Sam is 1,82 meters, he wanted to be in the video like this turn on subtitles for instructions step 1: creating the fluke for the fluke you need a wooden plate and some clay. Okay.... A LOT of clay Put the clay on the plate and start smoothening it I used a silicone caulking tube for this keep going until you have a base for your mermaid fluke Then start adding more detail and 3D shapes And now we have a h2o fluke sculpt! Put wooden walls around your sculpt make sure it is waterproof Now it is time to protect the mold, by applying some Vaseline Using a brush will make it easier for you! Now cover the mold in plaster This will create a cast from the mold, that we can use for the silicone When you turn the cast around you can remove the clay and have a finished cast Then it is time to cover the mold in silicone. I'm using a Pattex caulking (safe for oceans) that is very clear, so the light will go trough :) my silicone is pretty thick, so I have to manually smoothen it Now it is time to peel it out! Oh and don't forget, you make the fluke 2 times, 1 for the front, and one for the back! Kind of soft, but the cast and silicone make scrunchy sounds!! some silcone got stuck, but that's okay, it will be covered in scales anyway Now it is time to start the painting process! simply grab a brush and start brushing pigments on the silicone fluke. When you're done, cover the fluke in a thin layer of silicone, so the pigments are stuck to the tail :) And when you painted both sides, and covered them in silicone, they are done! Step 2: Creating the monofin start by marking the fluke shape on some Lexan plastic, then cut it out with a jigsaw I will not go crazy in detail with this, because I do not want people with less crafting experience to try this. Please use an existing proper monofin for this step. for people with more crafting experience I will show how the results look like. And you'll know how it was created :) We used heat, bolts and strong plastic to create the extended monofin And this is how it turned out! again, use an existing monofin please it is safer in a lot of situations :) I used the finis monofin feetpockets for it, because they are very strong Step 3: creating the body hello! that's me waving uwu for the body we'll be using Lycra fabric, but you can also use neopreen. (but because this is an expensive project we're going with lycra today) there's 2 ways to do this, 1 is putting the fabric around you and pinning it down. which works fine! But I prefer option 2 where you create a taped body and use it as reference (see my other video on how I made it) Sew the fabric, I also added a zipper glue the fabric to the monofin, the bolts actually helped to keep it in place (and it will help with the foam later) If you buy foam, please test it first!! For this experiment, we're going to test if this foam works well with water (it said so on the site but still) as you can see, the ''flow through'' system works, and all the water gets out the foam very fast it's time to glue the foam to the body of the tail cover it in strong silicone and make sure you don't miss spots! I'm using a bunch of zip ties to hold the foam around the tail when the silicone is drying start cusual and make it thighter as you add more zipties spot the h2o necklace!! When it is dry you can cut them open Then I did some basic shaping (obviously struggeling with this shitty knife) And now it is time to try it on, to see what we need to shape and where THE FEET, obviously need some foam removal Just keep shaping it untill you think it looks good :) See the bump? you don't see it when it is on, so that's why you try it on to check if your foam sculpt is okay :) Now start adding a layer of glue/silcone to the fabric And cover it with a fabric layer, we do this so the scales will be a lot easier to apply, and reperations are also more doable. Now I decided to hang my tail up, so I can work faster and on both sides this.. was a struggle the tail is quite heavy and I'm not that tall happii me :)) before adding scales, let's cover the tail in a layer of silicone I mixed it with pigments so we have a nice base. *very excited* this looks so dumb but I Iove it cover the entire body with the silicone, you can also smooth sections if they are a bit bumpy also the loose fabric on the bottom, I did it on purpose so I can still adjust it a bit when it is almost done ( silicone shrinks and I wanna fit in the tail) And that is the tail body base! Step 4: adding the scales and fluke!! remove the protective layers of the Lexan plastic And apply silicone to the Lexan *yeets the glove like a boss* okay time to place the silicone fluke on the lexan The tail is starting to look like something aaaaaah!!! I later added some silicone on the top there don't worry And time to do the back!! put some pressure on it manually, and let it dry with some weight on it I used some random bricks I found hang up the tail again!! for the small scales, I'm using silicone and smoothen it with plastic I was running out of time, so for the big scales I did it without the plastic. It also works but it's slightly messier just put the silicone gun against the plastic and put a little pressure on it, this will create a scale like shape. you can use plastic to get flatter scales, or experiment a bit, there's different ways to do this Oh! and for the backfin, don't add scales there ;) painting time!! just like the fin, use a brush to cover the silicone with pigments I added some dark lines in it as well (just like in h2o) (Do this outside btw) unless you want your house covered in sparkles And that's it! you can slightly see the lines I put in cover the entire tail in a thin layer of silicone to permanently keep the pigment there. And put some extra silicone on the back to create a backfin And that is it! an extended h2o just add water mermaid tail A full swimming video testing this tail out is going to be uploaded soon :) I hope you enjoyed watching! and I'll see you next time :) bye bye!!!
