For the fog witch, I start with roughing out the form in styrofoam and clay. You can see that I have it on a simple stand.

Here’s the basic sculpture, without the ears, and the drawing Michael Schupbach, the designer, gave me. I’m pretty pleased by the resemblance to the drawing.

I’ve added in the ear armature here. I initially thought I would do the ears separately and then add them, but changed my mind. I have to have an armature because the clay would droop sadly and fall off the sculpture otherwise.

Now here’s where things get interesting. We got feedback from the director that the character needed to be less angry and more childlike and inquisitive. So I adjusted the sculpture like so.

One of the things that fascinates me is how much of a difference a tiny change can make. I’ve removed the wrinkles, given it less of a rosebud mouth and more of whimsical bent. It looks like a profoundly different character.

I sculpted heads of two other charactersalso, but you just get the process shots of this one.