Dear Manufacturers of modeling clay in the United States,
(Some words have been bolded so you can skim this and still get the general idea.)
Here's the pitch- My name is Don Carlson and I am one of many artists based in Portland, Oregon. I am looking for an eco-friendly modeling clay in stores in the United States as an alternative to the greasy, sticky, and heavily pigmented clay already offered here. So far in the two years I've searched and waited, I have been unable to find any.
Many companies outside of the United States sell a vegetable-based modeling clay called "plastilina" (Jovi , Giotto Patplume, Chenille Crafts Alpino), but none of those clays are available in the United States in many colors, much less on the shelves of craft stores. That's a shame, because these clays are very lightweight, which lowers the shipping costs . The low weight factor alone would be extremely popular with clay animators, sculptors, and illustrators and the combination of qualities unique to vegetable based clay would spark a resurgence in American clay animation. The low cost of manufacturing the vegetable-based clay with readily available, organic ingredients would allow for a lower price per pound at both cost and retail levels. The softness of the clay would make it easy for children to mix by hand and the color-safe dyes would make their parents happy.
I see an unfilled niche here...Why are U.S. clay companies slow to fill it while companies in Spain, Mexico, and Italy are cashing in on the Eco-friendly art craze?
My goal is to get something similar to Jovi... but made in the U.S.A.
Would you be interested in formulating a vegetable-based clay in, say, 20 colors? It would sell like hotcakes in this Eco-friendly, green-minded country! I know that clay animators would buy a ton of it...Many stop motion artists around the country stopped using clay in the mid-90's because it's so greasy and the pigments come off on their hands. They just got sick of it after awhile, and many developed some form of cancer from standing too close while mixing it in a double boiler. With vegetable-based clays that use plant dyes to color them, none of these problems are present and it leads to a wonderful sculpting and animating experience (and kids love it!) The consistency is wonderfully waxy and smooth...The most consistently smooth clay I've ever played with. I've never had it go crumbly on me.
I suggested the eco clay idea two years ago to a clay factory in California, but they didn't seem interested. Since then, more companies have cropped up (I found one in China) and with their versions of the "vegetable plastilina". Maybe now the company I spoke to would be interested, especially with everything going green and the FDA regulating the ingredients that can be used (believe me, they won't let clay be made of petroleum, which is not a renewable resource because it cannot be exhausted, if they decide that oil-based clay is bad for the environment)!
I'm probably thinking a little bit in the future here, but I see a very big need for Earth-friendly modeling clay coming. If you're the first in the United States to jump on it, you could make a mint. I would try making the stuff myself, but know nothing about chemistry and can't find even a generic recipe for eco clay so I don't even know what's in it. Usually the MSDS .pdf gives some clue, but I found nothing specific.
As an animator speaking for all clay animators in the U.S., we need a clay we can rely on, so I'm more or less pleading for an alternative to petroleum-based clay!
Best Wishes,
Don "think outside the wrapper" Carlson
Healthy clay sounds great. Do you know about how many clay animators are in the US? Are there stats online from clay forums, etc.?
ReplyDeleteHow about:
• Make a formula.
• Show the test videos of how great it is to work with and exactly why.
• Announce Don Carlson small batch clay manufacturing on Kick Starter.
If your handmade product price ends up too costly people could just prolly order from Europe. Shipping costs these days aren't so bad in small amounts?
Or for Portland, why not set up a UK Clay Courier to bring a case next time they come in from there to work on a Laika project? You could take orders from Portland artists and pay a courier to bring a filled case over to fulfill them?
Since posting that, I have located a Jovi dealer in the next town over. Her distributor is in Florida, and she can order me anything I want in sizes up to .75lb blocks per color. 15 colors are offered in a kit, but there are more available in the catalog.
ReplyDeleteI think the Jovi will do what I want, so I won't need to special order the Newplast. Like Newplast, Jovi also can handle high termperatures without melting- as I found out when I used my heat gun on it.
Not sure what is in the Jovi, but just for fun I'm going to try to make it. Not with the goal to sell it, given all the liability a company takes on when they market a toy- which I've been warned about and is the main reason you don't see more startups making their own clay.
What I'm doing at the moment is looking at what might be in Jovi- by looking at the original recipe for modeling clay and translating those ingredients to a greener alternative. For example, plant matter is made up cellulose, which is the equivalent of collagen, which is the connective tissue in animals. Cellulose is a powder you can get as a dietary supplement. Because it comes from plants, I'm starting there as a possible source of vegetable matter. If you fermented actual vegetables into a clay, it would rot. On the other hand, there's Biomass, which I haven't found too much about- but it also comes from vegetables.
There are other clays that are made from cellulose, which gave me a point for cross reference with Jovi's plastalina.
What stuck out to me, was the 33% more volume of Jovi than other clays. When I looked up cellulose, I got my answer: cellulose comprises about 33 percent of all vegetable matter. I think it was just a clever wording on the part of Jovi, but I don't think the two mentions of the 33% are a coincidence.
To make clay, you need these things:
Some sort of oil,
Some sort of stearic acid,
Some sort of wax,
and some sort of binder.
So a recipe that I can think of off the top of my head would be...
5 percent olive oil or linseed oil
10 percent cocoa butter or shea butter
25 percent jojoba wax (for a more brittle wax, you could use soy. I'm not sure that a harder wax (short chain carbons) is needed, other than to make a harder clay. But just in case, if I can't find jojoba, I'll use something else)
60 percent dietary or microcrystalline cellulose
With this recipe, it's still "mostly vegetable matter", although only chemically. The ingredients are all natural though, which satisfies that part of it. The wax component could even be beeswax- in which case you would want to start with that, then add the softer constituents (shea butter/cocoa butter, olive oil, then cellulose, which gives the clay body and prevents it from sticking to your fingers).
ReplyDeleteNote: Corn starch comes from vegetables, so you might not need cellulose. I find it interesting that the latter gives a plant strength.
I have made the ingredient guesses based on the commonalities with petroleum based modeling clays (including the stearic acid and long chain carbons, as well as the need for a binder). I don't know for sure how well it will work, but it should work, given that it's chemically right, and the plant-based dyes would be what you'd use to color it with. What I am not clear on is whether or not you need short chains of carbon molecules- but cellulose is heat resistant, so I'm going with that for the binder. Another reason I don't think there are any short chain molecules in Jovi clay is because it is always soft. That's a property of long chains, which allow for things to flex and stretch. Starch has short chains of glucose in it, so I would think that would make the clay more brittle than cellulose would.
So, there you go- mostly made of vegetables, if somewhat figurative in the definition of "vegetable matter".
Pretty neat, any health food store should have all this stuff, except for the wax, which, as I said, could be beeswax (probably unbleached to prevent discoloration of the clay).
Sources: All over Google, looking for chemicals and properties that appear in more than one search. Lots of cross-referencing- On any given day I have 20 or 30 windows open, and several instances of a text editor to take notes.
Hey, man! You could start your own business with this idea. Don's Green Clay!
ReplyDeleteHi Jon,
ReplyDeleteYeah, I looked into it and found that it's just too expensive to produce my own clay. The ingredients alone are about $20 to make 1 pound. If I wrapped each pound of clay in plastic and sold it at $3.00, I'd be losing $17.00 on every pack! And that's before the cost of distribution, a license, liability insurance, etc.
Factories can afford to make a profit because they buy the ingredients in bulk at cost from the manufacturers- not retail. I am not a factory, and wholesalers won't sell to an individual. At this point, I'm afraid the whole idea is beyond my financial means. However, by studying how clay is made, I can quickly fix a store-bought pack if it's too crumbly, soft, or greasy. If it is legal to modify a product and then resell it, I could look at that option- "refurbished clay". *lol* But that's a gray area I'm not eager to get into. The last thing I'd want is a lawsuit from the leading manufacturer of modeling clay. The stuff is good in the first place- that's why I buy it- it's just crumbly from time to time, possibly from being cooked for too long. It also has a problem with being smoothed with oil. I think there's too much powder in it and not enough wax. There are ways of repairing it, but you'd have to add special wax and powder-which is not readily available, and which is the part of the equation I can handle because I found it locally... The wax I'm talking about is something you can sculpt with on its own- it just has no pigment. Like I said, though, it's $10/pound... And even then, it's still not "vegan" clay.
I'm not gonna lie, I'm a little discouraged- but knowing that the existing clay which is easy to find in almost any art supply store can be modified, that is heartening. The whole point of this was to have non-crumbly, easy-to-melt clay that I can animate with. All I really want to do at the moment is make another film and release some of this built-up imagination that has been on the back burner while trying to figure all this stuff out.
Hmmmm... I miscalculated a bit, there. It's more like $6 per pound to make the clay. Still a bit up and out, though. Maybe I can save money using another formula that doesn't have wax in it. Not giving up, just taking a breather...
ReplyDelete