Yesterday I sculpted Luke pretty much from scratch using Super Sculpy, an extra plastic 1/48 head (I added the hair) and hands. Yoda looks a tad short, but he’ll be sitting up on some roots. I may remove the feet and add a little more to his cloak at the base to make him a few milimeters taller.

Here’s the tiny 1/48 scale Yoda sculpted with Super Sculpey/Sculpy III. I need to do a little touch-up like scraping the folds of his cloak cleaner and adding more nose definition, but he’s otherwise ready to go.  While he may look rough, remember that you’re seeing a larger than life digital image. Once painted and sat onto the base he’ll look just fine. Next-up: Luke.

Hooray! It’s working as I hoped it would! What is working you may or may not ask? The jute twine I used for the smallest dangling roots is what. In all of the images I have seen, the larger roots are covered in a lot of small vine-type roots and whatnot which really adds to the distinctiveness of Dagobah’s scenery. I wasn’t sure if the Jute Twine would work or not however and I really didn’t want to use natural materials that could rot/break in time. I use Jute for grass from time to time and am used to coloring and working with it… my concern was if I could get it to pull apart in long enough strands and blend into the trees convincingly. After taking my photos and checking them against the referenes (with the help of a little photoshop coloring) you can see I’m pretty close. Whew!

You can find a tutorial on using Jute Twine for making grass here on my blog. For the roots I colored the Jute with a very dark black-brown mixture then a slightly lighter version of that for some variety. I also didn’t need to brush it. Just twisting and teasing it out worked great.

After I finish adding the jute roots and cleaning up some cracks on the groundwork I filled with modeling paste I’ll put down a fine mix of crushed up leaves over the ground then maybe pour some muddy resin water.

Here’s the Dagobah progress to this point which might not look like much from last time. At this point the basswood sides have been cut and applied to the base with 5-minute epoxy. They were then stained with Minwax Ebony wood stain. Very nice stuff. It’s a black stain, but lets the wood still show through. I think I’ll be using it more in the future as I like the color. It’s very good I think at not contrasting with what’s above it. After the stain fully dried (24 hours) I applied 4 coats of Minwax Satin Polycrylic, sanding inbetween coats to make a very smooth, but not glossy surface to the wood.

Then today I used DAP white silicone sealant so seal around the edges of the exposed wood where the celluclay will touch later. This will keep out the moisture of the celluclay as it dries and hopefully keep the wood sidewalls from warping. A piece of clear plastic was added by Yoda’s hut to seal off the small pool of water when it’s poured but still keep the side of the water seen and interesting. Yoda’s hut is somewhat painted but still needs further working to get the color and look correct. Here’s pics:

The project is progressing nicely and at a halfway decent pace to boot despite the celluclay mistakes. I fixed all of the trees by making them thicker and that did the trick. They’re all now dry and painted-up. All that’s left is to mount them and add the finer vines and roots. I also made the wooded base riser today so that I can attach the basswood exterior. I screwed some 2x3’s under the MDF base then screwed a thinner sheet of MDF to the bottom to make a solid base. A hole was cut to add the LED tealight later for Yoda’s hut.

The basswood is now attached to the exterior via 5-minute epoxy and careful cutting/shaping. Later I plan to stain the wood with an “Ebony” (black) stain for wood. Since the client’s display case is black and to not contrast the diorama too much I think this is a good choice for the color. Waiting on the go-ahead for that though… once stained, it’s stained. I also purchased a 6-pack of LED tea-lights today which are very nice as they have a realistic flicker to them. I might “hack” one to run from an outlet to make it easier for the client. Here’s a video of the tealight in action.