Here’s an article about a polymer clay doll created for the movies.
For several years, Marcia Dundore Wolter has been creating one-of-a-kind collectible dolls from her Morris home studio. She sells them at The Woelfel House Gallery and through her Web site.
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“Driftwood” would be about an old fisherman who crafts a doll then makes a wish for it to come to life. Reminiscent of Pinocchio, there is magic involved in this story, also, but it turns out to be magic-gone-awry, and instead of the puppet turning into a young boy, it becomes, well . . . the artist prefers not to give the ending away, but it is an interesting turn of events.
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Steffes sent Wolter photos of Conant from different angles so the doll maker could get the best idea of what he looked like without actually meeting him. Wolter then took the pictures and modified them with an age-regressing computer program to get an idea of what the actor might have looked like as a boy.Steffes asked Wolter to make the doll look like it was made of wood, a bit whimsical and marionette-style. Wolter decided to make the doll’s head, hands, and feet just a tad over-sized to give him somewhat of a comical feel.
Since Wolter makes most of her dolls from polymer clay and porcelain, she recruited local woodworkers Harold Hedrick and Dave Perry to help her fashion the doll’s body of actual wood. Hedrick made the body out of two pieces of wood, and Perry helped with some of the cutting.
Wolter made the head and fingers out of polymer clay. Making them out of wood would require wood carving skills, Wolter said, which she did not have.
To make the head look as it were wood, she cut slices of her wood-colored clay in varying widths and patted them together into a cake of striped clay.