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Captain Jack Sculpey

I use the colored Super Sculpey mostly out of laziness.  I enjoy sculpting more than painting, so the less painting to be done, the better.  But it's just as unlikely that I'd use the colored stuff for non-caricatures, since the colors tend to be a little too bright to be completely realistic... unless painted.
 
As you can see from the closeups and subsequent pics, I made the hat removable.  I didn't sculpt the hat directly onto Jack's head, but onto an already baked piece of regular Sculpey, approximating the size of his head.  It was already baked to make the hat easier to "snap off" after its own baking.  Raw Sculpey and the baked stuff tend to have trouble sticking to each other.
 
Alas, sometimes they stick together just fine, especially during the baking process.  Not only couldn't I pry off the finished hat, it was on there but good.  Ultimately I had to use a combination of different Dremel drill bits to dig away the "head" part.  In some spots I dug too far and removed the hat part ( sigh...).

The base is just some balsa wood strips, scuffed up some with one of my knives, then glued together into a kind of half-pallet and painted very dark brown.  In other words, simulating a piece of The Black Pearl's deck.  For the first time, I bolted one of my figures to its base.  Usually just glue and/or wire had sufficed before, but progress needs to be made some time!  I drilled holes in his feet and the "deck" large enough to accommodate two tiny screws.  Cyanoacrylate glue held everything in place.
 
Sorry about some of these pics being blurry.  They looked fine in the camera??

I know what you're thinking:  "Somebody made a figure based on a character from Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean??  Sweet!  They always totally ignore merchandising for their movies!"
 
Yeah, well, they haven't released colored Super Sculpey caricatures YET, so that's saying something.  Since finishing Jack, I've seen that NECA(?) makes "animated" versions of the POTC characters, to which I say, quit making "animated" versions of stuff without supplying the cartoon!  It's become a trend in merchandising that drives me nuts.  I'd love to see a POTC cartoon, but no, we're tormented by character designs only, and nothing else.  Did somebody pocket cursed Aztec gold somewhere to collectively cause us this torment?  If so, please repay the blood and bring on the toons.
 
That said, as the page title implies, (Captain!) Jack Sparrow is made almost entirely from colored Super Sculpey and occasionally Fimo, depending on who has the colors I need.  There's lots and lots of color mixing, too.  I think I have more mixed colors by now than square blocks.

Then the top part broke off from being weakened in that manner.  I glued it back on, then pushed in more brown Sculpey to fill in the gaps, and wouldn't you know that that's when the raw and cooked stuff refused to bond?
 
That weird bone thing on the side of his head was just a toothpick painted ivory.  For the beaded braids, I didn't want to buy a whole box of different teeny weeny beads for those, so I just rolled the smallest spheres of Sculpey that I could, and strung them onto green floral wire.  There was slight smushing, but the clay blobs were no bigger than the smallest beads I've been able to find.  Then the braids were just attached to the side of the head like his rolled-up dreadlocks.
 
Items that were baked separately, then added to the completed figure later and rebaked:
Sword scabbard and handguard
Both braids
The compass.  I had to paint the edges rather than use rolled-up white Sculpey.
Jack's head! (minus hair/bandana)

...Now bring him that horizon.

I think we all know that Disney owns this guy, and they'll probably send me a Cease and Desist just for showing this to you.


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