By Jason Miller
Skills
Sketching
You will have to sketch a number of poses from a model or a picture of a model. It is important to learn to mentally 'map' the miniature if you want it to look like your concept art. Think of sketching as 2D sculpting practice. It is cheaper than putty and will keep you amused at boring weddings.
Sculpting
There is usually only one reason why a figure doesn't work for me, it needs more time to be reworked. Or, to put it another way, I need to learn the correct combinations of pushes, pulls, and smoothings to get the look I want. You will need to plan on a figure taking 2-3 weeks minimum in most cases (although I have done a 3 day marathon).
Armature making
You will need to be able to make (or purchase) a fully poseable armature to better capture the pose of your figure.
Concept (Art)- a beginningModels
A model can be anyone; or it can even be an action figure. You are your best model in most cases. If not pester a spouse, girlfriend, or who ever. They need not pose naked but it should be at least in a bathing suit. The whole point is to see how the human body is shaped in a certain pose.
When you look at the pose it should convey a one word 'message' to the viewer. So the pose above could be called 'fighter'; 'ready'; 'portly' etc. Although you could just work directly from this picture for the purposes of this exercise it is important to start with the basics. Knowing the basics gives you a better foundation for your skills at higher levels. So you should sketch a picture of each pose as well. Think of it as a 'dry run' for sculpting the figure. If you know how a figure looks because you had to spend 4 hours sketching him then sculpting him will become second nature, like driving and listening to the radio.
You should know how your model looks from all angles. You should know how wide they are at the hips and at the shoulders. Take a picture of your model at all angles. Pictures are good references to inspire you but the art is the start of your character. When you sketch from pictures you should 'tweak' the character to better fall in line with what you want the sculpt to look like. So Jay obviously needs to lose a few pounds, fix his posture, and learn to take pictures in a warmer room. Sven, on the other hand, is a little more trim, stands a little taller, and is obviously using some sort of enlargement device.
Skelly
Just like real life a sculpture benefits greatly if it has the right structure to it. What you need to do is draw a stick man over your art and bend the wire armature to match in scale. One trick is to hold it up with one eye closed and eyeball it but I use a digi-cam when I REALLY want to get accurate.
DollyThe Dolly should be a very thin coating of greens stuff to both bulk the figure up and to 'lock' the wire into the chosen pose. Always remember that less is best when sculpting at this stage. You are merely padding out the wire so that it becomes a thin man/woman/whatever. Notice how I have kept the wires for the arms long and still bare, this is to keep them out of the way while I sculpt. When I have completely finished the legs and torso I'll worry about the arms. Using my scale of 1/48 you can see that this figure comes in around the high 5 to low 6 foot mark if he stands erect. Likewise his head, legs, chest and 'hips' are still a reasonable length.
Where's the 'beef'?
The next 'stage' will take me about 2-3 days of slowly adding bulk to the Dolly. I add putty in VERY small amounts.In the first picture you can see the two 'largest' blob size I add for the entire thigh. Using my 'hard tools' I make sure the blobs are firmly affixed to the legs then I use my curved clay shaper to smooth the putty around the limb. In the two enlarged photos with blue backgrounds you can see the difference between a 'thin man' sculpt and the some what more portly Sven. I've also began adding to the upper biceps to firm the limbs in those positions and to blend the chest and shoulder muscles together when they are added.
When the Dolly is at this stage, the stage where all the muscles and 'fat' have been added, all he needs is 'skin' to make a little nude man. I've firmed up his left arm and started his sword arm. I generally do the arms last usually because if any limb has to be cast separate it seems to be an arm.
You can see that the pose for the miniature is much more aggressive than the concept art which is more about body structure at this stage. This is how far I usually take my 'dolly stage', right to the 'skin layer' so that now 'dressing them' in clothes, armor etc. is pretty easy as the putty can be easily form fit to the dolly.Ok, now it is time to 'dress' Sven, no more nude. This character wears a Roman style lorrica. In fact I have sculpted this character in this armor many times... I'd like to think I'm getting better at it too. If I wasn't already familiar with the armor I would search out pictures and photos of it.
Here you can see how this version of Sven is more 'true scale' than previous versions.
I have added the armored shoulders. I just need to do the Desert Boots and then it it's on to the weapons. I snipped the attached weapon as he will now have a variety of options instead.
