Some WIPs

So, once again I haven't uploaded anything to this blog in a while, but here are two projects. The first is a complete sculpt with greystuff and greenstuff meant to represent a dark eldar archon (GW's game system, my original model). I was just unhappy with GW's archon model because A) there is no female version, and I wanted my evil forces to be led by a woman for a change, and B) he looks terribly static which I think is unsuitable for such a combat oriented character. The second mini is a haemonculus made with spare parts (including some graciously donated by a friend of mine); the interesting bit is the hump on his back containing internal organs and sprouting extra limbs. Creepy little bastard.

They still need some more detailing, after which they'll be painted.

Merry Christmas (or whatever you're celebrating this time of year), since I can't promise that nothing more will get done before the season's upon us.

After a long hiatus...

...I'm kind of back. Not with any pictures, but I just want to do some CPR on this blog.

(Who am I kidding, right? Nobody reads this anyway, as far as I know. :) )

I've been doubting my own sculpting skills (now, was that not the case, I'd say artistry - see what I mean?). I've had a couple of ideas lately that seemed good at the time but didn't look good enough to even complete when committed to clay.

So, I've got a (mostly) free week to be productive and to prove to myself that there is some kind of point in doing this. In me doing this. By the weekend I'm going to upload something. Something good, dammit!

So, now I've put some pressure on myself...

The Headed Hunter

The Headless Hunter has now become the Headed Hunter.

First off: I hate grey stuff. I bought it to try out and indeed it acts a lot like green stuff, but it says "non-sticky" on the packaging. Now, this is a problem. The putty sticks more to my fingers that to the scalp to which I was trying to affix it. So, that's why there are two kinds of putty in the images below.

The first pic is of the face before the hair, the second is of the first braid, and then follows shots from all manner of angles of the finished result. I decided on giving him cornrows for a less Roman legionnaire/USMC, more tribal look. I've always enjoyed the idea of GW's space marines as being drawn from feral humans on technologically regressed planets and I wanted to give him an unusual hairstyle still good for a warrior.

Just to note, I've myself had rasta braids before and after doing this I long to have that kind of hair again. Enjoy the pics.

The Headless Hunter, part 2

The headless hunter has a face coming up. Doing Pebbles made me a little more confident about doing more human faces. This one actually looks fairly naturalistic for being my first non-monstrous face.

He still needs some kind of hair and/or beard to give him some personality, but we're getting there...

Contessa Iljana, the angry redhead

A somewhat chesty (I should take photos of her in profile) redhead with a gun. And a chainsword. Nuff said.

In other news, I got a deviantART page based on a recommendation from a dear friend of mine. We'll see how it goes.

Ogre face

Meet Pebbles, mercenary ogre and currently in the employ of a shady band of lizardmen searching the ruins of Mordheim in the game of the same name. See, Pebbles isn't particularly picky about his employers, and lizardmen probably don't taste very good anyways so he finds them better employers than snacks. Pebbles's head was sculpted in the space of about 25 minutes. The paint job's old and horrible and is going to be redone when I find the time. More pics then, although I don't know when I'll find the time.

Preview: The Contessa and her guard

The main number here is the trigger happy girl in the middle - the Contessa. The troopers are there for dramatic effect. They need a little bit more work, but the Contessa is ready for painting.

'I'LL BE BACK, SCUM!'

Temperance

Okay, technically she's not a sculpt since it's just a regular Battlefleet Gothic model from GW's line, but I wanted to show her off. It's Temperance, the Dauntless class light cruiser that the heroes of my upcoming Rogue Trader RPG campaign are going to tour the galaxy (or at least the Koronus Expanse) in.

Kairye Seeker finished sculpt

Here is the finished Kairye Seeker miniature (except perhaps some smoothing down with sandpaper, although I think that I got most of that done already). Now I have to paint her, and I'm more than a little curious as to how that'll turn out. The pics below are front, back, close up (as close as my camera will let me anyways) and side view.

The boots needed some last minute alterations; the left one didn't seem to be the same hight and was actually way too short! The putty isn't even properly cured in the pics, since I was in a hurry but wanted to take them to write this post while out, although I still ended up writing it from the comfort of my own bed after coming home again.

I ended up reworking the face a lot since I posted the first pic, especially the mouth and the eyes. I think it might be passable at this stage, although that remains to see after painting.

One note: Green stuff really looks horrible when you take a file or sandpaper to it. For the Headless Hunter I've decided to work in milliput, which's easier to work on with files/sandpaper (as an aside, he might not stay headless too much longer now...). Hopefully the horrible patches won't show up as nasty textures after painting.

More pics when I've had time to paint her.

The Headless Hunter

While waiting for futher details on Kairye Seeker to set (more pics when that's all done) I started yet another project...

First a history lesson.

Games Workshop at one point released a 54mm scale game called Inquisitor. It never caught on half as much as it deserved, all because of that in spite of an excellent concept most gamers just weren't fond of the scale. The game's RPG-esque rules gave a great deal of freedom as to characters and concepts, but the line of models was only about a dozen to begin with, making it a fairly daunting prospect to represent characters other than the sample characters in the game. One such sample character was Brother-Captain Artemis of the Deathwatch. For a guy named after a Greek godess, he was fairly kick-ass. In fact, space marines were outlawed in most gaming circles as far as Inquisitor was concerned. Being a power armour nerd and into gaming even back then, I obviously got the model as soon as I could. In my defence, I was grooming it to represent my psychic Inquisitor instead, but my gaming group dropped Inquisitor and I left the model half finished.

Until now, that is. I found him again a while back and thought about bringing it back as a mascot for my current smaller-scale-but-similarily-armoured war games army (space marines, naturally).

My premise: I want to make a regular trooper/veteran and not a captain. I'm also missing some parts, most notably his original sword (chopped it of to create a halberd originally) and his head (!). This provides me with ample opportunity to sculpt a larger scale face and a combat blade (basically, a cross between a machete and Crocodile Dundee's "that's no' a 'noif, this is a 'noif". The details on his armour are also filed off, so I have to sculpt new chest plate adornments and such. Of course the whole miniature will be repainted in the black and silver of the Deathwatch once it's all done.

On the left is a pic of what parts I found laying around (including the addition of a plastic shield-shaped ornament snatched from a GW sprue that makes a nice, ornate 'belt buckle') and below you can see the armature for the blade. I will attach this to the arm for sculpting and add pics once that's done.

Space Marine Librarian conversion

Some slightly grainy pics of a space marine librarian (a psyker from GW's game Warhammer 40,000, popularly referred to as 40k) that I sculpted details on this past weekend.

Mostly for 40k players: I used parts from several GW kits (including the Space Wolf Pack, Dark Angels Ravenwing, Command Squad and Tactical Squad kits). The conversion is really simple to do and I finished the posing and making the armature for the 'skull fireball' probably in less than half an hour, and I am slow. Some of the parts were old leftovers from other projects, hence the coats of paint present on notably the backpack and the spell casting hand. The staff started life as a plastic toothpick. These are by the way great for any kind of weapon shafts and staffs and I always keep a bunch laying around so I'm not shafted when in need (yes, that was a bad pun - so drown me!).

On the sculpting side the most challenging part was making the robes look like actual cloth and flow like caught in a draft. I imagine him standing in a creepy breeze while performing his sorcery.

The arcane spiral pattern on his staff also was no picnic to get looking smooth while still keeping some definition. I ended up going for the feeling of carved wood (most GW librarian models have arcane patterns sculpted onto their armaments rather than carved into them, but I like how the effect turned out). I'm curious as to how it will end up when properly painted...

More pics when I've had time to paint it...

Kairye Seeker

To start off this minature sculpting blog (to anyone who's actually reading: Hello...!) I'm uploading a picture of a current work in progress (also my first miniature sculpted completely from scratch).

The scale is about equivalent to 25mm wargames (e.g. GW games etc) and the material is Kneadite/Green stuff over a garden wire armature. The character depicted is an old fantasy RPG character portrayed by my friend Erika Hoffman (prolific artist and designer who's eventually going to make a living in a the creative world were most of us will always be but enthusiastic dilettantes *hats off*) after an illustration done by her. This sculpt is a project I've been at on and off for a long time, what with university life and so on taking its toll.

More pics when I've sculpted proper details on her.