This past week I've been working on creating horns for our stop motion animation for the scene in which our main character grows horns and manipulates them to be longer.
Sarah found this paper clay that was not only light-weight but also air-dried fairly quickly.
I first created a template for the shape of the horn by taping index cards together, drawing out the shape of the horn, cutting it out and then wrapping the cutout in tape.
The first time I tried making the full size horn, I made it entirely out of paperclay. By rolling it out, adding more clay to certain areas and shaping it with my fingers, water, and a spoon, I got the general shape that had some small lumps and mishaps that I intended to sand down.
The problem with this first one was that it was too heavy. The idea for the horn is that it will be attached to Sarah's forehead, so we need something relatively light that will stick with not-too-strong adhesive.
The second time around to making the full-size horns, I decided to create the overall shape of the horn with aluminum foil and then covering the foil in the paperclay. It definitely solved the issue of weight but also added new challenges in terms of texture and shape. In certain areas, the foils would be exposed ever so slightly which would cause problems when I tried to sand down the horn to smooth it out. Additionally, the shaping the foil could be a little difficult and tedious because of how material molded and its rigidity when compacted. Overall, though, it was a much easier process and I ended up using this process for the rest of the horns.
I'll likely be making more horns because I haven't quite covered all the stages of growth, though we haven't really figure out how fast we want the horns to grow in the first place. If I don't have enough time to make that many, we were considering Photoshopping horns in frames where we don't have actual horns to work with.