Microbiologist Lab Technologist Snoopy Scratch Built Sculpture using Polymer clay

I made this hand sculpted Snoopy sculpture for a gift for a very special person. I used a mixture of cernit, Sculpey III, Fimo polymer clays. Working time was about a week a few hours each day.

Ideally I first start off with a drawing before sculpting anything. I get most stuck on the design phase. I think I can sculpt things easily from a picture but coming up with original stuff is more challenging. There exists at least a doctor Snoopy statue, but I needed either a Scientist or Lab Tech and I couldn't find a statue of Snoopy like that. 

I really needed to have this project completed in a week. So I was not concerned so much on taking pictures and videos. I still find it hard to sculpt at my desk in a position that the camera can see anything. Sometimes I want to lean back or sit on the couch instead, so not all aspects are on camera.  

I am not used to sculpting and using different colors of polymer clay as I know I will paint the finished piece in the end. Here I started using Sculpey Living Doll polymer clay. As I was thinking of finishing on time, I was 2nd guessing painting the statue. I want to give the paint enough time to dry and then top coat too. So the next plan was to sculpt using living doll clay most of the shape and then add on a thin layer of white clay on top instead of painting. So the actual sculpting would be done with living doll, and smoothed out thin sheets of white clay on top. 

But I was thinking that I used too much clay, so at first I was scrapping away a little bit, but I ended up starting over from here. I redid the armature and used less tin foil.    

I combined Cernit translucent, cernit glitter white translucent (sorry that's probably not the official name) white sculpey III, white fimo. Sculpey III is the softest, very buttery feel but also the weakest strength. My hands hurt after trying to condition fimo but its strong. Cernit crumbles for me but I bought my stock from Michaels in a sale all at once so I'm not sure if that's how its suppose to be. So combining all these I ended up with a usable clay for Snoopy's skin/fur. Sculpey III and regular super sculpey darken much after baking. But using more of cernit I was hoping to maintain a bright white clay after baking. 

I used black fimo soft instead of paint and I regretted it. The clay was indeed much softer than regular fimo but the coloring smudged everywhere. Mostly I wore gloves, but I could not touch the black clay without it affecting the white clay. If I find myself doing something like this again, I would just paint the black areas. 

When researching what Snoopy looks like, I noticed he had two styles of ears, the one I did and an all black version. I think anyone off the street knows what snoopy looks like, but I am not sure the history of the character design. I went with this look because it seemed a lot of statues did this style. 

I did several bakings. I did not have enough of my premixed white color to do the lab coat as well. So I had to mix more. I thought it was going to be impossible to color match exactly, so I kept the original white clay mix separately and used that only for Snoopy touch ups now. The coat was mixed with more Sculpey III pearl. Above is how it looks unbaked. And below it is baked.  

As you can see the clay darkened a lot. I wasn't sure if I liked it or not, but I think it's better than just white on white for this whole sculpture. 

After a lot of bakings, Snoopy was starting to look a pale pink instead of white. I made very thin layers of clay and then smoothed over the full body. I did not do additional clay on the lab coat to keep it more contrasting. 

I ended up using some createx pearl paint on the full sculpture to give it some shine. I then heat set with a hairdryer. I did not do a final top coat, except for the nose and eyes to give them gloss shine. 

For the blood agar plate I bought the smallest plates I could find on amazon. The scale is off but I thought it looked great for this type of Cartoony piece. If I want to do more lab style sculptures in the future, I think the best thing would be to sculpt an in scale mini petri dish myself that I can make clear castings of. I also tried to use clear Tamiya pla plate but the result was not good, so I knew I had to buy something or come up with another ID. 

The raw polymer clay ended up melting / eating into the mini petri dish. I got a pack of ten and went thru at least half of them on this project. For the writing I used fabric paint. The loop is just a toothpick. 

Lastly I used Magic smooth to attach Snoopy, the blood agar plate, and loop all together. I did a grass effect. I used to use magic smooth as my base for choice for my resin garage kits years ago. It really is the best adhesive out there and very strong. 

More completed pictures are below.