Hey, welcome to the next post in the Sculptalong saga. I hope that the week off lasy week was handy, I certainly enjoyed it, sculpting a 54mm miniature that a prominent company have shown interest in already. Marvellous Anyway, this week we get to work on the face. Aaargh! Nah, it’s not like that, don’t panic, faces are tricky, but you’ve had some practice with the putty now, and its sometimes moving how you want it, so that’s good. As with everything we’ve done so far, faces stick to the same principles – economy of movement, being happy with each layer before you move on, and knowing when to stop. I know that this is a different format, but its taking me less time to write it this way, and hopefully it is nicer to work with too. If you don’t like it, then next week I’ll go back to the previous format. When I first decided to try faces, I spent a good few hours tearing my hair out trying to make it look just right. it took several attempts before I felt able to get the right features in the right place. Give it a shot, expect to need to give several attempts, and most of all, treat it as a challenge, and enjoy the process – not many people can do this, simply because they haven’t tried yet!

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So then, this is where we got to with the last installment. The head is a ball, and we will be putting the face over the front of it like those masks in mission impossible. I will do this in two stages, the structure stage, where I'll give the face it's basic features, and the problem solving stage, where I'll clean up the shape of the skull, and 'edit' any of the other features that need it, including giving the mini eyes. Hair will come next week, so expect your little guy or gal to be bald at the end of this (just to warn you in advance!)

Keep trying and let me know  how you get along, I can’t wait to see your efforts!

James

Hey,

Welcome to the next part of the sculptalong, the fifth part of our little saga, and hopefully the most exciting so far.  I am really pleased about how this project is coming along, and every time I stop sculpting and I’m faced with the task of writing this next tutorial, all I really wanted to do, is to pick up my sculpting tools, and carry on. If you are new to this and you have no idea what I am talking about, then have a poke around my blog at the other sculptalong entries, and you will find that you can follow this series of tutorials to make ‘The Mad Hatter’ from my forthcoming range ‘Malice in Wonderland’.  So then, this is what we’ve got so far:

… And this is where we will get to by the end of this week’s episode:

As you can see, we will work on his lab coat.  this sort of hanging cloth is a singular skill, unlike that which we have done so far with the trousers and shirt. This time, it will begin like we are used to up around the back and shoulders and chest, but down round the waist the putty needs to move away from the body, and this will give, with the right shape, a real sense of movement. This is what distinguishes a sculpted piece from a cast piece, you would never be able to get this sort of detail and fine cloth on a cast miniature, even the highest quality resin castings, such as those produced by studio McVey, and Smart Max Minis.  There is still only limited tolerance of this sort of fine work. A good example of what I mean here is Mei lLeiung from smart Max, whose kimono comes separately from the body.  Anyway, I digress. The first thing we’re going to do to get to this point, is very similar to previous instalments, as you can see below, I have rolled out a piece of putty flaton the table with the ferrule of my largest clay shaper. As I have said before, a rolling pin works just as well for this, but just don’t forget to talc what ever you use liberally to stop it all sticking together.

I cut out what is roughly a rectangle of putty, and make the little splits that will form the back of the lab coat which you can see on the top of the picture because I took it at a funny angle. I gently pick up the putty, and attach it to the miniature, pressing down around the shoulders of his left arm and under the arm of his right. I do this with my fingers, and my fingerprints are quickly erasedby the large clay shaper. I hope that by now you are getting a better hang all how to use the putty, and as such I didn’t need to have mentioned that I left the putty for 20 minutes before I used it. Did I? No? Good! Anyway, at this point the putty is attached, and looking at him from behind, the only thing I can see is a slight outline of the miniature’s backside, and the back of his left leg, but nothing else. A light touch is needed here, you do not want to go smoothing down the putty too much too soon, because otherwise you end up having to fill out parts of it, rather than just being able to let it fall in the right place.  Less is more.

Now, I look over the model and decide where the coat would be touching the body or the clothes of the miniature.  I pressed the bottom, the side of the belly, and the back of the left leg into the putty a little, just where they stick out the most already, and the putty moves around my gentle touch to form a good shape for the miniature. I make sure that the coat, particularly the corners at the bottom of the hem, show the models movement. Again, I get rid of the fingerprints that appear using the clay shaper. This is a stage which is extremely difficult to describe and extremely easy to do if you know to show your coats moving with the miniature.  Find pictures and copy them.

Next, I added the lapels. These were simply too small strips of putty, offcuts from what I had lifted from the table, which I cut to the right size on the table, and then glued on. You can see from the picture above that I hadn’t quite mixed enough putty to stretch around the shoulder as well on the left hand side, so before I did this stage, I just added a little layer of putty over that shoulder, joining at the miniature under the arm and over the shoulder to the back.

These two strips of putty are joined together at the back, and allowed to sit up over the next part of the armature. When we put the shirt collar in around the front it will be covered up around the back of the neck.  I am reaping the benefits of spending a little time at the bulking out stage, to get the slope of the shoulders right at this point.

Now it is simply a matter of pushing in a few small creases in the coat (again, this is a very stiff material, so these only needs to be very subtle) and waiting for the putty to cure.  I sandpaper in off any extraneous fingerprints that aren’t on puttythat you can rub it out on right now, all of a sudden my miniature has a lab coat. This was all that I had intended to cover this week, but because next week is the face week, I want to do a little ground work for that.I begin by adding a small blob of party to the neck, and pushing into very subtle V shapes. This will simply enable the miniature to appear like he has a voice box and the tendons that run down the side of his neck when he is finished. Most of this will be covered by his shirt collar when it is made, but that’s for next week.

Then he receives a layer of puttyover his head, a little smaller than I would expect his skull to be, so that I can sculpt the face over the top. While I am at it I bulk out the left arm as well, ready for his sleeve.  With that, I am done, and already itching to get on with the next step.  So, next week it will be focusing on the face, and I shall also add the collar if I have time.  then, the week after, I shall add to hair, sleeves, tie, and maybe shoes.  We’re past the half way point now, and he’s really beginning to look like a miniature.

Happy sculpting!

James.

Welcome to the fourth installment of the Sculpt Along

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then it’s not too late to get in on the action, but you’ve got some reading and some work to do to catch up.  Go on, this is only going to happen once, message me and pledge to do it, then go grab some putty!  You’ll find the latest posts here, here, and here, the preparation posts here, here, and here, and our private CMON forum here.  If you’re wanting to know who’s in on the project so far, then you’ll need to see here, and finally, if you want to know where people are at so far, then click here.
Right then, today we’re going to get to here:

and the last installment got us to here:

so this week it’s time to turn our attention to the business of sculpting the torso.  I’ll detail how I have sculpted the shirt, the belt buckle and beltloops.  Then I’ve ground a lot of the detail off and started again, this time with a different look.  Hopefully this will demonstrate how a very different effect can be gotten through the very same techniques.  With a bit of luck this should inspire and reassure those of you who are taking on very different projects from my mad hatter mini that you can achieve whatever you are trying to in a very similar way.  Anyway, on to the specifics:

<thousands of words got deleted at this point, and it’s taken me a few days to pluck up the courage to get it all written again!>

First off, I’m going to make the shirt.

I begin by covering the chest with a thin rolled out layer of putty (remember how to do this from the last installment with the trousers?  if not, pop back there to remind yourself – if it’s not working, contact me and I’ll see if I can help).

You may prefer to do this with a square piece at this stage, in order to allow it to be hooked over the shoulders.  you can always cut a ‘head hole’ with a sharp knife, preferably a scalpel, or some other precision instrument.

As I smooth the putty over the chest, I hope you can see why I went to the trouble to get the shape of the torso right underneath, but didn’t bust a gut to sculpt silly little nipples, or make allowance for chest hair or anything.  If I’d been after a bare chest at this point, then I would re-define the muscles, cracks and crevices.  As it is, we want to simulate a soft thin surface, a shirt.  As with the trousers, we can’t add all the creases we see in real life, its a matter of being selective in order to help the final surface look as good as possible with as little time wastage as possible.

When it comes to smoothing the putty around the belt line, if some is tucked in the trousers, but some isn’t, then at this stage that’s fine – when you add  creases it will simply seem like some is coming untucked.

Once that is smoothed on, but still pretty uncured and therefore supple, I begin work on the details.  Below, as an example of some of the creases I’m going to be sculpting, I’ll demonstrate on the side of his torso by his pectoral (moob).  In the first picture you can see it smoothed on, and you can see I haven’t skimped on this stage, smoothing it with plenty of lubricant until I was totally comfortable that it was a blank canvas on which to work on.  On the second picture you can see that I’ve used two or three confident firm strokes with the small pointed clay shaper.  That’s all it was, we’re talking 20 seconds work (obviously I’ve had a bit of practice at that).  That confidence is the trick, rather than over thinking each slightest fold.  I suggest you get pictures of shirts from google or wherever, or look at yourself in one if that is appropriate, and go for a representative approximation rather than an exact copy.

The most obvious detail on the shirt is the strip of buttons down the front.  I’ll work on the collar once I’ve got the head and lab coat on him in a future installment, but for now i’m looking to do the buttons from the first one down to where the shirt gathers/tucks into the trousers.  In the pic above you can see that I’ve run a scalpel, almost parallel to the surface to create a seam.  I then work from the top to the bottom of the chest, with the tapered small pointed clay shaper again, alternating between pushing a small indent where the button would go, and pushing slightly in from the side of the seam I’ve cut, so that where the buttons will be the fabric is closed, and between them it is more open.  Again, simple considered movements to generate one specific result.  I’ve then grabbed my scalpel, and using the blunt back edge of the blade, I’ve added a couple of much more pronounced creases  in order to make it look like the buttons are under a little tension, as they would be if I was wearing a suit, and reared up to throw something.  At one point in this process I actually struck the pose in front of a full length mirror in order to base my sculpting on the real thing as effectively as I can.  Very well worth doing if you can.

In the next few pictures you’ll be able to see as more folds take place, each with a few confident firm strokes with the clay shaper.

Where I’ve worked on it, I’ve lost some definition around the button strip, particularly around the sternum, which is now definately concave.  That’s easy to fix, I leave the putty to cure some more, when I’m happy with how it’s looking, and come in with a fresh piece to fill the cavity.  I smooth this on, cut the button strip out with the scalpel, dot the buttons back on again, and it’s as good as new.  I’ve tried to mix the putty a different colour so you can see this, but when it’s cast, you’ll never know that extra piece of putty was there, so that’s fine.  I’ve wanted to document the fact that I very often problem solve when I sculpt, fixing things here and there, and I hope you’ll see that no one gets it right automatically.

as you can see from the last picture is a small piece of putty, a little sausage of it.this is soon to become the breast pocket.when you look at somebody in a cheap white shirts, you can sometimes see the pocket through the shirt material itself.this is one of those times when I think of that sort of detail is best left to the painter and as the sculptor it’s important that you don’t clutter up the area with lots of little layers of party.our little piece of party is going to just simply become the top of the pocket.  Is that called the hem? Anyway, whatever it’s called that’s what I’m going to sculpt it now.

I smooth this sausage of party down into a flat sausage, and then using a scalpel, I cut it into a rectangle shape. I use the chisel clay shaper to smooth down the edges slightly, being careful not to splay the party onto the shirt below at the corners.

The putty of the shirt itself is still slightly supple, so I am able to push my pointed small clay shaper into the top of the pocket as if I was putting a tiny pen in it. I do this several times and then underneath the hem of the pocket I do the same thing but just pushing into the body of the shirt and not up into the hem. The indents below correspond to the holes above in reverse, by which I mean where there is a hole above, there will be a divot to the left and the right.  Although it isn’t quite right, it forms an approximation of the shape the pens would leave around the pocket.  At this point, I would allow the putty to dry and then make an extremely small set of Biros, or rather Biro caps by rolling putty into a sausage, cutting its to length, narrowing one end, and superglueing it thick end downinto the divot above the top of the pocket.  Sadly, as you’ll later see I decided to change the torso of the mad Hatter, and as such I accidentally ground off the detail here before I had a chance to demonstrate. Anyway, that’s water under the bridge.

Next, while the shirt cures, I am going to work on the belt.  At the risk of sounding repetitive, all I am doing here is reducing what is actually quite a complex task, into a series of simple movements.  If you bear this in mind and apply this theory to virtually anything that you sculpt, you won’t go far wrong. To begin with I need to add a belt buckle.  I do this by choosing a small round piece of putty, glueing it in place, and flattening it out. I then grab my scalpel, and really set to work.

I want to create a roughly square buckle, although the theory is the same regardless of the shape that you choose. I begin by shaping the outside of the buckle into a rough square, and then start work on the inside, I tracing with the point of the scalpel blade, in a slightly smaller square. I don’t use my small clay shapers, to smooth the inside of the smaller square into a little horizontal hump. Now, with a little imagination it is beginning to look like a rudimentary buckle. It is not quite there yet, and so I add the little tooth of the buckle by simply adding on a small sausage of party in the right place. Finally, to the right hand side of the buckle, I had a larger sausage of party, flatten it, and shape it into the loose end of the belt strap.

I use my pointed clay shaper to add small buckle holes down this length of belt,and voilà!one simple belt, and now I am practised, the entire process took me less than 5 minutes from start to finish.

The trousers need to interact with the belt, so I add some belt loops.  This is really simple, a small strip of putty was attached roughly across the belt at the right point as can be seen here:

and then it is trimmed and blended slightly with the scalpel and the small wedge clay shaper:

it is at this point that I have somewhat of an epiphany. For some reason, I’m not getting on with the whole concept of the mad hatter any more. I know better than to panic, it’s not like this is the first time this has happened, but now I’m halfway through the sculpt, I have invested a lot of time, and there’s all of you lot waiting on the next instalment, so I’ve got to fix this.  I sit and think, and speak to the guy who is helping design the role-playing game that is associated with these miniatures, and we strike on the notion of him being truly mad.  This will set him apart, I don’t just want to design yet another mad professor type character. The idea or something suspicious sewn into his stomach is born. Genius! Now, his chest and stomach can have some sort of feature on the figure, he can look properly mad instead of just a little bit mad.  This allows for some really interesting rules, for when he presses the big red button, and we find out what he’s actually been feeding himself! Okay, I grant you, that this whole process hasn’t exactly been super smooth and ideal for a tutorial, however I did promise that this would be a real world experience, and as such I feel obliged to  document the entire process.

I begin the alterations by grinding off the now cured parts of the miniature which I am not no longer interested in.

It is at this moment that I destroy the breast pocket, something I was planning on keeping. I suspect that only God truly knows why my hand moved in that way and I removed that detail. Muppet (me, not God, obviously).  Anyway, with the relevant parts of the model cleaned down, I add a large round piece of putty to the stomach, and smooth it down, as if I were sculpting a pregnant person.  You can see that I’ve bent the arm out of the way at this stage – it’s why I haven’t bulked it out yet, to give that flexibility.  It’ll get bent back into place when I don’t need acces down his side any more.

Once this is smooth (note the creases on the side of the stomach that matches the lower shoulder), I simply add in the belly button with the small pointed clay shaper:

…and then I had to scar into which he may have put all manner of unpleasantness. Did he operate on himself? Was it somebody else? Is it explosives? Is it a self-destruct mechanism? Is it a hamster in a wheel? Who knows.

The way that I add this, is quite simply to take the scalpel, cuts a line where I want to scar to go,

and then add small lines perpendicular to this one to show where the wound has been re-stitched.

Now, I simply wait for the putty to cure, and when it is I add the shirt in exactly the same way as I added the shirt before, except this time it will be open. In order to do this properly, another Google search ensues, and in a couple of minutes I find pictures of fat men with open shirts. Yuck! Good reference material though. The button strip and the buttons are added in exactly the same way as before, and at this stage I have reached the end of my instalment for the week.

Next week, I shall add the lab coat, and then I think the following week is going to be the infamous face week.  What do you all think of that? I have been wondering when to introduce the face, as I am aware that it is the part of the anatomy which most people find most intimidating. Anyway, it has to be done, and I don’t use any more techniques that I have already demonstrated to do it, there are simply more things to take into account during the process.

I am really looking forward to seeing what people come up with this week as ever, it is taking me many hours to put these tutorials together, and this is an absolute joy to when those of you who are posting regularly, post their work in progress pictures for me to see. Thanks again everybody, see you here next week for more sculpty goodness

Happy sculpting!

James.

Hey,

Welcome to the third week of our project sculptalongers! (can I use that word?  well I just did!)  If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then it’s not too late to get in on the action, but you’ve got some reading and some work to do to catch up.  Go on, this is only going to happen once, message me and pledge to do it, then go grab some putty!  You’ll find the last posts here, and here, the preparation posts here, here, and here, and our private CMON forum here.  If you’re wanting to know who’s in on the project so far, then you’ll need to see here, and finally, if you want to know where people are at so far, then click here.

A quick revision, so far we’ve figured out how to make and bulk out an armature, and we’re getting a feel for how to work with putty, blending new with old, and getting basic shapes.

Well, today the real fun begins as you can see from the preview shot at the top of the post, we get to start work on one of the bits that’ll actually be showing, the legs/trousers (that’s legs/pants if you’re from the other side of the pond).  This will be the first opportunity to work with cloth.  Hopefully the techniques used here will be adaptable to other things.  I’m very much of the opinion that specific instructions on how to make a particular thing out of putty would result in vast tutorials which aren’t really needed.  What is useful is an understanding of how putty moves when you push or pull it, how something complex and fiddly, like a belt buckle, can be made up of simple shapes, and how small thoughtful movements can yield really great results.

Anyway, enough of the recap and theorising, and on to this week’s task, making the trousers.  My mini, the Mad Hatter, will be wearing a long lab coat that gapes open at the front, so I don’t need to worry about the detail on the back of the thighs from mid thigh, over the bum to the waist.  The rest of them though are likely to be seen, so it’s important to get it right.

I should say that since the last installment I’ve fleshed out the armature around the stomach and the pecs a little more, so that my scientist looks a little gym shy.  Must be all that bad asylum canteen food.   That’s why he looks a little different around there.  I simply did that by quickly smoothing three balls of putty into him, one per moob, and one for his belly.  It was so quick and such an afterthought that I didn’t even think to photograph it specifically.  The first thing for us to do today is to put a very thin, very smooth layer of putty over the legs and waist.  I make this by mixing/kneading the putty, and then leaving it for 25 minutes to semi-cure.  While I’m waiting for my putty to reach the right stage I go and make myself a cup of green tea.  While this stage isn’t essential for everyone, you may have your substitutes (I’ve heard that caramel kitkats work well here too).  Why leave it? this gives the putty some rigidity, makes it easier to work with in this particular application and less sticky to boot.  I’m speaking of epoxy putty of course, with polymer clay there tends to be less stickiness anyway, so this isn’t so important.  I guess you’ll just have to keep from ruining your svelt figure by getting on with the task in hand straight away.  So then, the first thing to do with this semi-cured putty is to roll it out like pastry.  I use talc like I would flour if I was making a pie, and it becomes flat, without sticking to the tools or the table.  I reckon it would have been easier for you if I hadn’t done this on my glass coffee table from a photographic point of view, but you get the drift.  Adrian Bay uses his daughter’s play dough rolling pin for this, and he’s worth listening to:

As for me, I’m using the ferrule of my largest clay shaper to flatten the putty, that does the trick nicely.

I take the flat sheet of putty, and wrap it around my bulked out armature like a duvet.  If it doesn’t stick because of the lubricant, then a little superglue on the front of the armature’s thighs should do the trick, although be careful to use it sparingly to avoid solidifying any of the new putty.  Don’t worry, this will all start to look like what it’s supposed to soon.

I then proceed to slide my new shiny and very sharp scalpel down from the crotch to the cork.  This doesn’t work with a blunt or unlubricated blade, so make sure you use a good one, and move firmly but carefully.  A little tearing at this stage isn’t the end of the world, so don’t worry there.  If you are doing the backside as well, then you can wrap the minis legs fully, pinch the putty together between the legs and then cut.  This is what it’s all about -rather than try to ‘sculpt some trousers’, I’m asking you to make a vertical cut between the legs.  Can you see how the complex process is actually made up of small simple actions?

It should be noted that i’d normally join the putty all the way around the mini, but I’m leaving it half on so that you can see more clearly what is happening, and even if you can’t see your bulked out armature underneath, you can see mine in the pictures.

The next thing that needs to happen is that I need to define the top of the trousers, where they’ll stop and his belly/shirt will begin.  This happens by a horizontal cut around the right point on the armature.  Pushing into the bulked out armature is also a good way of securing the edges of the new putty to that which is underneath.  This doesn’t look so good at the ankle, so try to make sure that there’s a flat edge down there when you add the putty to begin with.  I almost always revise the bits of trousers around the ankles when I do the feet or shoes, so this isn’t anything to get too worked up about.  You should find yourself with an ugly seam around the inside of the trouser legs right now, but hey, who looks there?  use a clay shaper to smooth it down as much as possible, but accept that it’ll be there for now, you can always fill it with a little putty to smooth it out later.

The rest of the trousers need to be smoothed too, as you can see from the finger prints in the image above.  To do this I roll the large tapered clay shaper over the legs lightly, not pressing too hard, because I’m simulating some pretty stiff, starched fabric.  With the difficult to reach areas, an appropriately shape and size of clay shaper is used to gently ‘rub out’ the issues, like rubbing out pencil lines on a page with a rubber eraser.  Be patient, less pressure is more if you just want to clear the prints, but aren’t needing to show any detail below the trousers in the legs.

If I’m simulating thin fabric, something very figure hugging, or skin, then I want to get a clear indication of the shape of the leg underneath.  Here’s where getting the leg shape right last week really pays dividends, as you don’t have to worry about sculpting both the leg and the fabric at the same time, one of them is already done for you.  As you do this, you’ll notice that if you press in bits, other bits will billow out, particularly around the ankles.  That’s ok, there’s nothing wrong with that, this putty is going to simulate fabric right? well it’s kind of acting like it, so go with the shape it forms and enjoy the shapes you’re left with.  That said, you also need to be aware of gravity and any movement of the miniature.  Gravity pulls folds downwards, obviously, so a person standing stock still should have trousers that sit equidistant from his ankles at any point.  However someone running foward would have his shins pressed to the front of the inside of his trouser legs, with the other material billowing out behind.  This movement can be simulated with the folds that have naturally formed as a result of the adding of the putty.  This can be achieved by gently coaxing the peaks of the folds to face away from the direction of movement.  In the case of my Mad Hatter in particular, the concept calls for a pair of smart chinos.  These trousers, made from a comparatively stiff material will sit pretty flat, with an ironed in seam running down the front of the leg, so I don’t press so hard that I get the shape of the legs coming through too much.  Also, I roll the shaper up and down at a forty five degree angle  alternately on the left and right side of the front of the trouser leg until I have a smooth sharp crease.  If it’s not quite right in places, then you could always have it cured, either by baking/boiling it, or by waiting for a while, and then sanding, whittling or filing sharp.

So, now we have a pair of trousers which are in broadly the right place, and the material of which, particularly around the ankles, is simulating the movement of the character we’re portraying.

Of course in what we’ve done so far, we’ve only been working on the big folds, we’ll need to add some little creases to make the material look like it’s being wrapped around an actual human being, rather than a couple of salami.  I’ve taken a series of pictures stroke by stroke of my small semi-firm tapered clay shaper on the inside of the thigh just below the crotch.  Hopefully this will demonstrate that there isn’t anything arcane about the way I do the littler folds (the micro creases as opposed to the macro ones).

Four carefully chosen, confident strokes with the tool are better than twenty little pokes and prods trying to get them to look good.  If you do that, you’ll just end up looking rather too busy and uneven.

Also, be aware that you won’t get as many folds into a material as in your photo reference material which you’re using (you are still using photographic reference for everything you sculpt right? I promise you it’ll help if you’re not).  This simplification is ok, you are working on something rather smaller than a human, that’s why they call it a miniature after all.  Trust me, you don’t need every last fold and dimple in the cloth, it’ll work out alright in the end.  These micro creases interact with anything they touch, so study clothing and how it hangs relentlessly as you’re out and about.  I spend so much of my time musing over how to paint a particular reflection I saw on a car bumper (fender) somewhere, and it’s that which helps my painting.  In the same way I’ve discovered that if I mentally take myself through how I would sculpt something when I see it and it looks interesting, then my sculpting instincts sharpen, as I am more and more able to ‘just know’ where folds and creases will look good.  Practice does make perfect, sure, but in this case, practice can be in your head, you don’t need to be pushing putty right then and there.  Incidently this approach to learning is backed up in theory, check out ‘Hair brain, tortoise mind’ by Guy Claxon if you’re at all interested.  Just me?  fine, ok then!

I keep working at these micro folds, looking for where they will sit best.  There are always sharp folds on the backs of knees in chinos, so they get pushed in with the blade bit of the metal sculpting tool, and smoothed out with the little wedge clay shaper.  the front of the knees get some definition too so that the proportions are kept consistent.  these folds go slightly above and under the knee, and interfere with the sharp seam that runs down the front of each trouser leg. This is easy to make look good, as the seam is pushed slightly away from a micro crease’s trough, and slightly towards it’s peak.  Keeping this rule assures consistency and a uniform finish that will be subtle but effective.

I don’t think it’s necessary for my trousers right now, but if you need to, you can sort out the fly/waist bits and then leave it to cure before sanding anything you don’t like flat.

Ok, lets sort out the fly and crotch area.  My sculpt is a man, and as such he requires somewhere to put his bits and pieces if you know what I mean.  Two options here.  Some people put a small lump of putty between the legs at the bulking out the armature stage. I don’t feel the need to do that, as I simply gather a small amount of the putty that has been added for the trousers as a flat sheet, and sculpt appropriate creases on.  I had this in the back of my mind as I had sculpted the little creases on the inside of the leading thigh.  Remember that we’re about to add another layer for the fly cover, so any creases that cross this line are going to be gente rather than sharp.  I sometimes mark on the mini where it will go very lightly with a scalpel.  Look at a man in a pair of trousers with a fly if you don’t see what I mean.  In my case, he bulge’s shape is influenced by the fact that he’s throwing something, so it is going to be lifted in flight as he plants his feet.  I now need to add the fly cover.  I do this by turning back to the offcuts of the putty sheet sitting folorn on the table, and I pick a really thin bit.  I cut out a small shape  of putty in roughly the shape of a fly cover.  You can do this when the putty already on there has cured or before, I’m doing it before.  The putty is pretty firm now.  The little piece gets positioned on a tiny dot of superglue, and one side (not the side hiding the fly itself) gets flattened into the putty below.  Again, simple shapes and simple movements, but a convincing result.  If you’re sculpting something comparatively large scale you can afford some more detail here, like the rows of stitching that surround the fly cover.

Can you see how I’ve used the random folds around the crotch area, guided them to the right place?  This is simple practice – writing this has been difficult because it’s mostly subconcious.   Sculpting is just easier if you go with what’s there already.  Anyway, I digress.  I finally use the scalpel to pry up the ‘open’ edge of the fly, to distinguish between that and the closed side.

Finally, onto the belt.  I cut a strip of now virtually unworkable putty, the hardness giving it a sharp edge when I cut it with my scalpel.  The exact length doesn’t matter, he’ll be having a buckle, belt loops and his lab coat covering the back third or so, so if it takes several smaller pieces then that’s fine.  The strip gets superglued around the waist at the back, and tiny little bits at the front too, and then I take a step back, and admire my handiwork.

The mad hatter has trousers with which to complete his diabolical schemes!  Join me again next week to add the parapanalia to the belt, and a shirt to the chest.  Also, we’ll see the suprise reemergence of the suicide bomber theme.  Hmmm…

Let me encourage you, if you haven’t already, to get onto the CMON forum and post some work in progress information.  It could be by text, what you’ve found difficult, what you’ve found worked well, was particularly enjoyable or rewarding, or any questions you’ve got. You could also choose to share by picture, grab a camera, take a few snaps of your project to date and let us see the wonderful results.  If you’re too shy to show just anyone, but still wnat the feedback,  you may still feel free to email me with any pictures, questions or comments, and I’ll do my best to help you out.

You’re really sculpting now, most people never get this far, let alone with such good results as some of you are getting, so keep plugging away, it’s such a rush to have a completed mini in front of you, it never gets old, so look foward to that.  You’ll get there!

Until next week, I’ll see you on the forum!  Happy sculpting,

James

If you’re new to this, it’s not too late to get in on the action, but you’ve got some reading and some work to do to catch up – go on, this is only going to happen once, message me and pledge to do it, then go grab some putty!  You’ll find the last post here, the preparation posts here, here, and here, and our private CMON forum here.  If you’re wanting to know who’s in on the project, then you’ll need to see here, and finally, if you want to know where people are at so far, then click here.

So then, we have a great armature, with a rough version of the shoulders and hips/butt, correctly proportioned legs and arms, and somewhere to put a head:

Now it’s time to add some flesh to the bones.  You’ll have noticed that the waist is a little thin, he’s … well I guess ‘corset trained’ doesn’t even come close!  so, lets give him some bulk here.  Here’s the opportunity for a little revision of our three step plan that we followed when we added the shoulders and hips.  Firstly, add an appropriately shaped piece of putty, secondly, push it around the wire and then finally, smooth it into place and give it a rough shape with a clay shaper or your equivalent soft tool.  I find rolling the large tapered head up and down the body from the shoulders to the hips works to keep the consistency between the three parts.

We’re joining one piece of cured putty (well two actually, shoulders and hips) to another, so this is the first chance we’ve had to chat about making your joins seamless.  This is a particularly good time to do it because if it’s a join that will be covered by clothes or something later, then it doesn’t matter if you get it totally right.  How does that happen then? well you’ve put the putty down as normal, and there’s a seam right?  You need to do this with the softest putty possible (so well kneaded in the case of polymer clay, and very recently mixed in the case of epoxy putty), and with a hard tool.  Once the new putty has been pushed up to the old, you need to gently tease the new onto the old.  The more you do this the more you get just the right pressure.  With fully cured layers blended into uncured layers, its easy – use lots of pressure and smear the soft layer slightly over the hard one.  With multiple layers of uncured putty, you need to get just the right pressure on the tool.  too much, and you dent both pieces of putty and make the join even more obvious.  Too little and it doesn’t blend.  Also you need the right speed, too little and you push a lump of putty along and again, accentuate the divide.

Sorry, when I did this bit I hadn’t thought about the tutorial so much, and just got on and did it roughly without worrying about the result.  As such I can’t show you a final smooth blend, my bad.  However, have a look at my tweedledum sculpt to see what I mean.  This is basically loads of lumps put on as muscles and then joined together, so lots of seams to sort out. (You can see more of Tweedledum here)

See the fissures between his six pack?  well they won’t do, it looks like he’s not wearing any skin.  I’ve demonstrated this in pure magicsculpt so that you can see the difference.  Use some very soft putty, roll out a really thin sausage of it, manouver it over the seam (preferably once it’s cured), and aggressively smooth it on with something hard but smooth, like the ‘spoon’ on the end of my metal sculpting tool.  If the putty ‘tears’, you can smooth it out with a clay shaper with the appropriate shaped head.

Good stuff.  Now I’ve joined the shoulders to the hips, I decide that I need some more putty down one side.  If you bend to one side, you form folds on the squashed side and flatter on the stretched side right? well thats what this will give me.  Thus, I smooth another piece in.

This stage is hard to teach to be honest, especially without being with you in person.  Just keep adding bits of putty until you’ve bulked out your armature.  I found the anatomy so difficult when I started sculpting that I signed up for a life sculpting class, and had some rather lovely, if not erm… attractive ladies take their clothes off for the sake of my sculpting.  It really helped, and with cold hard practice I got to a point when I can relatively quickly see where a little bit of putty needs adding here or there.

Once the torso is done, not cleanly, I grant you, but roughly enough that I can add clothes over the top and keep the correct anatomical proportions, it’s time to bulk out the arms and legs.  I do these from the torso to the ankle and wrist respectively in one piece.  First I add a sausage of putty against the wire and smooth it around.  I’ll primarily demonstrate with one of the legs, but the same principle applies to each limb.

Remember, if you’re having trouble getting your putty to adhere to the wire, coat the armature wire in superglue and baking powder, and you’ll have a nice rough surface for the putty to key to.

Then, once it’s joined up and the seams have been ironed out (if the limbwill be bare), then start to get the shape right.  Less is more, the less  you poke and prod, the cleaner the finished article will be.  Again, we’re looking to get a painfully thin body here so that when we bulk it out with clothes, muscle definition and so forth, they won’t become badly proportioned. With anything less than 52mm scale at this point you can pretty much poke and squeeze in the basic shape.  an oblong crossection for the upper arm, a wider flatter bit for the elbow in comparison to the upper arm, and then a pinch of the lower arm with your fingers in the same plane as the bicep/tricep, and you have roughly the right shape.  Anything from there is just minor adjustment.  It’s important to take note of the position of the elbow so that the proportions remain, don’t lose sight of that, particularly with a straight arm or leg, or your mini will look different later on.

For the legs, with all your reference material to hand (including a mirror and your own legs if that helps), look at the taper of the thigh, noting how it is totally different on men and women, pinch in at the sides of the knee, and use a tool to give a little indentation above, below and particularly behind the kneecap for reference later (keep those proportions!).  For the lower leg, allow some lateral bulk for the calf, pinch off the bit below the calf again, and keep the putty around the bit where the foot will be, so that you can build the foot/shoe/boot around it later.

The putty gets smoothed around the armature:

The back of the knee has been indented here:

The results of the other leg:

Once the initial shape has been puttied on, I go around the mini, a little haphazardly, adding the odd bit of bulk here and there.  Firstly on the inside of the thighs, and also to begin to mark out a guide to his chest and gut.  I’m after a person who has spent more time in the lab than the gym, so he’s not going to be musculed, more soft than that (like me – oh dear!).  Finally, I added a little around the pelvic girdle to give it definition.  I should also point out that I added a little initial bulk to the head.  This was really simple, it’ll serve as a blank onto which the head can be sculpted later.  To do this I rolled a piece of putty into a ball, put a dot of superglue on the end of the armature wire, and then carefully pushed the ball on. Make sure it’s the right size, ‘scale creep’ can really hit home with the head, so aim for putting the brain on the end of the armature wire, we’ll add the skull and flesh a little later on.

Whatever you are sculpting, use source material of the nearest ‘thing’ to it.  i.e. if you’re sculpting some sort of lizard, then find pictures, see where their muscle definition lies, and rough that in.  I promise you’ll sculpt better with reference material to hand, this is a simple fact.

Here you can see the same proceedure has been applied to the arms:

This stage is the last chance to adjust your stance without having to saw off and re-pin limbs and joints, so don’t accept settling for anything less that what you’re happy with at this point.  Also, put your leg or arm in the position you want the mini to be in, and see how it twists, and which muscles protrude.  Again, if your body is totally unsuitable, then find a willing volunteer, or google pictures of people.

Also, if it’s not quite right when you’re done, it doesn’t matter too much,  because so much of this will be covered up when we’re done. Cool.

At this point we’re done for the week, we have a bulked out armature, learned to blend one part into another, had a look at muscle definition, and definately made plenty of progress since last week.  Well done!  Next week we’ll get the trousers sorted, I can’t wait!

Happy sculpting!

James

Happy new year!

Here’s what we’ll be doing this week:

Now we’re cooking…on to the actual proper real life sculpting part of the project rather than just thinking about it.  Happy days!  So then, today I’ll be taking you through the process of creating the ‘armature’ or ‘skeleton’ of the project.  As you know, if you’re going with a straight copy of my project, then that’s fine, just do as I do, and if you’re going wth  a different one, then you’ll have to adapt this slightly (for instance, if your project has six arms, you’ll need to revise the exact process somewhat).  However pretty much anything you do will be using the same principles, just break it down into small steps like I will demonstrate here, and don’t accept anything you’re not happy with, because if the proportions are off here, then you’re stuffed later on (well not entirely, but it won’t help).

You have two options at the armature stage.  Make one or buy one.  I’m going to be making one, but it doesn’t hurt to consider buying a dollie.  I’ve personally only used them occasionally to try them out, but I haven’t enjoyed the experience terribly.  Here are some pictures of dollies to give you an idea of what they look like:

If you decide to go with one of these, then you can bend them into the right position, and if you’re stuck on a particular joint, then you can cut it with a scalpel, drill a hole in either side of the joint and put a piece of wire (paperclip or something) with a dot of superglue on either side.  Volia! one re-poseable joint.  Some people re-do each and every joint on a dollie this way when they use them.

Pro’s and Con’s (advantages and disadvantages) of dollies vs. armatures?  firstly, the dollie gives you the right proportions and scale, great!  secondly, it is quicker, also great!  On the flip side, they are more expensive, and aren’t as poseable, with many people I know having trouble getting dynamic poses from them.  For that reason I choose not to use them for standard humanoid bipeds.  The whole point of sculpting for me is that I have complete freedom to do anything I want, which a converter or painter doesn’t, I don’t want anything to get in the way of that.

On to the tutorial proper!  sorry for that little digression.  For this bit of the project I’ll be using a cork, wire, superglue, clippers, putty, lubricant, my large clay shaper and my metal sculpting tool.  If you’re using polymer clay, then I’d recommend you also get some silver foil handy.  Finally, for scale purposes, I’m gathering pictures of skeletons, and another mini or three to compare size with.  Mike (Mickc22 on CMON) has shared a great resource with us and I thought I’d link straight to it with this hyperlink.

I begin with the width of the hips.  It might seem like an odd place to begin, but it’s important to take each of these dimensions one at a time in order to nail your scaling.  I’ve picked this one to start with, as it’s a dimension that I can concentrate on its own without worrying about anything else.  So, I clip off a generous piece of wire, much longer than the legs will actually be, and bend an ‘n’ shape from it, with the top of the ‘n’ being the width of the pelvis at the point the hips join to it.  Below are a couple of images that you can use.  Some people even print them out at their scale (my computer know-how doesn’t stretch to this), and then overlay their armature.  I’m looking for my armature hip width to be approximately the height of the tip of the coccyx, and further foward if you were to look at the skeleton from the side.

With my ‘n’ shaped piece of wire, I’m going to sort out the legs next.  Again, this can be done without worrying too much about more than one thing at once.  I bend out the length of wire from hip to knee, keeping it straight because i’m going to be putting his legs in trousers and I’m not too worried about getting the anatomy exactly right at this stage.  I make a little kink in the wire at the knee point, even if I want the mini to be standing straight, because it’s easier to get the proportions if you can see the joint.  I suppose that some black permaenant marker would do the trick too if you felt so inclined.

Now, with both legs bent, I’ve got the hip width, and the hip to knee part done (I’m going to try to steer clear of using any more anatomical terms than I have to!).  Next, i need to get the length from knee to the sole of the shoe/foot sorted.  This bit I always without fail find hard, and my minis have a bad habit of having shins that are too thin.  I am determined not to make the same mistake here!  As such, trying to keep an eye on the scale of mr. skeleton above, and in comparison with other minis of the same scale, I stick the two ends of the wire into my waiting cork to the right depth.

This gets compared to another mini to make sure the scale matches, and then I’m set.  In order to keep everything secure, a generous dollop of superglue on the cork around the join with the wire is added.

Phew! well that’s 1/3 of the armature done.  Hurrah!  onwards to the torso.  I take another piece of wire, and bend its end around the hip crossbar:

Then I hold this upright and put a generous bead of superglue on it in order to hold it in position.  Some people solder these joins for strength, but to be honest, I can’t see the advantage to that, my armatures haven’t ever suffered from a lack of structural integrity.

Anyway, next I measure out the piece of wire from the hip cross bar, to where i imagine the middle of the finished sculpt’s brain to be, i.e. right in the middle of it’s head.

The wire then gets bent out into the shoulder.

The end of the shoulder gets bent down to form the arm, and the head and neck section is squashed up.  You should be looking for approximately the same width on the shoulder cross-sections as the hip cross section.  Look at real people around you and you’ll see what I mean.

and then like the leg, the elbow is marked off, and the wire is clipped at where I imagine the mini’s wrist will be.

Now we have an arm, a back bone, shoulder and head.  marvellous! he’s actually starting to look like an armature.  Above you can see that I’ve actually began to pose him a little bit, so I can get an idea of what he is going to look like.  You can do this now, or do so later, it’s up to you.  Remember the golden rule though, bones don’t bend.  They stay straight, so any changes you make, except to the spine should keep those nice straight lines.  Several other guidelines,  to make a mini look dynamic, make sure that the line of the shoulders and the line of the hips are different. Also, people try to keep their head upright wherever they can, so a mini is likely to still have a head that is vertical or near-vertical.  When you’ve had a bit of practice of making armatures by the way, you can get to this point in 10 minutes or less.  I would have done so if I hadnt been stopping to make notes on what I was doing and take photographs every 20 seconds.  This is kind of feeling like stop frame animation!  I’m beginning to wonder what I’ve got myself in for, this is going to take me hours, nay days to sculpt and write up.  aah well, I’m committed now!

Next, we need to put in the other shoulder and arm.  This is done with a third piece of wire.  This wire gets wrapped around the shoulder/neck area of the armature, and superglued in place.

My project is going to have this shoulder and arm raised, so I don’t mind the wire being slightly higher on this side, it’ll help to begin to show  this movement.  However if you are after something more level, then you can wrap it around the spine and then bend it up and out, or glue a straight piece along the length of the other side of the shoulder, and work from that, whichever floats your boat.  Maybe this is where the soldering thing would come in useful, but I dont see this as being a particular problem.  It gets bent in the same way as the other arm, keeping the proportions.  I’m doing this straight away into the pose the mini will take, because it’s quite a dynamic one, but you can make it standing upright first and then bend it there afterwards if you like, it’s up to you.

Finally, I am adding a weight to the base before i go any further, so that when putty is added, it doesn’t become top heavy.  To do this I simply stick a generic miniature base to the underside of the cork, and glue a small coin inside it to keep everything stable.  Not 100% necessary, but I thought I’d mention it as I find it a convenience.

well done! we’ve now have a completed armature (almost)!  The next thing that we need to work on is securing everything that needs to be secured.  For that we’re going to be using some putty.  Woo! finally we’re starting on the putty!  Grab your preferred choice of grown up play dough, and start mixing it together.  This is simply going to give some strength to the final thing, and will begin to bulk out the shoulders and hips.  These two parts of an armature really give a sculpt its character, so this is where we start first.

Everything I do with putty follows three basic steps in one way or another, so while you are at a stage where you can play around and have fun and just try things out, I’ll mention them.  This way you get into good habits right from the start.  Hopefully too, you’ll begin to see that sculpting isn’t some kind of arcane art, it’s just a bunch of simple steps to get the desired result:

1.get the right quantity of putty in a clean lump

2.  Put it in place and get the right shape

3. sculpt the detail

Each of these steps becomes easier with practice, so just keep plugging away, and it’ll become more straightfoward.  Remember when you couldn’t paint in a straight line?  That changed with practice right? well this isn’t any different.  Just keep trying until you get there.

How does this manifest for the bulk of the shoulders and hips? lets follow through those three stages again:

1.  Once your putty is mixed (in the case of epoxy putty) or kneaded until it is soft (polymer clay), take a fat sausage of the stuff, and roll it smooth of any obvious joins in your hands.  Ok, so this isn’t totally necessary, but it’s good to get into the habit of being neat right from the start.   I’m aiming for a lump about the width of the hips, and about as tall.

2.  Squash it against the wire until it protrudes a little around the other side of the wire.  Finger prints don’t matter at this stage, so feel free to use your hands for this.  If the putty is sticking to them, then you could try lubricating your hands or the putty to counter it.

3.  Taking the metal sculpting tool (because I need to get the putty to go where I want it to firmly and without the need for a totally clean and tidy finish), I then begin to tease it around the wire to join up with other parts of the putty sticking out the other side. When it’s cured, this will make the join between the hips and the spine rock solid.  As practice, I then pick up the large clay shaper and start to smooth the putty out into what roughly equates to a bottom shape, with hip bones sticking out either side.

I smooth the putty against the spine and the legs, being careful not to go too far outside the ‘n’ of the legs and hips (with a man this is important, or he will look feminine, with a woman, their hips protrude more along with the thigh, so that’s ok).  Finally, I lightly draw in the ‘crack’ of the bottom with the clay shaper, which should follow a line from the spine around the middle of the ‘n’ shape where the spine is attached.  This is easy to rub out with the shaper if it goes wrong, and when it is correct, I ‘draw’ it in more firmly with the blade bit of the metal sculpting tool.

Who would have thought that the first piece of anatomy you would sculpt would be the backside?   with any sculpting it is useful to have something to go by visually, so find a passing person willing to model their bum for your efforts and try to follow their shape.  Also, the internet has plenty of pictures on it (might want to look over your shoulder before typing in ‘man’s firm buttocks’ into google), so there is plenty to go by.  If i was really keen on helping you along at this point then I’d photograph myself as a model, but alas, I’m just not quite that committed!

so there we have the hips/butt. hopefully it is a little smaller than normal, this is so the area can have clothes sculpted over without getting too out of proportion.  The same goes for the shoulders, which are coming next.  Begin again with a similar short fat sausage of putty and squidge it over the wire.

Then tease it around the wire until it is engulfed:

and begin to use the tools to mark proportions on like you did with the bum.  My mini is going to be covered in clothes, so I’m just getting the putty on at this stage, but if I knew he or she would have a clear or partially clear shoulders, back or chest, I’d I tend to lightly mark where the spine would go on the back, along with the bottom edge of the shoulder blade.  I’m not creating the shapes at this point, just making faint marks where these parts will go.  Google is your friend, as with any anatomy, find yourself a bunch of good pictures to work from, not just one, and from different angles too (remember your mini is three dimensional, and the image is two dimensional).  On the front I tend to mark in the dip at the base of the neck, and two parallel lines either side of where the clavicles (collar bones) will sit.  The putty should taper to a point part way down the spine, which you can do by simply squeezing under the arms and pulling down either wiht your fingers if they are small enough, by alternately using the metal sculping tool either side of the torso, or by using a pair of lubricated needle nosed pliers or tweezers to create the effect.  This will give the armature strength without getting in the way when you sculpt the anatomy.  This is also true at the shoulders, don’t let them protrude too much past the putty, or the proportions won’t be clear.

All of a sudden, we have a totally completed armature.  Very well done when you get this far, many don’t!  The next installment will be based around fleshing out the armature – I’m a big believer in getting the anatomical proportions correct before adding clothes or the like.  Send me your questions, progress pictures, or post them to Platoon Britannica or Coolminiornot forums, and we can all take a look at them there.  Don’t forget that I’ll be assembling a bit of an FAQ on each week if necessary and posting it next thursday, so you may find some last minute help in there too.  Trust me, if you’re struggling with something, then someone else taking part is too, so it’s good to share

Happy sculpting!

James

Hey,

It’s a mere few days before the start of the new year, and more importantly the start of the Griffin Guides Sculpt Along!

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then it’s not too late to get in on the action.  You’ll find the preparation posts here, here, and here, and our private CMON forum here.  Go on, this is only going to happen once, message me and pledge to do it, then go grab some putty!

For those of you who are already in on our little project, we’ve got this great private forum on one of the coolest miniature websites in the world, so now you’ve had a think and come up with your concept, start yourself a ‘Work in Progress’ thread, or just introduce yourself and let us know what sculpt you will be working on.  If we can nail the concept right at the beginning, then that’ll form the basis for a fantastic project.

The countdown begins!  See you in the new year!

James Griffin

Hey,

Great news!  I’ve got us a way to freely and easily upload and share work in progress stuff during the course of the Sculpt along.  Wonderful!  Coolminiornot.com have set up a dedicated area on their forums for the sculpt along participants.  This is a huge boon for us as we will now be able to support one another, discuss issues as they come up, and support, coddle and kick start each other to the end of the project.

Thank you Chern-Ann, Borg, and CMON, you’re great!

You can see the forum here, why not register today (if you aren’t already), and post a thread introducing yourself and what project you’re thinking of taking on!

James

Hey,

This sculpt along thing, it’s taking off! many participants, reports on a number of websites, and all, it’s quite exciting.  Well now it’s gotten even bigger, I’ve been asked to appear on Sanitorium, a radio station dedicated to computer games, and the hobby.  About six weeks into the new year I’ll be doing a phone in on sculpting, and the sculpt along, so if you’re someone that is doing this and we haven’t spoken, then you can call in via some internety cleverness with skype or some such magic, and we can chat.  Wonderful! anyway, more information on that as I find out details.  In the mean time, allow me to present the third of my three preparation posts (here are the first and second if you missed out).

We now have the pleasure of the hardest job of  all, getting a concept.  being inspired.  Of course you can just go with mine, and I’ll detail it below, or if you so choose you can come up with your very own.  Before I start to talk about my ‘Mad Hatter’ concept though, a word of advice – if you’ve never sculpted before and you are wanting to follow my sculptalong through, but don’t want to go with my concept, then of course that’s fine, but I would recommend you pick something humanoid, preferably human, so that it is easy to apply the lessons from my project to your own.  Anyway, onwards to the project proper…

I spent literally months coming up with the concept for my ‘Mad Hatter’, and as ever, it’s hit me rather suddenly.  I had started by wanting him to be an african-carribean guy with dreadlocks and a samauri sword.  So, I began to sculpt him (you can see the progress and results here and here and here), but then realised that he wouldn’t look any good with a hat on.  So, waste not want not, he’ll  become one of my ‘queen of hearts’ enforcers, one of her playing card army.  Now I have a blank slate again.  I get the best ideas when I have a solid idea, so I went back to that.  Wonderland is an asylum around the time of the fall of communism in the USSR.  There is some question over who are guards and who are inmates (watch out for a game to go alongside the minis, it’s in production…), and I need a prison psychiatrist figure/mad scientist figure to keep the mad march hare in check.  Now we’re cooking…  He needs a top hat, but I reckon I’ll put one of those light things on it like surgeons wear in pictures, it’ll look cool   He needs a white coat, and to make him look crazy enough, he’ll need something to give him a touch of the mad scientist.  How does a canonical flask emitting smoke sound?  good?  marvellous!  Of course a mad scientist isn’t scary, but what if he was carrying a cleaver?  that’d do it right?  Excellent.  maybe he could be a suicide bomber too?  step too far? ok, so maybe I’ll dial that idea back a bit.  This is just how I come up with my concepts, and i’m leaving it all in warts an’ all

So, the next step is to get online and find a bunch of pictures that could inspire the pose, the clothes, and other assorted inspiration.  So then, here are a selection of the pictures I’ve drawn from as I’ve started collecting ideas for the project:

How perfect is this one?  I love his expression, and he’s holding a flask! ok, so it’s not a canonical one, but beggars can’t be choosers!  Now I need a shot of his entire body, to help with trousers/shoes etc.:

That one works, even though it’s not ‘live action’, I love the pressed trousers idea, I fancy sculpting some chinos.  Let’s keep this down to earth though, he also has to hark back to the classic image of the hatter.  This one does that:

Mainly it would seem that he’ll b e recognised as the hatter because of the hat, although I think he’ll need quite a small one.

Here’s a view of the back of a lab coat, it’s always good to get plenty of source material for cloth and the way it sits.  That’ll be useful later on.

Finally, this one has some great movement.  I know that a classical fresco of the Archangel versus the Devil isn’t exactly where one might think to go for inspiration, but I like Gabriel’s movement.  It’s also a great example of a good torso twist, something I am keen to include to give some movement.  I think I like the mad scientist picture, but I’d like to include some real movement in my piece, maybe he could be winding up to throw the concoction, that would be fun.

So, with these pictures, and I’m sure many others over the course of the project, I’m off.  This is the point at which some people would draw their concept in painstaking detail.  Sadly I can’t draw to save my wife, but I do have a good mental image of what he’ll look like.  If you’re going with my project and feel like drawing what you’re imagining him to look like then feel free, and scan me a copy, I’d love to see how you interpret all this.

Anyway, because that can’t happen, next up is the making the armature.  Make sure you have your cork or whatever to mount your sculpt into for then, and you’ll also need some putty, some wire, your chosen flavour of putty, a metal sculpting tool, silver foil (if you’re using polymer clay), superglue, lubricant and a large clay shaper.  See you then!  In the mean time, if I can help at all, feel free to message me, call me if you have my number, or find me on a forum.  I’m going to have free time over xmas somewhat, so if you need to contact me then now is the time if you want my full and undivided attention

James

ps.  See you when we actually start pushing some putty!

Sorry I didn’t get all the preparation stuff into a single post, I’ve split it into three instead.  The first (here) dealt with putties, and the third will deal with getting concepts.  This one will tackle the tools and materials we’ll be using.  I’ve tried to include all the information you could possibly need, but I will have missed stuff I’m sure, so feel free to remind me of any missing salient points.

A couple of points of business before that gets started though.  Firstly, I’ve had a few people contact me to confirm their attendance (full list here), so if you’re planning on getting involved, then contact me to let me know.  Secondly, as was quite rightly pointed out, a point of clarification from the last post, boiling polymer clay works best for curing little details, but big lumps need the oven.

Anyway, onto the reason we’re all here for this post – tools.  What I’m going to do is to make a point of running the project with as few tools as possible.  You can actually use many more than I’ve listed here, and indeed I’ve got lots myself, however I’m coming to the conclusion that whatever your preference, learning to use a few tools well is much better than using many poorly.  So what are the implications of this?  well if you’ve already got tools, then the good news is that you can sculpt with pretty much anything you are comfortable using, unlike paint brushes where things get very much more specific.  On the other hand, if this project finds you starting totally from scratch, then you’re not going to have to buy a bunch of really expensive tools.  wonderful!

Here are a list of the tools I recommend you use.  Have a look at what you’ve already got, and see if there is something you could substitute it for, to save you unnecessary expenditure, or if you’re keen, go out and buy one.  They’re listed in order of ‘sharpness of finish’, that is beginning with things that will give a general, less defined shape to something, moving to the most defined of all.

1.Clay shapers – sometimes called ‘colour shapers’ or ‘rubber brushes’, these little beauties are designed for the task of pushing wet clay around to make pretty shapes.  Putty isn’t much different.  When I first got one of these it was a true revelation, and that’s not an exaggeration.  Stunning stuff.  For the first time I was able to sculpt things with something that was forgiving if I slipped slightly, and which left my sculpt with a smooth surface.  Fantastic stuff!  I would highly recommend buying some if you haven’t used them before.  For this project I am going to use three.  One large pointed one, one small pointed brush, and one wedge shaped one.  If you are just starting out and can only afford one thing to set up as well as the putty, then these are what you want.  A note on hardness too.  The brushes come in a number of hardnesses.  These will be denoted on the brush somehow, and that depends on the make.  For mine it is the colour of the tip, white for softest, black for hardest, and grey for in-between.  Which firmness you choose to go with should depend on the putty you have decided to use (see why we looked at putty first? ).  For a soft putty, like magicsculp, I will be using soft (white tipped) brushes.  If  I was working with pure greenstuff, I would be leaning more towards the medium or hard ones.  Likewise, if you’re working with fimo or sculpey, which can vary a little more depending on how much you’ve kneaded them, then I would tend to use a medium one to get the best of both worlds.  Rubber brushes.  Use ‘em, you won’t be sorry!  few putties will stick to them (unless it cures in contact with the putty), so as long as you look after them well, and don’t dip them in superglue or anything, these should last you longer than any normal paintbrush, these really can be an investment in your hobby future.  The ones I’ll be using are second and third from the left, and a much larger version of the pointed one third from the left too.

You can buy them here and many other places besides.  This was just a link I found, I dont know necessarily if they’re any good, or cheap or if it’s a good company, but it should start you off looking.

2.  Metal sculpting tool – This I use less than the other tools, but it can serve a useful purpose when you want the putty to really go somewhere or do something, and you couldn’t simply tease it into place with a clay shaper.  These come in many shapes and sizes, but i tend to use one with a blade shaped thing on one end for ‘sketching’ on the putty, and a ‘spoon’ end for squashing little balls of putty flat or teasing one layer of putty to blend with another where the weaker clay shaper would slip from the putty leaving a seam.  Games workshop make one like this and sell it as the ‘be all and end all’ of sculpting tools, but even their own sculptors freely admit to using a variety of different tools including those that I’ve recommended here.  Go figure.  I happen to have got mine from a family member and they can’t remember where they got it from, so I can’t link you to the same one, but any that you’re comfortable with will do.  You could also use dental tools, things from manicure sets and a whole assortment of other things.  Heck, if you’re really keen you could quite easily make your own if you’re that way inclined.

Here are examples of some.  The second from the right looks like mine, with a little spoon end and blade end.  Anywhere that you look for clay shapers are likely to carry some of these as well

3.  Scalpel (and lots of blades) – this is something that I use for my most precise work, and a tool I couldn’t live without.  I was lucky and got a good stash of scalpel blades from a professional, so I don’t have a good source for you to buy from particularly.  However, the good news is that there are many.  You could also use xacto blades, or even small stanley knives if you wish, the important thing is that when you drag it through the putty, it should leave an almost invisible, impossibly thin line.  This I use for getting sharp edges to things, either before or after the putty has cured.

They tend to come as a handle, and then replaceable blades.  I tend to use the second in from the left – but this is purely personal preference and preferring a straight edge to work with.  pick the one you like best, and don’t forget to check that your blade’s size matches your handle’s size, easy, expensive mistake.  Expect to be changing your blades pretty regularly, so if you can, have fresh blades to hand as well.  Again, art shops stock them.

4.  Sandpaper/files – These go last because I tend to use them for final touches.  One of the reason why I mix magicsculp with my greenstuff is to make it sandable/carveable when it is cured, something that it is not normally (it would tears or deforms like old chewing gum on it’s own).  This also works on cured polymer clays, and some other epoxy putties, like milliput (also good as a greenstuff additive).  I’ll make a point of showing you pictures of this in action in one of the first progress posts next month.  There’s nothing wrong with sculpting cured putty  I was told by Seb Perbet, one of the games workshop sculptors, and it’s advice I’ve taken to heart.  Cheap files are fine, though you do get a better finish with the better quality ones..none of them will last you forever.  If you have to ditch something from your shopping list though, then these should be it.  They don’t do anyhthing that you couldn’t do with skillful use of a scalpel or other precision blade.  Tamiya make a good sandpaper, make sure it’s grit 800 or above – the higher the ‘grit’ rating, the smoother the paper.  if it’s ‘wet and dry’ paper, then all the better.  Tamiya produce a good sandpaper, which I use, although there are many much cheaper options out there, if you’re on a budget, a quick stop at a hardware store will do the trick.

They are all the tools I’ll be using, aside from something to clip armature wire.  What you use there will be dependent on the type of wire you use, but many types can even be cut with scissors or brittle enough to snap, so I don’t feel the need to labour the point particularly.

I should be clear at this point – you don’t need everything in the pictures, in fact here is a shot of the tools that I’ll be using for the project (excluding a few square centimetres of sand paper and a pair of common garden variety pliers)

For the thrifty among us, or for those who are just plain sensible, there are a number of redily available other sources for tools, dental sets (ask your dentist, obviously!), manicure sets, needles (hypodermic, knitting etc.), all of these can have their uses, as can a damp cocktail stick/toothpick even!  It all depends on what you decide works well for you.  Having a paint brush to hand (of any quality) can be handy too.

Huzzah! we now have the tools we need!  now come the other materials.  In the last post I asked you to keep a look out for a bunch of common household items.  hopefully now you’ll see why.  here is a list of the other materials we’ll be using during the course of the project.

1. Lubricant – Sorry, you need it.  It’s up to you what you choose, but it’s vital for getting a smooth surface for your sculpt, for making thin layers which you can then work with and I couldn’t work without it.  Heck, you can use KY jelly if you’re mental, it doesn’t matter too much what, but there are a number of other better alternatives to that.  You could use your own spit or the waxy stuff your nose and forehead produces called sebum…which works suprisingly well.  Watch out for being poisoned by your putty though, that would suck I’m sure.  However some artists use this with great effect (cough, Adrian Bay cough!)  The next option, depending on the putty is water.  this works well with water soluble epoxy putties (like milliput and magicsculp), and less well with greenstuff and polymer clay.  Speaking of polymer clay, there are several good ones designed for this very use made by the manufacturers of the clays.  I’ve not got much experience with these though, so I don’t feel comfortable recommending them to you, I shall withold my judgement there.  Another good option is vaseline, otherwise known as petrolium jelly.  You’ve probably got some in your medicine cabinet.  While you’re looking in, grab the surgical spirit as well, this stuff works great too on some putties.  Lastly, my personal favourite, talcum powder.  It’s most likely that an elderly relitive has this, but you may also find that in the bath room.  Think of this like flour when rolling a sticky pastry.  It doesn’t matter if it’s fragranced, although you can buy it unfragranced for this purpose from some art shops, including ‘Hobbycraft’ in the UK.  Some people also use an actual rolling pin with it, but I’ve always found the ferrule (metal bit) of my largest clay shaper thick enough to do a good job.
2. Visor/visual magnification – I’m a lucky guy.  I have great vision.  For now.  As such, I don’t currently need to use magnification at all, although I have no doubt that I will in the future.  You know your eyes, if this is you then find yourself a solution.  You can’t sculpt what you can’t see.  Many art shops sell visors and magnifiers that are hands free, maybe you could start there.  Likewise, some opticians sell magnifying reading glasses, whatever works for you.
3. Superglue – if I’ve lubricated a piece of putty it sometimes needs a helping hand to stick to another piece of putty, or the armature.  that’s where your superglue comes in.  Pick the thin stuff, not the ‘gel’ (silly invention) or any other gimmick, just some good old plain thin superglue.  As a side note, try to avoid the little metal tubes of cheap stuff, I nearly lost an eye to one of those babys, you have been warned!
4. Armature wire – Florist wire, copper wire, brass rod, and even the humble paperclip can be used here, it really doesn’t matter.  See what you can find.
5. Corks – Something to attach the sculpt to while you work on it is really helpful.  The dense ‘fake’ corks are best here, the heavier the better.  Sticking a coin or something to the bottom of them can often help to keep them upright too, particularly if the mini is coming out at some sort of an angle.
6. Baking powder -  A quick trip to the kitchen will get you this.  It’s really not a necessity by any means, but some people find that their putty sticks to their armature better if it’s been dipped in superglue and baking powder to give it a rough ‘keyed’ surface.  Don’t worry if you don’t have this!
7. Silver foil – This is useful for bulking out the inside of the mini in order to save on the amount of putty used, or in the case of polymer clay, to reduce the chance of burning the sculpt as it bakes through.  This is most often used on large scale work, and so it’s not going to feature in my project.  However, I wanted to list it for your information, it’s saved me a few pennies.  However, if the piece is going to get cast, then the air that this traps inside the mini can become a problem, so it’s good to avoid it’s use in those cases.

Phew!  Tools and materials for sculpting in a mere two thousand words.  Marvellous!  Coming next, ‘getting the concept’.  Once you’ve got that, we’ll be ready to kick off in the new year.  It’s getting exciting!  Thanks for coming on this journey with me, you’re all wonderful!

James