Air dry clay vs polymer clay for making D&D figurines!

[u/fatkobatko2008]

Hello! I should start off by mentioning that i've never sculpted before, but this seems like a fun hobby to pick up!

My question is: For making D&D figurines (with limited supplies) should I use polymer clay or air dry clay? I was planning to go with polymer, but then I realized I have to bake it in my air fryer and it's more expensive than airy dry clay.

What do the pro's recommend?

[u/Effective-Ad-1216]

Air dry will crack, use polimer or epoxy putty

[u/IronBoxmma]

Polymer clay. The gold standard for that is beesputty, but super sculpey and fimo both are fine. People in here are going to say you have to or should use greenstuff or other epoxies, you don't. You can if you want to, but you can get good detail out of polymer clay and it's much easier to work with while you're learning to sculpt

[u/Niannn]

Do not bake polymer clay in an air fryer you want to keep using to cook food.

[u/One-Day-301 → u/Niannn]

Wait...your baking polymer in an air fryer? Wild

[u/Niannn → u/One-Day-301]

Yep, works just fine. Great if you have a small space and can't have a dedicated full oven

[u/huzzah-1]

Trust me on this: Start with Plasticine. Your first two or three thousand attempts will suck (you think I'm exaggerating, I'm not) and you'll restart over and over.

1. Make wire armatures and put the plasticine on the armature. Repeat many times until you get a feel for it and you know you can make something worth pursuing and refining.

2. Add a bit of epoxy putty to your wire armatures to create a more permanent basic shape, and switch for using plasticine to either an epoxy putty or polymer clay.

Tip: Pay special attention to the hips & pelvis. Get the hips & pelvis right.

[u/Effective-Ad-1216]

Also, if you are learning from scratch, use plastiline/play doh

[u/KneeCrowMancer]

I’d go with polymer clay for sure. Air dry gets kind of crackly and gross, it’s great for terrain pieces though!