Hello!
I thought I would share a little bit about the process that has gone in to making my most recent keycap.
The Protoplasmoid v3. SA profile AKA Windowlicker.
Their first sale is live now on the https://www.ritual-master.com/store-raffles page!
The first Protoplasmoids were released in 2018 in both a partially encapsulated and non-encapsulated varieties.
My initial interest in making this cap was driven by trying to figure out how the legendary Hungerwork Studio Hungerkey was made. (grail cap to this day!)
Of all the keycaps I had seen in my early days in the hobby, only around three months in or so in at this point, it gave me a bad case of the “howdeydodats” and so I modified my Wormskull sculpt in monsterclay, sculpted the slime drips, made many molds and eventually landed here. I was beyond satisfied to have made something requiring two molds!
I no longer have the original sculpt but here are a variety of Protoplasmoid v1 Partially encapsulated and regular versions.
During my foray into partial encapsulation I tried out a fully encapsulated blob version that didn’t go anywhere as well. But I was happy with the partially encapsulated versions I released, especially the few hand painted ones, even though I had a lot of issues with the encap shot leaking into the face which lead to a lot of fails.
Unfortunately my earliest versions also stuck out too far in places and so needed to be reigned in a bit. I was also quickly made aware that the height of the cap was a tad low, it fits nicely with DSA but nothing else really.
So the first taller versions were born and for a variety of reasons didn’t meet my expectations.
At this point I was unhappy with the results and took a break from the project for a while. There also may have been a baby born around this point who knows. ;)
unreleased and yellowed Laser protoplasmoid v2 as well as a blob version and two taller unreleased attempts.
Eventually I came back to the idea in early 2020 and began to iterate again. I decided to switch to doing the cap fully encapsulated inside of SA profile as the extra room seemed like fun and I was, and still am using SA on my own board.
The only original tongue SA version I made and some other experiments.
The earliest versions stuck out of the sides of the SA encap on nearly every side, especially the tongue.. So I spent time working on a whole new sculpt that would lean into the tongue aspect but attempt to alleviate the other portions from poking outside the SA cap.
A new version sculpted to fit better inside the SA profile while adding a new larger tongue.
And so many new iterations were born. Even with a mold system there is still a tiny bit of wiggle from cap to cap any my new issue was the cap being too thin in places and so I adjusted many more times with new issues popping up whenever a different one was fixed.
Various versions and iterations.
and even more iterations.
Finally after a couple years and I don’t know how many attempts and various versions I finally have something I am happy to release!
The Windowlicker sale is live now on the store/raffle page!
Creeper, Invisible Eye, Acid Bath, Harlequin Horror and Icy Veins.
Thanks for reading if you made it this far!
Protoplasmoids as far as the eye can see!