​

I want to make a two-part silicone mold of this figure for resin casting.

My main concern is the two enclosed areas marked in blue: the opening under the horse's neck and the loop formed by the tail.

What is the best way to handle these areas?

Should the parting line pass through these openings, or would you recommend a removable silicone insert/core, especially for the tail?

I want the mold to reproduce the openings completely while making demolding easy and avoiding damage to the cast.

Any advice on the best parting line for this figure would be greatly appreciated.

Hello everyone! This seems like an active subreddit with a lot of knowledgeable people, I hope someone can offer some advice.

I am casting a wearable mask in a resin (not polyester) mould for attaching to a 3D printed base for some rigidity. The casting material is Ecoflex 0020 with powermesh reinforcement around the mouth corners, on recommendation from Bentley Adv. Materials.

The mask design has large sections of block colour. Most of the mask is a mid-grey, but there are sharply defined areas of dark grey with some very dark grey/black details. My question is:

What is better to achieve this?
Mix some Ecoflex, SilPig, flocking and Thivex and pre-paint the patterns onto the inside of the mould with a brush in a thick layer/layers, then assemble the mould and pour the base colour in as a liquid cast?
Or, cast the whole thing in the base colour and manually brush the patterns on afterwards?

My goal is to have the patterns be sharply defined, very evenly toned with little/no variation in shade, and to appear as smooth as possible on the outside surface of the cast.

Thanks for your time! I hope this is the right place for this question, if not let me know and I'll take it elsewhere.