Casting a half scale dress form
Oct. 17th, 2011 07:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labricoleuseFirst off, I need to give credit to the faculty and staff of Ohio University's costume department, who hosted the USITT Costume Symposium a few years ago. At the symposium, they had a half-scale form two-part mold out on display one day and handed out instruction sheets on how to cast your own forms. I can't take credit for this idea! We only decided to give it a try.
Half scale forms are often used in draping classes (though we don't use them in our program), and by designers figuring out how to create their visions in 3D. Madeline Vionnet used to work out her bias dresses initially on half-scale forms. Julie Taymor is known for figuring out her puppet structures on small forms, and the method for creating creature-costume pod-bodies taught at the Ohio symposium involves figuring your foam structure out in half-scale before sizing up to full scale on these forms. Costume Shop Manager Adam Dill and I decided to give the casting process a shot to evaluate whether it would be a potential new project in my crafts courses.
Half scale dress form by Wolf Forms.
Two-part rigid casting foam (Foam-It 5) from Smooth-On
Two-part mold created from an existing dress form using plaster bandages.
Adam paints the interior of the mold with mold release
Be sure to varnish the interior with lacquer first so you can get your cast out!
Trussing the mold so it won't open when the foam expands.
It's like a roast! We then combined the two parts and mixed them,
then poured them into the mold. You have to do this fast so i don't have a pic.
The foam was rigid to the touch within 5 minutes!
After the foam completely cured, we removed the shape from the mold,
cleaned it up, and added a wooden base to the stand.
Then my assistant Leah Pelz added a layer of padding, draped a canvas cover,
and stitched it on. We added a collar cap and scye plates and voila!
I think, if you had a program where you use the half-scale forms frequently (like, every semester), and you also wanted to incorporate a two-part foam casting project, it might be a good idea to have them take an extant mold and cover pattern, and make their own as a first project.
For us, given how infrequently these forms are used (for one project in one of my four courses), i'm not sure it's worth the time the students would take to produce one and the storage space the mold would take up. That coupled with the short shelf-life of the foam chemicals and the difficulty of which project i'd phase out or scale back in order to add this, and i'm on the fence about whether I'll incorporate this project into my course structure or not. Given that a student who was particularly interested in, say, specializing in foam pod-body structures on the half-scale, could purchase one for as cheaply as under $60, which is less than many textbooks, I'm leaning toward not.
It was not cost-effective for the time it took to make, all things considered, and if i decide i need another half-scale form, i'll most likely just buy one from Wolf Forms for convenience's sake and to support a US-based manufacturer.
Nevertheless, it was a fun adventure worth sharing!
Half scale forms are often used in draping classes (though we don't use them in our program), and by designers figuring out how to create their visions in 3D. Madeline Vionnet used to work out her bias dresses initially on half-scale forms. Julie Taymor is known for figuring out her puppet structures on small forms, and the method for creating creature-costume pod-bodies taught at the Ohio symposium involves figuring your foam structure out in half-scale before sizing up to full scale on these forms. Costume Shop Manager Adam Dill and I decided to give the casting process a shot to evaluate whether it would be a potential new project in my crafts courses.
Half scale dress form by Wolf Forms.
Two-part rigid casting foam (Foam-It 5) from Smooth-On
Two-part mold created from an existing dress form using plaster bandages.
Adam paints the interior of the mold with mold release
Be sure to varnish the interior with lacquer first so you can get your cast out!
Trussing the mold so it won't open when the foam expands.
It's like a roast! We then combined the two parts and mixed them,
then poured them into the mold. You have to do this fast so i don't have a pic.
The foam was rigid to the touch within 5 minutes!
After the foam completely cured, we removed the shape from the mold,
cleaned it up, and added a wooden base to the stand.
Then my assistant Leah Pelz added a layer of padding, draped a canvas cover,
and stitched it on. We added a collar cap and scye plates and voila!
I think, if you had a program where you use the half-scale forms frequently (like, every semester), and you also wanted to incorporate a two-part foam casting project, it might be a good idea to have them take an extant mold and cover pattern, and make their own as a first project.
For us, given how infrequently these forms are used (for one project in one of my four courses), i'm not sure it's worth the time the students would take to produce one and the storage space the mold would take up. That coupled with the short shelf-life of the foam chemicals and the difficulty of which project i'd phase out or scale back in order to add this, and i'm on the fence about whether I'll incorporate this project into my course structure or not. Given that a student who was particularly interested in, say, specializing in foam pod-body structures on the half-scale, could purchase one for as cheaply as under $60, which is less than many textbooks, I'm leaning toward not.
It was not cost-effective for the time it took to make, all things considered, and if i decide i need another half-scale form, i'll most likely just buy one from Wolf Forms for convenience's sake and to support a US-based manufacturer.
Nevertheless, it was a fun adventure worth sharing!
