I am a sculpting voyeur. I don't do it much myself, but I love to watch other people doing it. And I have just found the coolest page yet for this-- Make Your Own Scuplting Tools.
As I struggled against postprandial Thanksgiving sedation, I found the time to work on some new sculpting tools I got here. The first is ProCreate Epoxy Putty. I'm no expert on epoxy putties, although I've used most of them at some point, and ProCreate has immediately become my favorite. However, this may well be because of the new clay shapers I bought. Mine are a mixture of firm and extra firm, which is definitely better, but both are workable. Anyway, I wound up creating the new shoulder pads for my upcoming Space Marines. Pictures once I get back to my camera...
Hlynrian is a blog from a guy who is sculpting his own armies. He seems pretty early in the process, but I really like his sculpting sites of interest post. That is a commendable objective, to sculpt and cast your own army, and I wish him lots of luck!
So, after dinking around with sculpting and casting for many years, I have finally cast something well and have it in use! It is a...
...base weight!!! TAAADAAAH!!!!
My recent post about the clever idea Impact Miniatures had got me thinking. I'm painting some Cobalt Palansi now, and they are rather spindly, and the extended ones are prone to tipping over. What I needed was a base weight, and that's right about the skill level I have to sculpt and cast!! I packed the bottom of a base with Apoxie Sculpt, let cure, savaged it out with an X-Acto, poured a mold with OOMOO 30, and just cast up about 8 of them tonight. They work great!!! Perry brothers, here I come! ;-)
Seriously, I am somewhat pleased with myself right now, while still being aware of how humble the accomplishment is...
I've been finishing up some 15mm Sci-Fi guys, mostly 15mm GZG Free Cal-Tex guys, and wanted to convert some specialists not offered. I think they turned out pretty well.
Every pack includes this sniper figure, which seems weird to me, but the rifle barrel trims up nicely into the regular trooper rifle. I've done this to all the others, but I did need one sniper, so I give his rifle a funky scope and a head swap.
I need a figure for Electronic Warfare, so I converted up a regular trooper.
The SAW gunners weren't very obvious, so I added a bent wire bipod. GZG only supplies one per pack, and I want two (I don't see any trend towards getting rid of SAWs!), so I converted some regular troopers into SAW gunners.
I cut the commander's arm off this guy and sculpted a new one carrying a bag for a medical officer. I realized after taking the picture that I didn't get around to sculpting the shoulder pad back on yet.
My first conversion, FCT as a Zulu/PAU.
A couple more little things I sculpted but forgot to take pictures of:
A 6mm dragon skull, and a Venus of Willendorf statue, maybe for some primitive cleric's base. Hey, if some primitive screwhead can sculpt it, so can I!
I've been trying my hand a sculpting again lately. Not great, often not even good, but not terrible, either.
A giant 6mm evil treeman...thing. I forgot to include a scale, but he's 1.5" tall and 2.5" wide.
A beetle...thing. I guess he's kind of scale independant. I didn't really have a scale in mind, just the carapace laying around I had done a while back with some leftover putty. The body is about 3/4" long.
No, this is a lurker. Two pieces, blue-taced together for the picture. Tops out at an inch tall. You can see I started to cut the body shorter, but thought I could always do that after casting it, rather than having to add to it if I wanted it taller.
Naga! I was pretty pleased with the sculpture on this, but ran into a number of problems. First, the bow was just too thin for me to drop cast. Second, I intended to twist the torso so that he fired forward, but the metal was too brittle and the torso torqued off. Third, this thing would never sit on the intended 20mm deep base without having them all coming in at an angle, and spearmen on 15mm would be worse. I may redo them on top of coils instead. The flat green is 7/8" from tail to tip of bow.
Well, after several on-again off-again attempts, I took my first miniature from raw sculpt to successfully finished casting.
Previously, I have had a mini of mine cast, the Dwarvish gladiator from VIP #1. However, I've never been able to satisfactorily make my own mold and cast it. I think this was primarily due to my selection of a very malleable RTV that made vents difficult to cut and made the pressure of holding the mold together during casting deform the mold. The latest RTV I picked up, though, was very firm. I was able to cut vents relatively easily, and used rubber bands alone to hold the mold together while casting. Here is the finished project:
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