Step 3: marking out the disk

Next I need to determine where the figure will fit on my disk. With these pieces I need to begin at the top (usually the head of the figure) and slowly work my way down. I try to determine where this top point should be so that as the piece gets taller and draws metal in from the edges everything fits in the end. I'd hate to have a wonderful figure going and then discover I don't have enough metal to finish the leggs or something like that. I usually try to leave too much metal. That way I can simply trim off the excess. In this image you can see where I've used a marker to indicate the head of the figure (high point) and roughly indicate the body.