Snugglepuss sculpting skills WIP

[Snugglepuss]

Lo all,

After lurking around for quite a while and adding the odd post ive decided to actually post something of reasonable substance. I've been expanding my hobby lately as usually ive just been gaming and painting with only GW miniatures but i have been priced out of building and painting gaming armies. I have however decided to try the small scale miniature painting as well as sculpture, it seems to be cheaper atm and with companies like kingdom death producing awesome single minis the pull of making little display pieces is hard.

Anyway ive done a little bit of sculpting an was looking for some advice, ive been using milliput and greenstuff but can't seem to get it really smooth like in some of the sculpts ive seen on this site, example : http://www.coolminiornot.com/307001 i can get it reasonable smooth but not the the same degree of the muscle and armour in the link.

below is the start of my WIP sculpt, any opinions or tips would be helpful

 

[cassar]

for smoothing green stuff (im no expert)i believe that water and brushes can be useful in achieving the smooth finish you want, i can say that the technique definately works with milliput as does the ultra fine wet n dry sand paper.

 

[TrystanGST]

Yep - water (saliva/vaseline) is your friend. Just make sure if you use something oil based to wash it off first. Green stuff doesn't sand well, but if you mix it with a bit of milliput you can fix that. I usually run about 50/50 GS/Milliput, but that's just a personal preference.

 

[Snugglepuss]

Thanks for the advice, water and brush got the surface looking pretty smooth

 

[Garshnak]

Doesn't Kingdom Death use 3dmodel sculpts to produce their models (via 3d printing and so on)?

Watch your base anatomy there friend. Even though you're not making something human, it's still based on human anatomy, so the muscles and bones need to be accounted for. It's still a little early, and thin, so there's room for it. But for instance there needs to be just a little more muscle atop the upper leg, instead of it going perfectly straight. Which it shouldn't be doing, unless your going for really stylized, but that requires quite some skill to pull off right and then I would be saying: "Don't challenge yourself too much at first, get the basics right first"

Just a heads up. Proportions look good though, not sure where the knee on his left leg is though.

 

[Snugglepuss]

@ Garsh, aye im still in the process of learning basic anatomy (going to get some books on it) im hoping drawing humanoids will help with that . The limbs will hopefully bulk up a little bit with the addition of clothing, straps and braces etc, thanks for the advice.

Decided to work on the torso today, added some straps and armour plates left putting buckles on till tommorow although was unsure as to whether i should have done the buckles at the same time as the straps.

View attachment 13581

 

[Snugglepuss]

well another update, thought id wait till it was a bit more along.
im adding bits here an there when i get time and i hope with the armour buildup on the legs they are starting to look a bit more anatomically correct.

View attachment 13713

 

[cassar]

looking a bit more like it question : are you happy with the thickness of the torso seems really skinney personally i would fill in the straps so the torso is flush then re apply the straps to the thicker body, the hips should be okay if you add a big belt.

 

[Kris370]

seems really skinney

I dunno, is it female? Reminds me of a big sister from bioshock 2

Kris

 

[cassar]

I dunno, is it female? Reminds me of a big sister from bioshock 2

Kris

dont see any boobage lol

 

[Kris370]

dont see any boobage lol

Cos then she'd float! Durr! lol

 

[Snugglepuss]

Aha Kris gets a cookie, i am trying to sculp a big sister from bioshock with a few alterations.
can't be going too far wrong if it reminds someone of a big sis

@ Cassar, they dont have the boobage because they havnt grown them yet, think the sisters are supposed to be the 10-16 year age bracket or something even though they are 6 foot tall.

heres a pic

View attachment 13716

 

[cassar]

Ahh now all has become clear, well done matey spot on so far, almost exactly spot on, keep up the good work.

 

[Kris370]

Yeyyyyyyy!

 

[khavor]

Yep, seeing what you're doing it all makes sense now. I agree with Trys. vaseline and / or saliva are your friends to get a smooth finish. I usually put a LITTLE vaseline on the tool when you start sculpting (not much, just poke it straight in and use a finger to wipe of all the excess). then as it starts to get more sticky I'll lick it to keep evrything going smoothly. If it gets to a point where the green stuff seems to want to stick to the tool more than the mini, reapply the vaseline. (Wow, that all sounds really crude). Be careful though, if you get too much vaseline on the model, the next layer won't stick and you'll have to clean it with something that can cut the vaseline.

Second is to realize that green stuff tends to "bounce back" until it cures. It expands for a couple hours and turns your nice flat surfaces and sharp corners to stay puft marshmallow. To get good sharp corners you have to either work it until it starts to get hard (about 1 1/2 hours), or if you get the shape you want quick, set it aside and come back later to smooth and square off the corners again.