Ah, Rats!

I've run in to a rat-sized road block.

I decided to try out the rat mold I made. I grabbed my tubes greenstuff and made a small ball by mixing my blue and yellow.

 Here was the process I had in mind:

1. Mix  a huge batch of greenstuff
2. Press a bit in to my mold for a minute
3. Remove it and start forming my rat swarm

Sadly, here's what happened on step 2:

Oh physics, you cruel taskmaster!

Within the circles (and in small places elsewhere), you can see that the greenstuff isn't fully filling the mold. It was actually much worse until I went at it with my sculpting tool. But still, this particular piece took me several minutes just to get mostly in the mold. 

Step 2 also falls apart because I can't remove it from the mold. I chose greenstuff over Milliput (a softer, but weaker, epoxy) because I imagined greenstuff's density would allow me to safely remove it from my mold while being pliable enough to fill it. Instead, here's one of those mathy things to explain my frustration.

I'll see how things turn out in the morning, but odds are good that I'll be moving to Plan B, which is to make a silicone cast of my rats followed by an eternal series of small amounts of resin. While simpler, it's unfortunate that it will lack greenstuff's ability to be easily cut and formed to fill gaps.

As it is, the resin idea will give me a series of mounds with spaces in between. It's doable, but the amount of work and potential finger-slices are the reason this was Plan B.

I have my models primed and ready, so I think I'll take a break from all this nonsense and actually do some painting.

See you tomorrow!