One of my favorite parts from the show "Villains" is when Willow dips her hands into the dark arts books and sucks them dry. I've been wanting to make the table for the magic shop as well and the scene I wanted to create helped pushed me to complete it. This particular piece took some time to create since I was collecting as many books as I could to build up a nice pile on the table. I am not sure how I could have done it differently but I'm not entirely happy with the end product (and by the lack of comments on two Buffy forums I'm thinking other people have to agree?).
Anyway, here is what I did.
I used a Doppelgangland Willow head, torso, and legs. I used the upper arms/shoulders from Gift Dawn, and the forearms and hands from a Charmed figure. I also used the largest book (I think it was a Pylean book from Angel). I needed a large book for Willow to dip her fingers into.
Here are the pieces I used for Willow (and the book I cut open):
For the table I used a Tupperware meat container (I think) and then to get it to stand the height I needed I put a yogurt container on the inside of it and cut it to size. You can see the container inside the meat container in the picture below. I went with this meat container because of the lip (which you can see on the side view picture). I then used white labels to put over the two containers to cover up the seam. Not pictured is the top. I used foam board and cut it to the size I needed.
I had made casts of various books awhile back and I used all the books I made on the bottom to bulk up the pile (plus I didn't want to paint all these books). Then I used every book I could find and started gluing them into a big pile.
For the sculpt I sculpted Willow's hair (to make it less rigid in the front), I sculpted her front, cleaned up the sleeves, and sculpted the tie in the back. I also altered the jeans for a more realistic look. I like how the side pockets turned out. Here are some pictures of that:
Okay, for the hands dipping into the pages of the book this was tricky. The hands were not perfectly flat. I got this cool heat gun from my dad and I used that to "melt" the hands. I heated them enough for me to smash the fingers a bit to flatten them out. I then super glued them to the book and sculpted the pages around the hands. It didn't look a clean as I wanted but I knew I'd be painting over it and wouldn't matter so much.
This is the part where I goofed. I wasn't thinking about the painting of the face until after I had everything already glued and sculpted. I didn't attach the books to the table (in the event I wanted to change the table and put in the light in the middle like the real table). But the hands were attached. I cracked the arm sculpted clay numerous times moving this thing around. The tricky part was tying to get close enough to the face to paint the tiny details. So in one hand I have my brush and in the other I'm trying to hold the figure attached by two tiny arms to a huge pile of books. It probably goes without saying, but I will anyway, that I am not happy with how the face turned out. Some pictures look worse than others due to the angle or the fact that the picture is magnified many times larger than what you see in reality. But anyway, here are the in-progress pictures and the final piece....
Show reference pictures so you all don't think I'm crazy why there is paint all over her arms/chest.
