Its Alive! The Making of FiMO Zoidberg

On the weekend I had the chance to use the FiMO clay to model my favorite character ‘ Doctor Zoidberg ‘ from the brilliant TV Show ‘ Futurama ‘ which gave me the inspiration to start story boarding for the video art assessment ‘ Orange ‘.

Today I want to show you some photos and steps to achieve the final product of my clay modeling.

Step 1 – Prepare the FiMO. Not as easy as you think, this stuff is like rock hard not like normal plastic clay. Break the large chunks up into smaller thumb size pieces, hold the clay in a clinched fist to warm it up until its malleable than you roll that piece of clay in both hands until its nice and soft and in a ball shape.

Continue reading for steps 2 – 6 and youtube video of the finished product.

Step 2 – Started to mold the head than the eyes and finally the tentacles. The tentacles were made up of 4 small balls shaped into ovals.

Step 3 – Breaking off another chunk of FiMO and repeating step 1, mold the body. It was hard trying to give the body a bit of a pot belly, but I found using a chopstick to roll out the bits helped.

Step 4 – Start molding the arms and legs, you can see the unshaped arms. notice I used too little FiMO for the claws, so I had to remold them with more FiMO. Its always better to have too much clay than too little, as its easier to remove than to add.

Step 5 – Almost Done! The claws were separated into 2 pieces and molded separately, I used a none serrated knife to get the sharp cut in the middle and to remove the edges for the claws.

Step 6 – The final step if you are going to animate your model is to attach some joints. It is not wise to try to stick the movable parts onto the body – you will find the model will quickly bend out of shape. So the best solution I found was to cut up little pieces of plastic tubes from a ear bud and using them as joints. Works like a charm!

Its Alive! The finished Zoidberg in all his glory, ready for his debut in my claymation video.