Volks & Art Clay

Not sure if this has much impact on dolls or doll customization, but Volks has announced their acquisition of Art Clay.

https://www.volks.co.jp/cs/news/20201106_01.html

What kind of clay does Art Clay make? I ask not just for speculation on what Volks will do but as someone who likes to sculpt and is always looking for new materials to try Lol.

If it's an air dry or epoxy clay, that would be compatible with both vinyl and resin. Probably a long shot but it would be so sweet to see clay in colors officially formulated to match skin toned. If so maybe it could be a limited Dollfie World Cup thing. . . 

51 minutes ago, Poofiemus said:

What kind of clay does Art Clay make? I ask not just for speculation on what Volks will do but as someone who likes to sculpt and is always looking for new materials to try Lol.

It’s powdered metal held in a clay medium that burns off when fired in a kiln, so you end up with an item made of silver or gold metal. It’s supposed to be very good for jewelry making because you don’t need to be a silver or goldsmith to make stuff. You can also use it to add gold metal accents to things.

It has to be fired in a kiln to work.

This could be huge for Volks because this stuff is used all over the world, and hopefully more money for Volks means more dolls.

I’m also thinking someone could make a metal arm or leg for a doll, but I am pretty sure you would be limited to silver and gold. AFAIK steel has a very high temp for its melting point, and probably can’t be fired in a kiln. 

It's an interesting acquisition. Since volks showed the more mermaid ears, multicolored resins, and other new stuff, it looks like they are branching out to appeal to customization. I bet this will work out for them well.

I'm very excited for this!! Mostly because Volks US shipping is a tad bit faster to Canada than HLJ and other Asian hobby suppliers. I hope they make the product itself available for purchase, alongside purchasable, completed metal accessories.

I purchased a small-scale jewelry making book from Japan earlier in the year with hopes of making accessories for my collections, but was curious what the easiest way to find this material would be.

The only trouble is the kiln... However, when I did a brief Google Translate over the book with my phone, I believe they walk you through using a small hobby kiln. (it's the ceramic, cylindrical looking one, not the square metal one which I believe is a proper hobby kiln.)

The clay they use is the PMC products in photo 2. There a various different types throughout the book, I haven't figured out what's what yet.

   

   

Edited November 6, 2020 by Veravey
clarified kiln, added PMC info

Or it will have nothing to do with BJD and everything to do with their "hobby" (figure, etc.) department.

1 hour ago, Veravey said:

I hope they make the product itself available for purchase, alongside purchasable, completed metal accessories.

I am kind of hoping that this opens up the possibility Volks will make things like rings and bracelets regularly, but if the materials are silver and gold then they would be pricey. They did announce this through the their Volks Doll Twitter account, so I think the potential exists that they have plans. 
 

1 hour ago, Veravey said:

The only trouble is the kiln...

I wonder if art collectives have kilns available for use. That seems like a thing people would potentially find ways to share ownership of. 

14 minutes ago, BeyondTime said:

I wonder if art collectives have kilns available for use. That seems like a thing people would potentially find ways to share ownership of. 

That's a great idea, there must be some. I'm curious about the small scale hobby ones, too.

Oh, precious metal clay! I've worked with that stuff before. It's not something you'd put directly onto a doll. It would be possible to make metal doll parts out of it, but PMC also shrinks noticeably in the firing, so it wouldn't be just super simple to do. (Honestly, if you want to do that, it's probably easier to 3D model the item and have it printed in metal by Shapeways or something similar.)

It would, however, be absolutely priceless for making doll jewelry and jewelry findings. I made some tiny metal buttons out of it once, which turned out really well. I'd take pictures if I could remember where the stuff went. 😅

6 minutes ago, Gallye said:

I'd take pictures if I could remember where the stuff went.

If you ever come across them, I'd love to see! This material would be great for accessories. I recently made some quills for my future doll, and I modified an existing metal piece into a quill tip. It's worked well enough for the time being, and I realize there are better options out there, but this was cheap and quick. The "ink pot" is from a Cardcaptor Sakura pen I have, it worked out really well aesthetically. 

Metal clay would solve so many perfection and scale problems 

   

22 minutes ago, Veravey said:

I'm curious about the small scale hobby ones, too.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Volks doesn’t end up selling one. 
 

17 minutes ago, Gallye said:

I made some tiny metal buttons out of it once, which turned out really well.

I honestly wondered how well that would work out for small items like doll rings. 

Don't want to burst anyone's bubble but Artclay Co., Ltd. is not the manufacturer of PMC and Art Clay Silver.

Artclay Co., Ltd. makes light weight air dry clays "New Fando" and decoden clay whip stuff.
Fando, New Fando, and similar are good for making and customizing figures.

PMC is a Mitsubishi product and Art Clay Silver is by Aida Chemical Industries.

So I'm pretty sure that the aforementioned products will be available anytime soon.

Edited November 7, 2020 by Subaru

41 minutes ago, Subaru said:

Don't want to burst anyone's bubble but Artclay Co., Ltd. is not the manufacturer of PMC and Art Clay Silver.

Ah, that’s my bad then. I did a search for Art Clay and the only references I found were for the Art Clay I mentioned above. 

I’ll probably move this over to off-topic unless the clays Subaru mentioned have an application for dolls. 

1 hour ago, Subaru said:

Artclay Co., Ltd. is not the manufacturer of PMC and Art Clay Silver.

I didn't think they produced PMC, I was just showing the book and the products it mentioned that I came across earlier in the year when I first heard about metal clays. Looks really fun to work with.

On 11/6/2020 at 5:16 PM, Subaru said:

Don't want to burst anyone's bubble but Artclay Co., Ltd. is not the manufacturer of PMC and Art Clay Silver.

Artclay Co., Ltd. makes light weight air dry clays "New Fando" and decoden clay whip stuff.
Fando, New Fando, and similar are good for making and customizing figures.

PMC is a Mitsubishi product and Art Clay Silver is by Aida Chemical Industries.

So I'm pretty sure that the aforementioned products will be available anytime soon.

Aaah okay, gotcha. Huge kudos to you for working out that crazy branding mess! 

Looked up Fando and New Fando, seems they're that kind of reinforced paper clay with a bit of stone powder in it. Considering direct competitor La Doll's role in the doll hobby for making lightweight accessories and sometimes even for BJD prototyping, this is actually a really sensible acquisition for Volks. Decoden stuff can actually work well for making doll size foods like cakes and soft serve ice cream, too, so that's also not too far off the mark. . . . though I'm horrible and hope we see some people mixing decoden materials with the Volks vehicle models at some point because my heart deeply desires a frosting covered gingerbread tank. Why? Because reasons, that's why. 

18 hours ago, Poofiemus said:

Aaah okay, gotcha. Huge kudos to you for working out that crazy branding mess!

Yeah, we do owe it to @Subaru for correcting my misinformation before it got any further.

Your comments make me think maybe it's more on-topic for Volks DD than I thought when I moved the thread here. I guess we will see what Volks does with it.

Fando clay and air dry doll clay types makes sense for Volks to buy as a business! I remember Padico (the company that owns ladoll) made a completely customizable alice rock BJD kit, it will be exciting to see volk's plans (or maybe they wont have any... we'll see).

Edited November 9, 2020 by sumdude

5 hours ago, sumdude said:

Fando clay and air dry doll clay types makes sense for Volks to buy as a business! I remember Padico (the company that owns ladoll) made a completely customizable alice rock BJD kit, it will be exciting to see volk's plans (or maybe they wont have any... we'll see).

I suspect at first we'll have to settle for the occasional blog post showing cool things people have done with the stuff, but I would still love to see a sculpting component added to Dollfie World Cup eventually.