Hey all, I'm curious, what other materials are there that are commonly used as an attempt to mimic lifelike skin/flesh? The only one I've found so far is this stuff called "EZ Flesh" but it's a bit expensive, and you have to cook it and melt it.

I'm sure there's a whole bunch of stuff. Like, somewhere at my place, I have a "Sexflesh Take Me Tanya" - not sure what it's made of, but it costs less than her weight in silicone (on amazon right now, it's available for $99, and she weighs something like 22lbs).

Is there something out there that's considerably cheaper than silicone, but a good way to experiment? Like "hmmm, I wonder how it comes out if I insert the skeleton THIS way?" That kind of thing can get really expensive, so I'm sure there are some substances you can use that are really cheap, but just not good enough for production (not soft enough, not durable enough, not a good enough approximation, etc.)

What's out there? The one saving grace of ez flesh seems to be that it's re-usable, but I think it's meant to be used for thin masks (kinda like latex), so I am not sure.

cheers!

Hey CuriousT,

I've actually done quite a bit of research on that. There are some urethane products out there that are quite interesting.
The cheapest way that I know of to fill the volume is with castable urethane foam. From what I've seen, the most commonly used foam for this type of purpose is the 3lb density flexible urethane foam.
http://www.smooth-on.com/Rigid-and-Flexible/c10_1121/index.html

There are of couple of urethane products that I've found that are for making skins.
Here is a video from brickintheyard.com that shows how to use a Polytek PT Flex 20 skin with a flexible urethane foam fill...



This would obviously not be as soft a result as silicone, but it would be much lighter and less expensive.
One nice thing about the urethanes is that you don't need a release agent when using a silicone mold.
At $144/gallon, PT Flex 20 is actually more expensive than silicone, but you would only need a thin skin so you wouldn't be using that much.
http://www.shop.brickintheyard.com/Cast ... ne_c30.htm

BJB Enterprises makes a urethane coating product called SC-92 that is water base and is applied like a paint in thin coats. It also can be used to skin the mold much like you would do with silicone. This stuff has some amazing physical properties like a 4000 psi tensile strength and 750% elongation so you wouldn't need a really thick skin. Here is a similar video using the SC-92 and flexible urethane foam...



The SC-92 is less expensive at around $80/gallon, however this is an air drying product so the mold would have to be open and each coat would need to dry whereas the PT Flex could be sloshed around in a closed mold in one application. The SC-92 is also clear so you would need to tint it to your desired color. BJB also makes water base pigments for that purpose.
http://www.bjbenterprises.com/polyurethanes/coatings/sc-93/
http://www.bjbenterprises.com/7105-blue-water-based-pigments/

The good thing about using a urethane skin material is that the foam will bond to it aggressively whereas silicone will not.

A third really interesting product is called "Flabbercast", which is also by BJB Enterprises.
http://www.bjbenterprises.com/polyurethanes/castable/flexible/specialty/flabbercast-1/
This is a three component urethane material that uses a third component to adjust its softness. The literature says that by adding more of the third component it can go from ordinary soft gumdrop to a jelly-like consistency. It will also bounce back to its original shape. I think they use this material in the movie industry for fat suits and other special effects. This is a relatively cheap material (around $60/gallon) that could be used for filling breasts for instance. It has very little tear strength so you would want to limit its use to non stress areas.

With the exception of the urethane foam, I have not actually used any of these products so I'm just going on the information that I've read or been given by the manufacturers.

Hope you find this helpful!

MF

Neat, thanks for the info! That 18x expansion one should go a long way. I should play with it a bit in a while.

Has anyone played with elastomer gel? I was looking at old posts, and there's a site (Sex toy scientist) that explains how to make it, but the links for where to get the specific type of resin to mix with the oil seems to be down.

Just to clarify something on my last post:

The Polytek PT Flex gallon kit, similar to the Smooth-On products, yields 2 gallons (1 gallon part A, 1 gallon part B) or 16 lbs., so the cost per gallon would be $72 not $144.
So it's still cheaper than silicone at $90 per gallon.

MF

I

3 month ago, but perhaps You'll find it.

The Canadien factory/seller-site: http://www.gelpolymer.com
is unfortunally down since nearly 2 years.
The stuff, You asked for" TPE-RESIN" was named GP78.

I've been searching the hole www. to find an alternativ material, but there seems to be none.

Suddenly I ask for" superweiches tpe-granulat", translation: "super-soft-tpe-granulat" and GOOGLE finds following:

http://www.shop.dollpoint.de/super-weic ... t-1kg.html

They have an english side, too.

I think, that matrial could be an equivalent for gp78 and Your experiments.

I have not tried it yet, 'cause of less money, but I'm sure it works with that stuff.

Burman Industries used to sell a super soft hot melt vinyl product. It was available in clear or white - so you'd have to tint it somehow if you wanted a different color.

http://www.burmanindustries.com/estore/product.php?productid=1112

The picture and the tech sheet links are gone so I'm not sure if this is even available anymore. I remember the picture looking like it was a granular or pellet type of material that you would melt down and pour into a mold.

MF

Cool, thanks for the link! I played a bit with a trial size of: http://sculpt.com/catalog_98/RUBBERS/Elastack.php

It looks like per gallon, the one you posted is cheaper.

I found it's a bit hard to work with. The workable range is really narrow. Once it starts to melt, it's already close to the max pouring temp, and I have to be really careful not to get it to smoke, etc. But once taken off the stove, you have mere moments to pour it. It may be that I need to heat up my mold or something. I tried pouring into my mini-doll-torso experiment mold, and it cooled enough while it hit the walls that it didn't completely fill the mold (neck caused a bottleneck), resulting in something kind of freakish-looking haha.

But the re-meltability is a really nice feature. I was thinking this would be great stuff to experiment with for getting a skeleton in place, and seeing how it moves and stuff. Great for "doll debugging"

I've worked with a hot melt before... won't ever do it again

To heat up the mold is a good idea.
Thank You for the links.
And also my respect @ MannequinFan for
Your knowledge and ' how to' about 'mold- or doll-making'.

Thank You for shareing it.