Why is it so hard to find any videos or detailed books, on how to modle standing people out of gumpast?? All of the ones I have found, are either sitting, laying, whatever..but not standing!! I would love for some to tell me where to find one...thanks

I wonder if it's because it would follow the same logic for a laying down person, you'd just stick a long kebab stick through it to make them stand up?

I wish it were that easy. Any maybe it is if I were doing it right. But it hasn't yet. I tried dowels, sticks, toothpicks, the gumpastw/fondant, just falls off.

I just put kebab sticks in the legs.

I just put kebab sticks in the legs.

Have you tried inserting a lollipop stick (cut to size) through the figurine, diagonally through one of the legs? I'm thinking that a dowel would be too thick and that a toothpick may not be strong enough of a support. HTH!

maybe you just need to wait for it to harden a little first. I made a scarecrow out of fondant with some tylose added and used a skewer to stand it up on my cake. It was very sturdy. Of course since it was a scarecrow, I wanted the skewer to show, but it would have been easy enough to hide it and stick it further down into the cake.

Come to think of it, I also made a standing up mario and that's exactly how I did it.

I have the same exact problem! i was asked and committed to a baby shower cake and was told it was a prego figure on the cake. Lesson learned: ask more ?s. I said yes and the example pic comes via text and it's a standing woman.... I am on panic mode. And to top it off they got the picture from Pink Cake Box so they are expecting super high quality. I feel like I committed to more than I can handle. I am gonna try a practice figure w/a skewer and hopefully it works.

I too have been having a hard time finding videos on this. I just made a Wizard of Oz cake for my daughters party, and the characters.....well lets just say I had to make some sacrifices. I'm not good at this stuff yet, lol.

I tried modeling chocolate, but the recipe we used....the modeling chocolate just wouldn't stay hard enough for the characters to stand on their own.

So we settled for rice krispy characters covered in fondant. They too still didn't want to stand so nicely with toothpicks in their legs, and they were short stubby characters.

if anyone has a video, or knows where I can buy a video DVD on making characters with modeling chocolate/gumpaste/fondant, please let me know.

What I have figured out so far, as I am not an expert on this is:
Give the figure plenty of time to dry
Make the figure as light as possible
Check it for stability while you can still adjust the angles of feet, legs, torso, etc....
Insert skewer/lollipop stick/dowel into it before it dries
One of the above into each leg tends to work better than just one in one leg
Dry it standing in the position needed (sticking the skewer into a block of foam has worked for me0 or dry on a bed of flour/cornstarch/powdered sugar to keep the back from flattening.
If possible, don't put it on the cake until the cake is at its final destination and set down in its final place.

Hopefully, my hard learned lessons will help you.

If you don't need them to be edible you can put a foam ball in the head to make them lots lighter.
The key definetly is lots of drying time - I learnt that the hard way.

OK, I just checked marzipan magic, and it says: stand the body upright and push a piece of dry spaghetti down through the neck, leaving 3cm showing at the top".

However in another book, there is an animal standing up like a human, and it says:
push spaghetti through the body leaving 2cm showing at the top, and push a short piece into the hip (I think they mean as if it was a barbie doll, sort of on the side if the body were shaped like a doll with no legs). Shape the legs, then push a piece of spaghetti down through the centre of each leg, leaving a little showing at the end of the leg, but not the top. Add the shoes. Attach the legs at the hip.

Yet another part of that same book has a human, and it says:
Make legs, push a length of spaghetti through the centre of each leg leaving 2cm showing, apply some glue and push the legs and spaghetti into the shoes. Make the body, then push spaghetti down through the neck and out at the other end. It also says to use some spaghetti to attach each boob! Ensure that the arm is resting on the body for support, so that you can push spaghetti down from teh wrist through the elbow and anchor it at the hip.

Hope that helps!

Thanks to all of you for your advise!! I will try them all to see what works..

I put skewers through each of the legs and stick it into styrofoam. Put a short piece of toothpick into the legs that sticks up into the torso. Let dry a bit.

Add the torso and arms. Put a skewer into the neck that will go up through the head. Add head. Let dry before adding hair.

Btw, aine2 (extra icing on the cake) has a tutorial for a standing Victorian Lady.