Cnidaria

All you hear about is things that try to hurt you in Australia. With this jellyfish you can play with it all day without getting stung!

This marks the beginning of my journey to create some sculpts of realistic marine creatures. 

Couple months in the making, I've finally made a working prototype of this jellyfish modelled after the stingless jellyfish of Palau. This sculpt will be named Cnidaria, which is the name of a phyla of organisms that include jellyfishes, anemones and corals!  They all poop out of their mouths, and the majority of the creatures in this phylum are radially symmetrical.

This is how it all started, some drawings and sketches on how the jellyfish would sit on a switch.

Sculpting is the fun part, looking at different pictures on how the tentacles behave under water. The difficult part was getting the texture of the tentacles right. Also trying to capturing the smooth top of the real thing.

Casting the mould for making the master, first cast did not go as planned. Silicone set WAAAY too quickly under the Queensland heat.

Pressure pot was a great asset to get a nice bubble free mould. Second pour of silicone was much better after pre-chilling the bottles before mixing. Mould came out nice with good details.

Started the resin pour mixing 2:1  made a total of 7.5ml of resin with a drop of white pigment. Demoulding was pretty straight forward.

To get better quality of the stem a resin printed stem negative will be used.

For those who are curious I'm using the zbutt system for casting. If you head to the zbutt discord there are some very helpful artisans that will help you get started!

First prototype next to the sculpt!

I'll try and answer all your questions so please comment below and tell me what you think about this keycap. Or any questions relating to marine stuff in general!