My current phase of production, i.e. 'tooling' for making miniature articulated animatable heads is going to be the technically hardest part of this project, by a pretty wide margin. But all the steps/techniques i've attempted so far have worked, which is nice.

I intend to lay out all my steps with details; maybe somebody reading this someday will benefit from what i've learned.

Now that i've got an un-sucky head, i'm going to cast the whole thing in alginate (fast setting dentist's moulding material). I'm going to do a test first to see how it reacts with unsealed clay - whether or or not it damages or contaminated the surface. May have to use a mould release.

Having covered the whole thing, i'm going to cut the hardened alginate into two halves, making the cut on a line that will be covered with facial hair on the finished product.

Then i'm going to build my rubber mask with liquid latex. The test was successful; I wasn't impressed at first - the shit seemed to be about as strong as rubber cement and very delicate. After you get multiple coats on though, it becomes suprisingly tough and flexible.

The next hard part will come after that; i'm going to have to find a way to cast the inside of the resulting mask with hard resin. The hard resin will be my basis for the 'robotics', which i'll be hacking and sawing etc.