Fast and easy SCULPTING MAGIC with Foam Clay!

Hello guys, this is Svetlana from Comic Cosplay. And today I want to talk about one of my favorite materials, foam clay. So this Diablo head is actually made out of simple 5mm EVA foam and just one bucket of foam clay. That's pretty awesome, right? I bring the darkness! Foam clay is the cool new stuff in the cosplay community. Like especially if you're searching for an alternative when it comes to make something organic and like if you don't really want to work with monster clay, if you don't want to make like a silicone and a mold and like all the complicated stuff. Like basically the foam clay, you can directly apply it onto EVA foam as you can see. And like, yeah, you can sculpt it with your hands and once it dries out, it becomes like very lightweight, quite similar to EVA foam actually. You can also like cut it, you can sand it, you can burn it and like dremel it and like all the things. And yeah, so I thought since the material is like super gamer friendly and like perfect for all kinds of things, today would be just perfect to show you in a tutorial how to handle it. Well, and as always, if you want to get more tips and tricks on how to make cool costumes, check out my cosplay crafting books. I have, for example, one about foam armor making and also one about foam prop making on KamaiCosplay.com. And now let's start with the video. Wow. First, foam clay, as the name suggests, is an air drying lightweight modeling clay out of foam. You can buy it from a lot of different shops, but I get mine usually from Lumens Workshop in Australia or Cosplay Shop B in Belgium. The one I bought came in these plastic buckets and the label says it weighs 300 grams. This is only in its wet stage though. Once it has dried out, it actually becomes a lot more lightweight and will only weight around one third of this. Also for me, the material has a really long shelf life. This bucket here, for example, is actually from two years ago and still works fine. I just had to get rid of a bit of dried out material on top. It also comes in different colors, but I prefer to stay with black. I know there are plenty of vendors using different formulas for their clay, so if you order another product than I did, keep in mind that it might behave a bit differently. Anyway, my clay is really soft and squishy and can be brought into shape just with your bare hands. Simply roll it, squeeze it a bit and let it dry for at least 24 hours. However, the part directly exposed to air dries much faster, so turning your piece from time to time actually speeds up the process. Then you can add texture with a Dremel and you get a cute monster teeth. This is actually how I made all the snappy jaws for my Brigitte cosplay. Once dry, foam clay is still a bit flexible and can even be heat shaped with a hot airgun if you're careful. However, it can also crack really easily. To prevent that, it helps to apply a flexible brush-on primer like Flexbond. Here I applied three layers and as you can see, it became a lot more durable. I think foam clay is really amazing, especially in combination with regular EVA foam. To connect both, just spread some water onto the surface and then add the clay directly onto your foam afterwards. The water will help it to stick, so there is no glue needed at all. In addition, you can also use water to dissolve the clay to make it easier to work with, add more clay on top to smooth it out or even to use it as a filler in between foam seams. Once it's dry, simply use sanding paper to even out the edges. Be careful, however, because if you use too much water, it can become super sticky. I personally mostly use foam clay for sculpting on details. For the shield of my demonic Brigitte cosplay, for example, I had to build a massive Diablo head. So here we used a 3D model as a starting point, which Benny found on the internet. He first simplified the shape, adjusted the proportions to fit onto my shield and turned it into a Peppakura pattern. Then he printed out a template, which I cut out piece by piece and traced onto 5mm EVA foam. I glued everything slowly together and got this quite flat skull as a result. Already looked super cute, but missing a lot of details. If you're curious about this technique, you'll find a link for the tutorial video in the description. Now to give it more texture and depth, I began sculpting on scales with foam clay. As you can see, I just spread on some water first and then applied a clay sausage, which I smeared out into one direction. A little bit of sculpting here and there and I slowly made one scale after the other. Then I added thinner sausages for veins and wrinkles and placed scary looking teeth, which I sculpted before. I also used my Dremel to give the foam a more natural look afterwards. Foam clay is super dusty while sanding, so of course I did this over the hose of my vacuum cleaner and while wearing a good respirator. I think the result turned out pretty nice and all I needed was some 5mm EVA foam and around one bucket of foam clay. In addition, it's great for all kinds of different sculpting projects. Just use plenty of water to keep it soft and smooth, work a lot with your fingers and maybe consider getting some sculpting tools like these silicone brushes. You can also carefully heat up the foam clay to secure the surface texture and stop it from shrinking or expanding. Well and as I mentioned before, a Dremel and even a soldering iron are great tools to add even more details and texture. In addition, you can even use silicone molds to create all kinds of shapes. Just press some clay into the mold, then put it all in the freezer until it becomes solid and finally release it again. Super pretty! I'm pretty sure now you know how absolutely awesome foam clay is and you want to try it yourself. And I hope this video was inspiring and helpful and if you still have any questions regarding to how to work with foam clay, let me know in the comments down below. And yeah, I'm pretty sure I also didn't really cover every single application of foam clay, so if you still have some ideas, let me know as well. And yeah, I want to try it out by myself. If you enjoyed this video, consider to give me a like and you can also subscribe to our channel and if you don't want to miss any of the upcoming videos and tutorials, hit the notification bell and then you get like a notification when a new video is up. You can also support us on Patreon and like give me a tip for all the content we're producing and also like as always, I actually listed all the products we used for this video tutorial in the video description down below. These are affiliate links and if you click on them, you also support us directly. So thanks so much for being so awesome, watching this video and yeah, see you in the next one. Bye bye!