Amphibia Marcy Wu Clay Sculpture

I have sculpted a clay figure of everyone's favorite adorable nerd, Marcy Wu from the Disney animated series Amphibia! The ranger is gleefully confident as ever, proudly showing off her trusty crossbow while trekking through the shallow waters of the Amphibia bay. I wanted to make this figure as show-accurate as possible and include every intricate detail of Marcy's design including her journal, bag, crossbow, shells, marshmallow keychain, and more. The base is also very detailed as well including some submerged sea life and a mushroom. Plus the water glows in the dark! This figure was made entirely from scratch, hand sculpted and painted relying on 2D reference images from the show and my own sketches. It took about 3 and a half weeks and there was a huge amount of trial and error in the making of this figure. I documented my process the best I could and I'm going to show you how I sculpted Marcy.

The supplies you will need for Marcy are: crayola model magic air dry clay, regular crayola air dry clay, all colors of Acrylic paint shown in photo, white paint pen, paintbrushes, armature sculpting wire, thin wire, superglue, mod podge both matte and gloss, Elmer's blue color glue, Elmer's glow in the dark blue glitter glue, sculpting tools, rolling pin, a silicone mat, wax paper, a glue gun, and a 3" wooden circle.

Before I begin actually sculpting, I gather as many reference images of the character I possibly can. The characters in Amphibia are 2D and you have to figure out just how you are going to accurately translate the flat lineart to a 3D sculpt. Take screenshots of every angle of the character possible and download the official model turnaround sheet. Study the references and imagine how they would look in 3D. Now you're ready to start sketching out your design and choose the pose you will be going with for the character. For Marcy, she is very cheery, positive, and confident, so I chose an expression and dynamic pose that reflects her character. I sketched her out and I was constantly looking at that drawing throughout the process as well as my many reference photos from the show to guide me. I also sketched out the many different components that will make her up separately and how they will go together.

The first thing you are going to want to start with is the body. grab a bit of clay and roll it into a ball. Then start to roll it out more and use your fingers to shape it into the body. It should be around 1" and a half long. Let it dry and then start messing around with your armature wires bending them into the shape of the legs. I did not know this at the time but I would reccomend using thicker armature wire for the legs as I found out in a later project.

When you've got your wires glued in the body, roll out some cylinders of clay and form them around the leg wires however you wish using your hands and water. the area towards the waist may require some extra super glue to make it sturdy.

When you've got your body and legs you can now add the boots. Roll out a cylinder of clay shove it up the leg wire then form the boot shape once you have it on there. This may or may not require adding extra clay towards the bottom. It's going to take a lot of messing around with and smoothing to get it how you want. To make the straps on the boots, flatten some clay and cut out some long rectangles and wrap them around the boots like how it looks in the reference photos.

Next we're going to add marcy's skirt. To make it, you must roll out your clay very flat on a piece of wax paper. I turned a cup upside down and pressed it into the clay to make the circle shape for the pattern of the skirt. I found I needed to cut the size down though. The circle doesn't have to be perfect it just needs a slit in somewhere in it like pac man. Then you can bring it up to marcy's waist and start wrapping it around her. You'll have to manipulate it quite a lot to get it looking right. It may need some trimming and smoothing. You can cut the little slits in the bottom out with tiny scissors.

Next is Marcy's armor. Once again, you need to roll your clay out very flat. I cut out a clay shape like this and placed it over her body. That is the top layer of the armor. to make the underlying layers just cut out some small rectangles that are the same width of the top layer. This is also a good time to add your wooden dowel in the neck as well so you know the head hole in the armor will fit. There are two straps on the sides so cut out 4 small flat rectangles for that. Place them along the sides of her chest. Then place the top layer of the armor on her body and make sure it covers the ends of the straps on the sides.

Now you can add the details in the armor Take a needle tool and poke all the tiny holes in marcy's armor. To make the X, roll out some very thin clay and cut some pieces. Take some super glue and just barely put some on the armor and place one of your pieces diagonally then do the same with the other but cross it over the other one. (I think you could also use thread or very thin wire for this if clay is too finicky)

To make marcy's belt flatten some clay, cut out another long rectangle, make sure it can wrap around the waist over the top of the skirt. Now you can sculpt the shell belt buckle. Start with a flat square and use your knife tool to cut it in a zig zag jagged way on the top and bottom. Then carve an M into the shell. Wrap the belt around the waist and glue the shell belt buckle on top. Now just poke some holes along the belt.

Marcy wouldn't be complete without her trusty journal and crossbody bag. To make the journal roll your clay out very flat and cut out some rectangles for the cover pieces. Mine are about 3/4 of an inch long. Now cut out a slightly thicker rectangle to make the pages of the journal. Doesn't have to be perfect you will cut into it later. Next cut out a long thin rectangle for the spine of the journal. Now place one of your back cover piece down flat, place your pages on top of it, then put the front cover on top. Now cut into the pages piece with a small knife tool to make the lines for the pages. Once that is done you can go the extra mile and add all of Marcy's post it notes that stick out of it. To make those I cut out some itty bitty rectangles and squares and precisely placed them between the pages.

Now for the shoulder bag. start with a small clay ball and make it flatter and mold it til you have a rounded square. Then roll some clay flat and cut out a rectangle with rounded edges. Place it over the rounded square. Now roll out some clay very thin and cut the pieces to make the edging of the bag. Look at your reference images and see how the edges go around the bag, then place them along the sides and on the edge of the flat top of the bag. Now make a flat oval shape and place it on top of the bag's flap. For the strap of the bag, cut out a very long thin rectangle like a piece of ribbon and glue one end of it to side of the bag. Wait for it to dry for about 15-20 minutes and then wrap it around marcy and make sure its the length you want then glue the other end of the strap to the other side of the bag (You could probably also use elastic or ribbon for this if clay is too difficult)

For the marshmallow keychain it's pretty simple. just three tiny circle glued together, and a tiny cylinder a the bottom. Wait for it to dry and then glue it to the bottom of the bag.

To make Marcy's head roll out a sphere. Study your reference photos especially the character model sheet, to make sure the scale of the head compared to the body looks about right. Let it dry a little bit for about 20 minutes. When it's somewhat dry but still moldable, shove the wooden dowel about halfway into the head. Make sure your dowel is long enough for there to be a neck. DO NOT glue the head down yet. Keeping it separate will allow you to put the cape on much easier.

Now for the face, this is just gonna be a lot of trial and error. Again, study your reference photos and maybe take a photo of it and digitally draw your expression on the head so you know what you're going for before you carve it. I had to go through about 5 heads before I got the expression just right. The others were quite wonky but a good learning experience. For the nose take a tiny ball of clay and glue it just below the middle of the face to where it looks about right under the eyes and mouth. For the ears make some small circles, lightly smush them against the sides of the face and glue them on about where you think they should go.

To make Marcy's right arm, cut an 8 inch piece of armature wire and poke it all the way through the side of marcy's chest just above the straps of the armor. Then bend it into the pose you're going for and trim down the excess. Keep in mind the hand is going to add some extra length.

Roll out some clay into a long cylinder. cut two pieces. about 1 and a half inch each. Then take a needle tool and poke a hole right through the cylinders. Dip your needle in hot water so this works better. Now you can slide them right onto the arm. Use water and your hands to smooth out everything and make the elbow more pointy. Now to make the sleeve of her T-shirt, roll out some flat clay, cut out a small rectangle. Wrap it around the shoulder area and manipulate it to look like a shirt sleeve.

Now for Marcy's right hand, which will be making a fist. First roll out a small ball of clay and then roll it into a cylinder, flatten the top quite a bit, and then make 4 slits with tiny scissors to make the fingers. Then separate the fingers. Now round them a bit by rolling them in between your actual fingers. Then cut the clay fingers off the rest of the clay hand. Look at your reference images once again and decide how you the fingers must be bent and the position of the thumb when making a fist. Now glue the fingers back on the hand except for the thumb. Very lightly press them together and bend the fingers all at once into the fist pose. Then glue the thumb towards the side of the hand and bend it into the rest of the fist. Let it dry a bit, then poke a whole in the wrist place a dot of glue in it and carefully slide it onto the arm wire.

Now that you've got marcy's arm and fist, it's time to make her crossbow. Flatten some clay, cut out a rectangle, measure it against the arm to see if the length feels right. Then take a piece of wire and press it in lightly to make an imprint for where the arrow will sit. Then roll out some clay and coil it at the end to make the swirls on the sides of the crossbow. Do this twice, then glue it to the rectangle. Let it dry, then glue it to the arm. Now make some straps that go around the arm and into the crossbow.

Marcy's hair is the most difficult part of the project. Don't start molding the hair on your head piece right away. Use a spare sphere to test out different methods on. Now to be honest I'm not entirely sure I managed to sculpt the hair. There's no exact shapes that were used here it was just blobs of clay that I molded onto the head and smoothed out til it looked accurate. I wish you luck!

For Marcy's left arm, it's basically the same method as the right arm.

For Marcy's left hand it's also basically the same method as the right hand, except this one will not be making a fist, but be holding her journal. So before bending the fingers, slide the hand onto the end of the arm wire and place the journal in her hand. Lightly bend the fingers to see how the fingers cradle around the book. Don't glue the journal down until it is painted later.

Take out your wooden circle. pinpoint where Marcy is going to stand and draw some x's on the circle where her boots go. cut 2 pieces of armature wire that are about half an inch long and carefully shove them into the front of marcy's boots poking holes in the bottom of them. Don't shove them all the way through just about halfway through. Now cut 2 pieces of wire that are about 3/4 of an inch long and shove them about halfway inside the back of marcy's boots so they go up the leg a bit. These wires are going to secure marcy to the base rather than just relying on super glue which wouldn't work very well. now take the wires out and put some super glue in the holes of the boots. Then insert the wires once again. Now that the wires are in, stand marcy up on the circle. The wires will make her stand much taller, but don't worry they're going to be trimmed and be inserted into the base. Where the wires are touching the base draw some more x's. Decide on your final placement for the pose. Then take a power drill and drill some tiny holes in the x's so the wires will fit through or take your needle tool and use it like a screwdriver on the wooden circle until you've poked a hole all the way through. Be very careful using the tool either way you choose to do this and grab a parent/guardian for help if you are a minor. Once you have the holes, don't place marcy on the base yet because the landscape of the base has not been sculpted yet.

To sculpt the base, we are not going to be using crayola model magic air dry like the rest of the figure. We will be using regular crayola air dry clay which is heavier than model magic and it's going to be messier while you work with it. So, grab yourself a blob of clay out of the bucket, and make it a flat circle like a cookie. Doesn't have to be perfect. Now spread some super glue on the base, do not get any in the holes. Then place your clay on there and really press it on there hard with your hands. There's probably going to be some excess drooping over the sides of circle so just pull that right off. Let the glue dry for a few minutes.

Now get your hands wet and start molding the base. You can do whatever landscape you want. You have full creativity here. I chose to sculpt a partial island that ends with the rest of the circle with some sand and grass, and some shallow water. This looks like a location in Amphibia called Newtopia where Marcy lives. It's a big city in the middle of a huge bay with shallow water, sand, coral, and shells. So that's what I wanted to make the base look like. I reserved about 75% of the base for the water and used the remaining 25% to sculpt the island/shoreline. For the water area you want to smooth out the clay and press it down pretty hard because it should be pretty thin so the water can rise above it. For the island just take small blob of clay and shape it however you'd like. Just make sure it's a tad taller than the sand where the water will be and try to smooth it out so it makes more of a natural slope where the water comes into contact with it.

Before your base fully dries make sure to turn it upside down and take your needle tool and poke it through the holes you made. And place marcy on it lightly so you know where she will be standing. maybe even carefully press her boots down into the clay a bit to give it the boot imprints where she will perfectly fit. Then take her off. (She may get a little stuck to the base but don't worry just carefully slowly get her out of it.)

When your base is dry, you can now secure Marcy to it and this is where the wires sticking out of her boots will come into play. There may also be slight cracking in your base. Just wet your hands, grab a tiny bit more air dry clay and smooth out the cracks. You could even smooth it out with a bit of model magic as well. It's annoying when this happens but fixable and usually doesn't keep happening once you fix it.

Now, confirm Marcy can stand in the holes you made in the base. If she fits pretty seamlessly, then grab your super glue put some all over the wires on the bottom of the boots, and in the holes, and in the imprint where her boots will go. Place her in the slots snd press down on her boots. If Marcy is levitating above the ground because the wires are too long, just carefully trim them until they fit in the holes and she's touching the ground. Now Marcy is secured to the base. Add a tiny bit of extra clay around/under her boots too and smooth it out with water.

Now that marcy is secured to the base we can finally begin painting! I didn't do this but a coat of paint primer may be a good idea. So for the colors, I wanted to get them as accurate as possible to the character so I had to mix my paints quite a bit until I got the shades I wanted. Oh and acrylic paint can look wildly different when it dries than when it's wet.

You can use normal acrylic white paint for the eyes, but I suggest using an acrylic paint pen since it gives off a nice smooth shiny effect. To apply the paint It's like drawing the paint on. Let that dry and then for the pupils, I reccomend taking a photo of your current figure and digitally drawing them in to see what size and area of the eye they look best in. The pupils can make or break your figure. It's such an important part. After all, eyes are the windows to the soul. To apply the pupils use a dotting stylus tool dipped in black paint for the best results, or you could use the back end of a paintbrush.

You don't have to do this but it really adds some extra flair to the figure if you do. I made several little tiny marine life sculpts to decorate this tiny environment. Some shells, a starfish, a piece of coral, a barnacle, some rocks, grass, and a green mushroom. They're pretty easy sculpts for the most part. The shells are just clay rolled out into thin cylinders and rolled into a spiral. For the starfish I used a knife tool to cut out a star shape and smoothed it out, the barnacle is a ball that you poke a hole into and carve into the sides. The coral was rather tricky though because that has a small wire frame inside that I molded clay around and I used my tweezers to give the coral texture on the outside.

The mushroom on the other hand, was made with hot glue. You see, I wrap a ruler in wax paper, pour out a glob of hot glue on it, turn it upside down let it droop, flip it over again, flip it upside down, flip it back up again, for a few minutes until the glue fully drives and I have a nice bell shape for the mushroom and I made the rest of it with clay. Then I lightly painted it neon green and it has a nice translucent effect.

Once you have the crossbow painted, you can now add the string and arrow. To make the arrow, cut a piece of wire that goes a little longer than the crossbow. Flatten some clay and cut out an arrowhead shape. Poke a hole in the bottom of the arrow, put some glue in it and insert it right in there. Paint the arrowhead grey and the wire reddish brown. now glue it onto the slot on the crossbow. For the string I used some very thin wire I got at Walmart. I think some black thread would also work but wire is the best in this case. Poke holes in the sides of the swirls of the crossbow put some glue in there, insert the wire and angle it then glue it to the middle of the crossbow at the end of the arrow. Do the same for the other side. Now add the fletching of the arrow by cutting some thin clay into 2 oblong trapezoids of sorts. Carve some lines into it to give it a simple feather-like texture. Paint them red and glue both of them on top of the wires at the end of the arrow.

To paint Marcy's journal, mix the colors of paint you'll need and paint the front and back cover reddish brown, the pages light yellow, the spine brown, and the post it notes light blue, pink, grey, and yellow. Now for the stickers. I actually used the tip of some thin wire to paint these microscopic details on.

For the marshmallow keychain, paint its little :3 face on using a wire or very thin paintbrush

Now it is time for the water along the shoreline that Marcy is stepping in. Make sure all your tiny environment details are glued down, the sand is painted how you like it, and Marcy's boot in the water zone is secure, and fully painted. To make the water, this is where the Elmer's blue glue comes in. the glitter glow in the dark teal glue is going to add a great sparkling water effect and bonus it glows in the dark! How cool is that? You can use the glow in the dark glitter glue on its own but problem is it's a little too glittery and opaque so it's going to cover up all those wonderful details we made. But, if you mix it with Elmer's clear blue glue, you get a nice translucent look and can see the marine life through it just like how the water looks in the show.

Mix the glue together and start with one thin coat on the base. Spread it with a foam paintbrush and submerge part of Marcy's boot and the details in the glue. It doesn't look like much now but keep applying coats after it dries. You don't want to spread a huge glob of it on all at once because the bottom may stay pretty squishy and you want this dry and hard so it lasts. Spread it with a foam paintbrush and submerge the details in the glue.

Roll out some clay very thin until its about 1mm thick on some wax paper. Cut out a cape pattern using your knife tool. This is like an elongated trapezoid basically. Don't peel the cape off the wax paper just yet. Instead, cut the wax paper around the cape, pick it up, poke a hole through the wax paper near the top of the cape where it will wrap around the neck. Take marcy's head off and put the wax paper on her. Now manipulate the cape to how you'd like it to flow around her. This way it won't get stuck to marcy's back while it's drying. She's protected by the wax paper. Once you have it how you like, allow it to dry for a while. then pull it off the wax paper so the other side can dry. Put it back on Marcy and make your final adjustments before it fully dries.

Now that you've got Marcy's cape made, you can work on her hood and the fluffy fur lining of her cape. Flatten some clay, cut out a circle, and mold it into a hood shape. Look at your reference photos and a real hood to guide you. When you have a hood, now you can make the fur lining by making many little teardrop shaped pieces of clay and putting them together under the hood. Smooth out with water.

Also make the shell, by making 4 3 gradually size decreasing circles, glue them together and glue a tiny clay cone shape to the bottom.

For Marcy's green hair clip, cut out a tiny triangle, use your tweezers to make the hole in the middle of it. Let it dry then carefully glue it on the hair.

Now it's time to gloss the figure so it has a cool sheen effect and preserves the clay and paint job so it doesn't crack. Apply a coat of matte mod podge on Marcy's clothes, skin, crossbow, the sand and grass, the journal, and her bag.

Apply a coat of glossy mod podge on Marcy's hair, shell belt buckle, her eyes, and the coral piece. These components look very good when they're glossed.

Now it's time to glue the cape on. Take the head off the neck, finish the neck by applying some clay on the wooden dowel so you don't have that wood texture, let it dry and paint it. Then, apply some super glue along the shoulders and put the cape on. Then glue the head back onto the neck.

Apply a coat of matte mod podge to the cape.

Whew, finally after 3 and half weeks of meticulous sculpting work, painting, and trial and error, we have the finished figure. I am very pleased with how it came out. Looks very accurate to the show's artstyle and I made sure to include every intricate detail of her design. Now, she can be displayed proudly. I also staged some photography for extra fun outside by a pool to make it look like her environment in Amphibia.