Sculpter, I hardly know her

For ages I have been threatening to try to sculpt my own puppets for my stop mo. Last weekend when I was out with a friend I found some Van Aken clay on sale, so I scooped it up. Then I promptly forgot all about it. well, not forgot as much as was too nervous to try to do anything with it.

So today I was restless and listless and had a really hard time concentrating on anything, so I decided to take a walk. That walk took me past Oregon Art Supply, a very very dangerous place for my bank account. It suffers casualties every time I go in. Today I was good, but I did see they had a cheap extruder and flat roller, which inspired me to bite the bullet (and all sorts of clams) and dig in.

When I got home I dug out my sorry attempt at an armature. Now I am close to being ready to give it a go. Just gotta get up the courage to fail now.
Wish me luck...I'm goin in.

EDIT: OK, after about 2 hours, I barely have a head. I realized I can't use white clay for eyes. They will mush if I try to move them, or the eyelids, or the eyebrows. So I now need to either go to Michaels and look for doll eyes or Sculpy to make n bake them.

Here are the humiliating results so far:

Yeah, I am giving up for the night. I could make hair and build up the body, but I feel like I am saturated at the moment. Tomorrow I gotta go in to work for a little bit, but I may continue this afterwards, given I find enough chocolate and Pepsi and maybe a movie or two to keep me sitting there. When your sculpting skills suck it is easy to lose patience with it. I may not have the temperament for this kind of puppet making. Or the fine motor skills.