Ok so there are two trains of thought here, one is to finish the sculpt completely and then cut it apart. The other is to cut it up as you are going along. I try to avoid finishing a piece all the way and then cutting it up, this is stressful to me and I think to most people. So we like to make some male/female keys as we are going along. If you know it is going into production you want to know those pieces fit back together as precisely as possible.
Cutting versus clipping, I do both. If you are working with Almaloy you can cut and clip the wires easily, if you mess around with the other end of the spectrum which I would say is a coathanger, and that is going to be so super hard to cut through it will blow your mind and damage the sculpt because of all the pressure and stress created when sawing. So look for Almaloy in a craft store, the right armature wire is important, and we bind that with floral wire.
Ok so here are some pics of some of our pieces being parced out.
These are some wings , you can see the male key is square so it will not rotate.
This is the Komodo King in it's resin pieces, each of these were taken off /apart and sculpted on ,then put back together and so forth hundreds of times. That's how we do it, and it's different on every sculpt and it kind of feels like we're making it up and it might not work every time. That never goes away because sometimes it works , sometimes it does not. Some pieces are always better than others , better proportions, less armature trouble , whatever.
Here is the 'Deal with The Devil' piece being cut up and put back together midsculpt. Now in the interest of full disclosure and we often say this but we do not cast the pieces, we sculpt the prototype and send it to a caster. The plastic bits are pens and pen caps which we like to use as keys.
Affectionately called ' Noynub' for me this is Paul Bunyan and Babe the blue Ox merged into one fantasy tech minoatur, and the trilas he goes through with having to be shoed.
Cutting it apart wether by clippers or saw, before a bake or after is important, but getting it to all fit back together is the other half of the struggle and again it's different on every sculpt.
Hope this helps,
Jarrod
