FantasyWire Video 8: Wire Technique

hi I'm Robin white from fantasy wire and I'm the guy that makes the wire fairies so if you're watching these videos in sequence you've now got a skeleton and you've got some hands and feet on it now before we start building up the figure and applying all the wire it's worth me going through the different aspects of wire technique how to actually apply the wire and the rules that you should have in your head about the routes that you follow around the figure and how you actually go about applying the wire to the figure so we're about to add wire to the figure so I don't tend to add wire in a single strand so I'm going to show you how to make us with a multi strand sort of bundled wire to attach first size I'm going to do is we're going to bulk the figure out so I'm going to use one point six wire which is sort of quite heavy duty now what I tend to do is just get quite a bit of wire as much as I think I can sort of deal with in one go nothing too scientific about it get both of the ends making sure that you haven't created or not just that neither of them are tangled up put the two ends into a vise and simply twist twist them together to create a nice neat twist and then chop them off so that's sort of created almost a needle then follow move that out the way follow this back to find the other end so you know that they're both the same length and then just squash that together so you've you don't need to twist that end because that'll pass to the figure and you'll be able to sort of attach that wire out any difficulty so that's creating a double strand so now let's do a multiple strung with some smaller wire a tool I use all the time it's incredibly important this little piece of wood it's just a piece of wood with a slot in it and I put that in the vise and if you can see I've got another vise with a sort of rod in it at the other end of the workshop it doesn't have to be this length it just happens to be that I've got two vices and and therefore I can use the two as a guide I'll put this coil in the middle and I'll just pull some of this off lock that in so it sort of can't pull off into that slot and then take the wire making sure you don't get any twists in it around this bar in the otherwise round that this a bit of wood so now got six strands tie this end in so it can't escape so that's nice and tight now what I'm gonna do now is deform the wire as I walk keep some tension on as I walk back up to this end to lift it off this this pole in this vise and the reason I do that it's a bit like a ribbon if you stroke a ribbon it will sort of curl up whether the wire has been curled up as it was stored and what I'm doing is taking the tension out so I deform the wire slightly so it's now gone nice and straight otherwise as soon as I took that tension off it would all sort of try to Ravel up so I'm just sort of pre-tensioning the wire and then I try not to get it all tangled up take that end out of the vise put this the other end that was around the pole into the vise these are actually wire twist employers you don't actually need these I don't use them quite as they were intended to be used but it does allow you to pull the wire and speed things up a little bit but creating a nice twist and then cut that loop off so effectively got a needle with with six strands of wire on there that I can now apply the wire at that end so put that out of the way put this end in the vise holding the wireless time rather than the piece of wood and then just use the piece of wood to add the twist to this end and then chop that so I've now got a six strand of the point nine mil wire now I do this with multiple different sizes so I've got one point six which I tend to do in two strands I've got one point two I'll do in about four strands I've got the point nine which I'll do in six strands four strands eight strands depending on where I am in the build the process of making the multi strand look is exactly the same just how many strands that you want to put in it so we'll now start adding some wire to the figure but now that she's got some flesh on her it's probably easier for me to illustrate how I decide where I'm going to route the wire through and how to actually apply the wire so I'll start off just by passing it through the figure somewhere find the sort of midway point and the only reason to do that is some only wrestling with half of the wire at a time you don't want to anchor one end and then have so much wire that you have to sort of keep pulling it through and it takes a lot of effort now what I first need to do before I can start working on half of it is anchor it in so what I do is take one end pass it back through the figure anywhere that's I know he's not gonna do any and pull that through until I get take up that slack now when you do the first lock in it always pays to go back to the go back to the end and keep them together follow them through and go all the way to the figure making sure that you haven't got one wire longer than the other and then pull them through until you know that both sides have got why is exactly the same length if you get one wire longer than the other out of that bunch and it by you know this is only two but it could be up to eight every time you wrap it round you're going to have like an extra loop that sort of you'll be fighting it all the way to the end right you know on every turn that you take and you only have to get it right on the first one so when it when it's you can see that loop get it locked in and that means I can pull against it on on either half of this so I can now sort of work with half of it and route it around the figure now if I just sort of cause that half out of the way and I know you're looking at this from a distance so it's sort of difficult without having a cameraman to sort of follow me around the figure all I'm gonna do is sort of follow the lines of the figure I'm not trying to sort of wrap it and sort of build it up never sort of go perpendicular around the limb it's always long spirals so I'm sort of it's almost like I'm sort of feeling where it needs to go that forget that wire needs to come around the front sort of down into the middle area and it's just because I'm following the lines of the body sort of pass it through pull it out it's still loose at this stage I'm not trying to put any tension in it because I'm still building up the shape of the figure but the lines at the wire take are exactly the same even though I'm building it up now you've got a crease down your back and I could go either way with with this particular one but because it's on this side I tend to stay on that side I tend to you know it's difficult to sort of change sides but you do it round the front when it's mostly round rather than this are having the crease down the back so I'm going to come round that book just leaving that and that seems to take me around the leg now now if I just do one long line to the end of the knee I'll have a big baggy wire there so it does need to spiral but I just you know what like I said we've seen with kits people do this and they just want to keep on winding wire around in that sort of goes baggy and the viewers I will follow the lines of the wire in it it sort of never looks nice and neat so although it takes time you know just do so the long spiral so the the length of the length of the limb you want no more than about two spirals in there so I'll take that round come around to the knee so that's just one spiral till I got to the knee now I need to change direction now so in order to change direction I need to pass it through the figure and create another lock point so I'm now pulling against that and it's not it's not even bothering the wire that I've just applied and then take it in a different direction following up that look that leg so again long spirals no more than a couple of spirals over the length of any one sort of bone length that's coming out it's awkward it's sort of coming out there and this is sort of a a convex surface which means the wire could go either way so just to lock it in that I want to sort of build it up in this corner I need to pass it through the figure so it's trapped and it can't escape just pass it through that it's gone through a couple of wires to lock it into that position you always get loops just make sure there's no sort of loop in how that you pulling the whole wire and then I decide where I go next so I feel like it needs to go over the back of that muscle and then through the center again now as I'm going through the center in the middle of the figure that's a good opportunity to sort of change sides so I could come back down this side now and again it I sort of feel like it just taking me round here make sure you don't get tangled up so long spirals no more than a couple of spirals over any one sort of bone length into the calf muscle at the moment I'm not putting any sort of skin on and I don't want any more than one layer of wire it in front of that shin and this is quite thick as well so I'll try and avoid it and I'll just put this stick wire into the muscle and I'll use that as a direction change looking at how much wire I've got by the time I get back up here I'll be starting to sort of run out so I'm almost thinking even now I probably need to be making my way to the head so I can hide this - the ugly twisted part at the back of the head you know the figure is is sort of taking shape now so I am applying a little bit more tension because it's it's just making it stronger now rather than sort of bulking it out you see I'm really now round about the time I'm going to get up to the top of the head now another thing that's worth pointing out I'm trying to stop on the surface of the figure although I'm passing it through the figure when I do pass it through I'm just taking a direct short route through the figure I'm not trying to add material inside that cage I'm trying to add material on the outside of the cage and it's yet you we're in a sort of density flight path if you like to get it to a high density just at the time that the figure is complete and the right shape if I start filling it out so that all of these spaces are sort of taken up now if it's too dense now I won't be able to pass wire through it later on so what I'm trying to do is get it to the right shape with a very loose cage you know you can see through it there's hardly any material there but it's almost getting to the shape of the ferry and that means that I've got I could pass this through almost anywhere that I wants to go it doesn't it doesn't matter where I am I can sort of pass it through and get get through and I want to retain that until I've got the shape of the ferry and then I'll change wire and then I'll start to sort of cover it up and make it denser but I don't want to make it dense now so you're pretty much stopping on the surface don't waste wire by sort of going through the figure a lot so back to the root this one wants to sort of come up and a classic line and it's in the book a line that you want to look for to get the proportions right is you come round the chest and where that ribcage breaks the sort of line of the waist is where the muscles of the buttocks start so that's it you know so coming from the buttocks that would take me up that route that's going to create a nice line to create that sort of shape and I tend to sort of follow those lines quite a lot I don't add very much to the shoulders there's a temptation to take the wire up to the shoulders and sort of come back down if you do that you'll find that you build the shoulders up like some sort of bodybuilder so I try to avoid putting any sort of meat on the shoulders or even the arms at this stage as so I'm just bulking out where all the mass of the figure is I'm just thinking as I'm explaining why I'm going to choose the next route the neck the neck is in front of the shoulders on a human being so what I want to do is take more wires straight up the neck to sort of bulk out the neck as I'm taking wire into the head but if I was to just go straight up there there's nothing holding that that wire would sort of be loose here and it wouldn't be sort of where I want it to be so I need to sort of go through the surface of the figure and come out at the base of the neck so I can come up up the neck without it sort of been creating a triangle layer or a triangle here so I want it I want it to be coming out of the neck at that point so I'm gonna go through the figure but only sort of through the surface to sort of come out at that point and that sort of maintains that line so as I do that you can sort of see that's the line that I wanted to take and it's coming out there and I'll pass that through there through the skull as it were and then this wire just helps me build up the sort of the back of the head getting that the head size and position is is a sort of tricky one when you when you're doing the skeleton the neck seems incredibly long because all you've got is a loop on the end of it so the four and four and a half inch sort of stem and it looks sort of ridiculously long compared to the size of the figure as soon as you get some bulk to the head you realize that the neck isn't isn't that long it's the right size but what I've got the opportunity to do now is as I sort of flesh it out gauge whether the neck is still too looks too long so I can add meat to the top of the head to move the neck up or I can add meat to the bottom of the head to sort of bring it so I'm sort of varying where the sort of bulk of the head is as I'm sort of flesh in the head out to make sure that the neck is the right length for the figure and then when you get to the end of the wire you basically try to end up with that ugly bit of wire at the back and then just took you in and if you can get all of these ugly bits of wire at the back of the head then nobody will ever see them in the finished product one of the things we need to sort of consider when we're doing this is not just the root of the wire in terms of nice big spirals but the apes that were forming so although we're doing a female form any form it doesn't matter whether I was making a dragon or a ball or whatever it would be made up of convex so external or concave so internal sort of shapes so obviously now that she's starting to flesh out you can see that all of her chest is one big convex it's on the outside where her back has got a gap down the back and that's sort of more sort of not just concave but it's sort of a groove now one thing I must never do is bridge that gap and expect to push the wire into that gap to create that shape because as I tension the wire it will sort of bring it out again I'll never maintain that so whenever you've got a crease in the body the wire needs to go through the figure and that's the main reason that we've got sort of two spines because when I on the on the little kits it's sort of impossible to make one that sort of small and you can sort of get around it on the advanced kit you've got two spines and it's because there's just so much wire that sort of passes through the middle and the spine would be in the way and you couldn't make it symmetrical so that's why there's two spines but the the whole body is covered with sort of convex and concave and creases so when we're sort of dealing with the creases down the insides of the legs you know it's tempting to sort of go across here but there's a crease sort of down there down the inside of the groin so the wire is going to go through the figure at that point or it's going to follow that sort of line of the crease you've got I mean one thing we need to sort of make sure that we get right also is a woman's body has got sort of hips you've got a bigger pelvis than a man a man would have a sort of narrow pelvis and a sort of thin waist where a woman's got a larger pelvis so these muscles here need to be sort of built up much more and the waist is sort of higher than a man now but that what that creates in terms of the cross-section of this part of the body is you have the stomach muscles and then you have the lats and although it's very subtle there's a sort of come concave down between the lats and the stomach and I don't even want to take the wire all the way around the whole figure well I'll tend to start doing now that it's what why I sort of stop the time lapse I'm going to start bringing Y around here to build this up and going through the gap between the lats and the stomach and although the finished figure it's only going to be very subtle but it allows me to form the wire the way that I want if I if I was to go straight across and then try and dent that in it wouldn't look right and the wire would it would create a looseness in the wire and the wire will try to sort of just spring back to where it was where if I maintain this sort of rule in my head and it's not an absolute you know there are circumstances where you you do change it and when we get further down the line to create this sort of line between the ribcage in the stomach I'll hit it with a hammer and I'll actually create a sort of concave that I didn't form by the roots of the wire and that's okay then because I'm not going to be adding more tension which will force the wire out and there's enough density for it to sort of maintain that shape but generally speaking it's a rule in your head in my head that wherever there is a crease or a concave the wire goes through the body where if it's convex it goes on the outside and you're sort of building up that sort of shape so I just thought it's worth sort of pointing that out and I'll go back to the time lapse now

Channel: FantasyWire

Views: 148,169

Rating: 4.9304771 out of 5

Keywords: FantasyWire, Robin Wight, Fairy Sculpture, Wire Fairy, Wire Sculpture

Id: kzNlBMqO1ok

Length: 23min 17sec (1397 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 24 2019