go back to my clips in my hand and start smoothing out. You'll see how that clip creates a much smoother area because there are some areas where your fingers don't fit. We can also stamp the eye and work with it in there. Shape it. If it's your first time scalping, I would suggest just working with the eyes in there and baking it that way. Because it is much easier when you don't have to hold the perfect coal for the eye to fit in afterwards. A lot of smoothing going on here again. I like to use my nails in the eye sockets because it has like the perfect shape to go around them. Just be creative and use anything you have at hand. Anything that might work. Both for smoothing and for creating patterns on the play or creating indentations and textures. I suggest you watch the whole class so you get the idea of how to do everything. The when you have your clay in your hand, you start playing it as you go. Also if you have any questions or you get stuck on something, just write to me. I'll make this process really, really fast because it's exactly the same thing we did on the other eye. You don't want to cut out any parts of the video because I don't like to see something and then see it magically happen when the video comes back on. I decided to make it really fast so you could see it's there and coming along, but you don't have to be bored waiting for me to smooth the whole eye again. I think the eyes are okay like this. Now I'm going to create the nose. We get a little piece of clay and just make it like a little triangle. Press it on. See if I like it. Here it goes. I'll press harder. I'm going to add some detail there. I'm going to use this tool to create a straight line down the middle. I'm going to create the mouth in the same way. I don't want him to be sad. I'll create this smile. Doesn't matter that area has been cut, because I'm going to smooth it now. You have to be really gentle with this tool because it will create indentations very easily. Be careful not to hold your head from the eye area, just hold it from the top. You don't want to be squishing around the eyes that we took so long to make. Now when I fix that part with my paperclip, I will add some whisker dots here. Now we're going to add the ears. It's good to use wires, or in this case I'm using paperclips, a paperclip that I've cut in half. It'll attach the ears because that's the way they will be more sturdy. I'll just press in there. You can use straight wires too but I just thought this paperclip cut in half would be great for the ears. Make two balls that are the same size, press them a bit, and squish them in there. Now I have to bond them in as I did with the eyebrows and the nose. This is another tool you can use. This is a blender, I use it with masking fluids to paint watercolors, but I found it's really great to use on here, in places where my finger doesn't fit. There's different shape of tips and they all provide different effects. Usually come in a set of five so you can try all the different tips. I used this makeup sponge to clean up the little debris that this causes. Now I'm going to create fur. This sole is great for creating fur and you just press it and plaster at the same time. One of the best parts for me is to create textures. This clay is absolutely amazing on holding details. This is a point where you can create scales, fur, whatever you can think of and depending on the tools you have, just take a little piece of clay and experiment, press on them to create scales, use them as stamps, experiment and see what they each can do. You're using this side of the tool, but here you can't use that side. If you were to use it on the other side, it will create ugly indentations like this and you don't want that. We're going to use a different tool, this one that looks like a needle. This one is straight so it will make different markings, so you got to try to imitate the other one and not make them all straight. I will just fill in those areas that weren't covered by the other tool. If you need inspiration, you can look at a picture of how a bear's fur works or even use your pet. You can also use this tool to start adding smaller hairs like around the eyes and in the nose. I think we're done with the fur. Now I'm just going to make sure that everything looks fine with the eyes. I think they need to be a bit smoother so this is a trick. I'm using a little bit of rubbing alcohol, this one is 70 percent. Don't use a lot because you'll make the surface go in, but with a brush stick, a tiny little bit, see? That's like a drop in there. Take a tiny little bit, dry off your brush on the side and add a little bit to the area you want to smooth. Then just go around it smoothing it. Do this very softly because this surface is going to be a bit softer than it usually is and you can add a bit more to another area that you haven't covered before. See this is the difference. This is the eye that I have already smoothed, I think it needs more work there, and this is the one that hasn't been worked with the alcohol. I'm just going to finish smoothing this eye and then do the same in the other one. Always after you work on the eye's fit, this stumping it, see? Here you can see the details and see how smooth the eyes look. It doesn't matter if in the inside it's not totally smooth because that's where our eyes go. I'll want to add some detail to the ears so press on here and remove that area from the ears. I'm pressing on the back with my fingers so it doesn't bend over. Use a knife to take this part out. I will fix it extra with my needle tool and my fur tool, that way it will all be blended in. Finally, I'm going to go over this surface here because I've been holding it for so long from there so some of the hairs have flattened down a bit. I'll just go over it and add a bit more fur so it's more visible. There we have our head. One final press with the eye stump, make sure it's lose enough in there and we're done with our head. This was about three hours of work. Now I'll put it in my wire so it stands. 5. The Body: Now I'm going to create a body. We have our aluminum foil structure here and we're going to do the same thing as with the head. This is what's left of our sheet. You can see here what we used for the head. It's pretty good value for the super, it can make five toys around this size out of one box. Again, I'm going to need it and we're just going to cover the body exactly as we did with the head. I'm going to give it a flat area in the bottom and a flat area on the top. Push against the table. I'll make a whole with the wire and I'll try on the head to make sure it's the correct size. Yeah, I think that looks right. Remember it's going to get thicker when we add more layers. I want this to be very smooth. Again, I'm going to use the alcohol to smooth it. See its got like bumps. Very thin layer and just start softening the surface. If you do this enough, it'll be super smooth. But again, don't overdo it with the alcohol because it may alter the surface of the clay. I want it to be very smooth in the back because that's where the chemo area will be. It will have no extra. I will be painting it with flowers, so I want it to be very smooth. This is how it looks like. This is the area in the top, this is one that has been done, and this is the area that hasn't been done. You can see the difference. I can smooth this a bit more so I'll keep going. I am going to make the head. These brands specifically, it's to 275 Fahrenheit, 15 minutes per one fourth inch of thickness. You should guess what the thickest part of your toy is. I bake mine 40 minutes because I figure the thickest area is just around a bit more of a half of an inch. I just place it on a baking sheet on aluminum foil and cover it with a 10th of aluminum foils to and put it in a special oven I have. I just bought one of those little ovens. Some people say it's safe to use it in your kitchen oven, but I prefer to have it separate. You should check your safety instructions of your specific clay to see if it's safe to make in your kitchen oven. After the 40 minutes are up, I turn off the oven and I leave my toy in there. I don't even open the door. I leave it in there until it cools completely down. About two hours. I just usually bake before I go to bed and then take it out the next morning. This is how the toy looks like when it's baked. You can see it also makes some little cracks. They're not actually cracks, there just discolorations. But I have heard sometimes if it's very thin or very thick, it might crack or if the temperature in your oven is not correct. Follow the instructions of your manufacturer. Now I'm just going to blend a body to the head. Now I'm creating the arms so I'll make these similar and cut two arms so that are the same size and shape them. I want to try different poses. I think I'll follow this one that I made in the sketch. I liked him holding his belly. Now that I've decided the position of the arms, I will attach them. I will only attach them at the back at this time so I can lift them and put his clothes underneath. I just want to blend them in a bit. I'll do the same on this side. It's good to work on a smooth surface, not like cool or something because I think it might stick to it. After all that pressing my belly, it isn't smooth anymore. I'm going to add the rubbing alcohol and smooth it. Now I'm going to create the clothes. This is all about experimentation. They might not fit right the first time, don't be discouraged. I will cut out two rectangles of the same size. The way to flatten the sides is just rolling it against the table. I'll open his arms and start dressing him. I need to cut this one a bit because it's too long. I'll position it here so it's in the middle. I will just press on it so it adhere to the body. I'll press on it down here to make sure it comes to the bottom. See this one has a piece that's overlapping so I'll just cut it and smoothen with my finger. I like to use this tool for straighten it. Now I'm going to make the kimono. I just try it on. I think it's going to work. I'll just cut off a rectangle out of it. Now I will just start feeding it. I want to cover his arm first and I'm not pressing too hard anywhere so I can move it around if it doesn't work. Remember to have fun with it. Now, I know I can't start attaching it like really well and pressing on it. I'm not pressing too hard, so I don't create a lot of indentations on it because I want it to be smooth. I think I have to cut a bit here. Now I'll just start smoothing it out on the bottom. Again, I will use this tool to create this straight edges around the dress. I'm just pushing slightly through the sides. I want to press this really well so it doesn't have holes. Since I'm going to mold it, I don't want little holes where the silicone can go through. I want to create a crease here for the arms. I'm pushing slightly, and I'll do the same thing on the other arm. I'm showing you here how to perfect the edges in case you don't want to add a trim to your dress, but I am going to add one to my kimono. I'm going to make a snake. I am going to measure it. I think it will be enough. Now it definitely needs to be flat. I'm going to take it off and flatten it. You can use a round tool. I'm making it very thin because it's going to be adhered to the body, so it doesn't matter, but you should never have areas that are super thin in your sculpt because then it will be very brittle. I'm going to use this tool to make it a bit straighter, rub it against my table, so it's a bit straighter. Now I'm going to feed it. Now I will add fur to the paws, the same way I added fur to the face, and I'm going to create the borders in the sleeves. I will do it in the same way I added the collar to the kimono. I'll just create a little snake and place it here. I will use this tool to create the edge so it matches the rest of the sleeve, and I'll do the same thing for the other side. Finally, I'm going to add up texture to these. Try out different tools and see the different markings they make. It's super cool. Finally, I'm going to use the other side, which is thinner to create this other texture. Now the tail, I just created a little bowl and I'm going to press it here and blend it in. I'm pressing down to make sure it's flat, and I'm creating this texture again. Finally, I'm going to smooth out the kimono on the back with some alcohol, and the sleeves. Remember not to put too much. This is why I'm telling you about different markings. See, different tools will create different effects. This one creates little holes. This one creates little dots if I use it this way. If I use it the other way, it will create a different effect. This one can create stitches. This one will make straight lines, and I like that effect, so I'm going to use it in the kimono. Adding these details will really make it pop when we paint it. But you can also leave it very simple if that is your taste, and here it is. Now it's ready to go to the oven. The thickest area on this one would be around half an inch, so I put it in the oven for 30 minutes. Make sure you check your clay's instructions and you follow them. 6. Painting the Artwork: If you are going to make a mold out of your toy, I suggest not painting at the [inaudible]. My second part of this class will be released on the first of October 2017. Make sure to watch that part first. If you want to make the mold and castings to create reproductions of your toys. If you don't want to create mold, then it's okay to go ahead and paint them. You should check your brand of clay and see what type of pain they recommend, since this is super sculpey where you will be using acrylic paints. Here you can see how it looks after being baked. Now, you can drill and sand and paint based. I am going to use this tool here to sand off the bottom so its sits flat. Remember to wear protective mask and eyeglasses for these. You don't have this at home. You can use sandpaper, but it will be slower. I created my initial so made them really deep so that I could sand up apart and they weren't disappear. You can use a brush to brush off the dust. See this is what you don't want to be inhaling. That's why you're using the protective mask and eye glasses. Now are going to see that the eyes feet perfectly. Here, you can see that it won't go into the socket. You can use this tool or any knife. This is good because it won't cut you and just start scraping up the borders until your eye fits. You should be scraping and testing your eye, because you don't want to scrape off too much. See it doesn't fit. I need to scrape it some more. You can also use this tool and do it faster. I will just use a mixture of them and keep going at it until my eye fits in loosely. I don't know if the super sculpey shrinks. I guess it does a bit. Because my eyes fitted before and now they don't, see. Now the eye is perfect. It goes in easily and it comes off easily. I did the same thing to the other side and I'm going to use the sandpaper to sand off the surface and eliminate any defects that I find. You can use it during his fingerprints or little bubbles or any imperfection you want. Now I like to feed in different eyes because they all might not be exactly the same size. Make sure they will all go in easily. See that one comes off really easily. That's a good thing. It's nice to see how they would look like we eye. If they don't pop up, you can use a tool to pry it off. Just be careful not to scratch it. This is a different eye. This one doesn't fall off as easily but it still fits. I think it's okay. This is how I like to paint my toys, but you can also paint them just with solid colors, not with these shading. I recommend giving it a base of white if you are going to paint with solid colors and a base of black acrylic paint if you're going to paint it this way. This is Joe's black acrylic paint applied really thin because you don't want it to be so thick that it will cover the details or [inaudible] and create bubbles. I'm just using an old flat brush because these will destroy your brush. I'm just painting everything. Especially here in the smooth areas, make sure it's very thin so you don't see the brush strokes. Make sure to cover every nook and cranny. You really have to press in some areas where there's a lot of details and look at it from different angles. Make sure it's all black now, for white could be or using another technique. This is my palette and I will just make some little bit of blue with black, because I need to go progressively from dark to light. I will use a paper towel to dry my brush really well. That's my color. I think it's still dark. You might not be able to see it. But it's better to go patiently from really dark to light. What I'm doing is just stroking softly over the areas that I want to be blue. Using a soft brush. I'm not pressing too hard, so I won't leave the black paint. Just go around all the areas of the fur. Don't worry if it gets into other areas. That's why we're painting the darker areas first and the lighter last. Every time you need to grab more paint, make sure it's really dry. That way you're not covering the last layer of paint you made. Also painting the paws. Now and here you can't really see what's happening. I think that area inside it'll be harder to paint if I paint a paws first. I'm going to paint that area with a dark green and I'm using a smaller brush. They are all flat brushes because that's way easier to getting there. I thing here I pressed too hard so I lifted the black paint. You shouldn't do that. But we'll just cover it later. I'll go around every area that's screen here. I'll start progressively making it lighter by mixing some lighter green or some white. This is how I do the details and that's why the flat brush is so good. You tried to getting there. If you go into another area are little bit, it doesn't matter because you are going to cover it when you paint that area. The lighter the color, the dryer your paint brush should be, because it will show up much more. Now I'm back to painting the fur. I added up bit less black to the blue this time. I'm just going around again, is why you get like a layer of colors like real fur. See. Now, do I lighter blue. This is why you shouldn't use expensive brushes for these because they're going to get destroyed. But do make sure they are soft. Because if they're too hard, they will leave to your base layers. Here's my blue. Now, I'm going to start dotting white. Don't make it too light, too fast. See how little paint amusing. Now I really have to dry it off in my paper towel. See how the blue goes lighter slowly. I will also use a [inaudible] because now I'm using a lighter color and I just wanted to be on the surface of the details. You can also make selective areas lighter like I want the ears will be lighter. On the top of the eye. See how light am going now. Now you're starting to see the detail. This is so exciting when it starts showing up. Don't paint inside the eye sockets because this way, they will look better once you place the eyes in. This is a much lighter blue. You can add as many layers as you want or as you see fit. Now we're going to the kimono. I painted the red layer the same way. You could paint it solid just by using a very good brush and painting a solid color or you can use the same dry brush technique. What I do when I go close to the fur is go very slowly and make sure I'm not painting red on the fur. I think I want to add a bit of orange. That's a color I'm using. Drawing my brush and adding a bit of highlights, see how those details start showing up. I will go lighter on certain areas to make them shine. Now I'm going to add gold paint to the borders of the kimono to make it pop. Here I'm using a very thin brush and I'm carefully and slowly painting in the details. You could also use a dry brush technique for these, but I want the gold to be very saturated so I'm really painting it in with a solid gold color. This is when you're covering the mistakes. The fur went into this area, the fur color went into this area or the red color, then you're covering it with this painting. That's how it will look if it was a dry technique. But I want to really cover it. So the gold is finished. This is how he looks like. Oh, I forgot to paint his nose. I'm going to use a very light pink fleshy color. I don't want it to stand out too much. Now I think it's a bit too dark. I'm going to make him much lighter. Here I'm using a very light blue. Some mix of blue and white. I had some red on my brush from the kimono, so it's making it pinkish, which I don't like. But if you don't want this to happen, wash your brush really well when you change colors. I'm being more careful now because I don't want to get into the gold body. If it does happen, I will just paint over the gold again. See how my brush has like some blue on it, it becomes very pinkish at the end. Here I'm really like painting really softly because I have my brush loaded with a very light color. See how it really shows now. I think this is working a bit better for him. He's now more a polar bear. Blue polar bear. I'm adding this pinkish hue to this now to see how it looks like. But I don't like it so much so I'll use a smaller brush to go over these areas that I want to make much lighter and I don't want the pink to show so much. Again, this brush is very dry because I'm using almost only white. Yeah, that's much better. Oh, painting is so soothing. I love how you can see your character coming to life with the colors and the details. Now I'm going over with the gold to cover the areas that got painted a bit of white. I will use a clean, good brush to add the flowers to the kimono. If you're not very sure about painting free hand like this, you could take a picture of it and printed and paint on the picture first. So you get some practice and so you see how it looks like. A good thing about acrylic, is that you could basically just paint this black all over again and then start, we'll just paint the whole area black. Then start again. Okay, so you get the idea, This is how I keep on painting some flowers and leaves and dots. I'll see you in the next lesson. 7. Finishing Touches: Here's the sketch, and here is our finished toy. I wanted to show you this because there are some changes that occur from the sketch to the finished toy. See for example, here you can see these areas with lines on top and here you can't. It was just too much so I decided to take it out. This is how he looks in the back, very similar to the sketch. Here he is and the only thing that's missing is the eyes, so I will just use any glue that's made for glass. You just put some glue in there and put the eye on top and let it dry, and that's it. If you want to coat it, make sure you're using a water-based sealer like varnish made out of acrylics. This is my finished toy, I can't wait to see yours. If you're taking this class during October 2017, I will be choosing randomly amongst the class projects, and some lucky winner will win one year of premiums culture membership, and one of the toy castings that looks just like this one or very similar. In October 1st 2017, I will be releasing the second part of this class that will teach you how to make a mold of your toy and how to cast it it to create reproductions. Remember to follow me on Instagram @sandrabowersart and follow me here on Skillshare so you don't miss any new classes or announcements. I hope you'll have a lot of fun creating your toys and I can't wait to see what you create. You don't even have to actually make the whole toy, even sketches will work. It'll be great seeing them in the project gallery. Bye.