Anyone here sculpt their own models?

Arkansan

Member
I've wanted to give it a go for a while, and I've got several tubes of un-mixed greenstuff and miliput staring at me from my hobby shelf. Any advice? Know of any good tutorials? Have work you want to show off?
 

twisted moon

Moderator
not me (i struggle with even simple conversions), but there are others on here who do.
there are also a few tutorials further down this page.
 

Tubehead

Member
I'm a professional sculptor. There are several other guys here do do sculpting too. HEY WHERE ARE YOU GUYS? GET OVER HERE!
Well I don't know what's become of them.
Anyway, let's see; tips...

There are all sorts of tricks that make sculpting easier.

Keep the green stuff moistened: Although some people say you should lick your tools to keep them moist, this is bad for two reasons:
1) the tiny bit of saliva will dry out in seconds. 2) you will develop CANCER from doing that since green stuff is highly carcinogenic.
Saliva is, however, the best thing for the job. I find the best thing to do is have a little tray filled with liquid. For me this liquid is always composed of two spits worth of drool and about a teaspoon full of hojicha (japanese barley tea, although I'm sure water works too). Mix this up well and if there's any lumps, well, avoid them. :roll:
When this is ready you can dip your sculpting tool into the tray and pull out about a tiny half-bead of water. Hover the tool over the work until the bead spreads into a thin - but not soaking wet - layer on it's surface. You can do some of your best sculpting when you get this right. If your tools stick to the work it's counterproductive.
I've also had good luck using a thin layer of Carmex petroleum jelly on large areas of work, but if you need to add any greenstuff after you've applied this it wont stick on properly. With drool water you can just blow on it until it's dry. :geek:

Make your own tools: You can do a lot of stuff with needles of various gauges, and off-the-shelf dental tools, but I'd recommend making purpose-built tools for the job at hand more often than not. One thing I do is collect any discarded lightweight utensils/pencil-like tool handles which can be put into service after wiring or taping a custom tip onto them. These implements should be always be cylindrical so that you can very easily position them with utmost freedom (especially if you have a hook on the end or similar). Square handled tools have a tendency to place themselves in the incorrect position for precision work. One of my favorite tools is a curved needle in an unusually small gauge which I bent carefully and mounted onto the end of my wife's old smart phone stylus which I found in the trash. I drilled a hole in the hard plastic end and mounted the needle into it using green stuff and superglue to secure it fast. The other end still has the old rubber tip, which is brilliantly useful for blending green stuff seams together.

Use a fat rounded grip to hold the work in your left hand: I usually scratchbuild figures onto a wire or ABS plastic frame sticking out of a cylinder of wood which is about 8CM high and 5cm around. But anything in this neighborhood will work as long as it is rounded. When you're holding this with your left hand, you'll find everything flows really smoothly since you can rotate the fig as you work and also (this is important) a fat figure stand keeps your hand from cramping up! You can pick up a ton of them for cheap if you buy a used set of children's wooden blocks.

Collect sets of Dremel bits: Dremel tips have all sorts of things you can use for tiny scale sculpting. Those barrel-shaped heavy gauge sanding tips are great for adding rough texture here and there. Likewise with the radial wire-scour tip used for stripping paint. You can roll that thing around on a fig and get all sorts of neat effects. One of my favorite tips is a micro-grain mini-sander that resembles two lens-shapes stuck together at the edges; the usefulness of this is that when you carefully roll it around on greenstuff it leaves a splendidly bevelled edge which is useful for doing ribbing and trim/piping of all types. There are loads of other tips with all sorts of uses.

Work in layers: Never try to sculpt a whole fig at once. Although Brother Vinni uses sculpey and not green stuff, this 'work and wait' approach is very well illustrated on his 'how to sculpt' page. (you may need to use google translate if you don't speak russian.) The idea is to sculpt a little at a time and allow the work to cure before proceeding so you don't annihilate the detail you just labored to achieve! Also building up thin layers and being patient while things cure is best. You'll find you'll have several projects going at once as you're doing a little sculpting on various models each night. Then sometimes a whole bunch will get done all at once!
http://www.brother-vinni.com/rus/articl ... archer.htm

Clone textures: You can use some of the implements you have collected to do things like this; place a blob of green stuff about the size of a pea or pinhead on the end of a utensil, moisten it with saliva, and push it onto something you've found that has a really neat micro-scale texture. For example, chainmail from an old Ral Partha fig or say, hair from the back of a chewbacca figure (chewbacca is that bigfoot thing from Star Wars.) :geek: Once the green stuff has cured, you can use this to replicate the texture onto your own sculptures. I really wouldn't steal textures from other people's work though. You can use this technique with all sorts of natural objects. Try using an orange to make a lizard-skin stamper!

The most important thing: Be patient!
Keep pushing the green stuff around until it looks right.
If you just settle for imperfect, you'll regret it every time you see the model. Have integrity and make it perfect! It really is way easier to sculpt than it looks. Just persevere. If you've got lots of supplies to play with, don't sit around and waffle. Get your hands moving! You'll be glad you did.

And that reminds me; try not to leave things smooth. It's easier than it seems to give something a cool texture. Collectors really respond to rich textures. In my opinion it's the main key to making a really impressive figure.

Well if I think of anything else I'll post some more... :)
 

Tubehead

Member
Since you asked for examples, here's some things I've done on commission lately.

V0r0zSe.jpg


And the carnivorous Tiffany lamp I made for CP Models (actually a fungoid monster from the Doctor Who episode, The Chase...!)

XkrJMmX.jpg


I use all sorts of custom made impression tools in repeated patterns to make different motifs. In the centre of the above mushroom I used the tip of a mechanical pencil. The next layer was a u-shape cut from a hollow piece of tubing. The outer layer was done with a bent piece of guitar string wired onto a chopstick.

The Elder Thing and the cyclops blob-monsters also have textures made with u-shaped impression tools, among other things. Impression tools are super useful. Notice that you can get even better results doubling up on things; use something rough to texturize and then use an impression tool on top! :)
 

Arkansan

Member
Thanks for all the advice! Those sculpts are awesome by the way!

I noticed you said that greenstuff is highly carcinogenic, should I wear gloves to work with it then? I see a good bit of conflicting data on this, some say yes, others say no and till others say who cares.

Is there much difference in sculpting for say GW "heroic" 28mm vs something like 1/72 scale?
 

Tubehead

Member
Arkansan":3ancqmke said:
Thanks for all the advice! Those sculpts are awesome by the way!

Thank you, very kindly. :)
But really, I think ketil b's work is easily superior to mine.

Arkansan":3ancqmke said:
I noticed you said that green stuff is highly carcinogenic, should I wear gloves to work with it then? I see a good bit of conflicting data on this, some say yes, others say no and till others say who cares.

The packaging instructions on some brands of green stuff say that the product is "known to the state of California to cause cancer" and consequently the manufacturers advise one to wear gloves while working with it, but it's much harder to sculpt wearing gloves, isn't it? Consequently no one does. I think the best thing to do is just to keep it from finding it's way inside your body and you'll be okay. Don't lick your tools, don't sand it and inhale the particles, no nibbling on it between meals; general common sense stuff and you'll probably be safe.

Arkansan":3ancqmke said:
Is there much difference in sculpting for say GW "heroic" 28mm vs something like 1/72 scale?

I would say yes. There are little differences between sculpting an ogryn and a dwarf, even if they're both 28mm. 1/72 is getting pretty darn tiny and certainly more challenging. There's a threshold where your visual resolution comfort zone cuts off. You start seeing spicks and specks focussing intensely on the same spot for ages and suddenly have to stop and blink a lot! :grin: For me it's probably 25mm figs because of my cruddy aging eyes (but fortunately I'm nearsighted!) even so, you can get yourself one of those magnifier goggles sets that jewelers use and you might be alright for 1/72 scale.
But just pick up a 1/72 scale fig and look at the detail on the firearm. You've got to have a darn steady tool hand to do detail that teeny; consequently you start needing to get into the realm of movable steadying jigs to place your needle on before carefully sliding it toward the figure... I did some 15mm monsters recently that really pushed my eyes to the limit. :lol: I would recommend getting the hang of using your tools and stuff in a larger scale before exploring the really tiny work. Larger scales are certainly more forgiving and there are lots of techniques (particularly the more subtle ones) that you can do to enhance a 28mm fig that no one has a hope of realistically achieving in 15mm. For example, even if you could somehow sculpt a subtle texture like say, the crinklyness of a cabbage leaf onto a 15mm fig, it's just going to be lost to the beholder at that tiny a scale. Super-tiny requires a different approach than mere tiny, in other words. :grin:
 

Plaiecivile

Member
Tubehead":18cnsi0c said:
... Make your own tools ...

I am far from being a professional, but I like to keep wooden skewer and pop cycle sticks close so I will literally shape the tip with a blade to get the edge desired at any moment.
I like to work from existing parts that I link with steel wires and than I give the volume and details desired.
 
There are several tutorial in youtube, for example, but it depends on the stuff you wanna use. I learned using greenstuff and I have never changed, but there are some interesting materials out there.
 
I am absolutely NOT a professional sculptor, but I was -ahem ( a bit poor and unable to afford models for sometime) - so I made my own from sculpey - sometimes just that and sometimes based on "skeletons" of other thind=gs, like plastic power rangers, football trophies and the like.

Here - have a look and it doesnt matter if you laugh - I still like em even if they are bodgey.


Pink power ranger inside this one...

Rugby trophy in the giant


Some trolls wih weird plastic thigs inside:
 

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Orjetax

Member
Bluey Zarzov":ql5eljtw said:
I am absolutely NOT a professional sculptor, but I was -ahem ( a bit poor and unable to afford models for sometime) - so I made my own from sculpey - sometimes just that and sometimes based on "skeletons" of other thind=gs, like plastic power rangers, football trophies and the like.

Here - have a look and it doesnt matter if you laugh - I still like em even if they are bodgey.


Pink power ranger inside this one...

Rugby trophy in the giant


Some trolls wih weird plastic thigs inside:

These radiate good vibes. I especially like the ogre.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Tubehead

Member
Bluey Zarzov":3m5y7tix said:
...I made my own from sculpey - sometimes just that and sometimes based on "skeletons" of other things, like plastic power rangers, football trophies and the like.
(...)
Pink power ranger inside this one
(...)
it doesn't matter if you laugh

Who would laugh at these? I think they're great! Full of their own kind of charm. And there's nothing wrong with building atop 'found object' skeletons. If that's cheating, then most professional miniature sculptors are cheating when they use armatures and dollies, so no worries.
I sculpted this guy onto a Bandai Kamen Rider ZX body:

pJdoR07.jpg


It seems tokusatsu figures don't last very long around creative people. :lol:

You used sculpey huh? For years I thought a figure would melt in the oven if you did that but I guess the temperature isn't really high enough to be a problem.
For this guy I used some products found around town; Modena air-hardening polymer clay for the wings, and the body was done with Mr. Hobby two-part epoxy putty, which compares rather poorly with green stuff since it tends to crumble or shatter if drilled or carved.

Thanks for being brave and showing your homemade figures! We should make a thread just for that!
 
I do. And the "trick" with greenstuff is to sculpt step by step. I mean: You sculpt something, let it be until it is totally hard, and then continue. If you can imagine what do you want, and divide the work in steps, you might have enough time in every step to do it carefully.
 

symphonicpoet

Moderator
Bluey Zarzov":75vda7tx said:
I am absolutely NOT a professional sculptor, but I was -ahem ( a bit poor and unable to afford models for sometime) - so I made my own from sculpey - sometimes just that and sometimes based on "skeletons" of other thind=gs, like plastic power rangers, football trophies and the like.

I honestly love those. They have an innocent and beautiful fun to them that is sadly missing from a lot of commercial sculpts nowadays. They remind me of some of Henson's best work. Each of them is charming. :) Okay, maybe I'm supposed to be terrified, but you know, a giant or an ogre just out walking around would probably be more happy and goofy than terrifying. Like a draft horse, maybe. Or a gorilla. They can be plenty terrifying if they've got reason to be cross with you, but . . . normally they're just doing their own thing. Maybe lying about and scratching a pesky itch. Maybe rolling in the grass like a two thousand pound dog. (To scratch a pesky itch.) Anyway . . . I'm working on my first full up sculpt. I can only hope it comes out that well. :)
 

Tubehead

Member
Here's a rather useful trick:
If you need to sculpt something right onto a model for a perfect fit, but you need the piece to be removable, you can use Mr. Hobby Masking Gel.
It brushes on as a liquid and dries hard into a thin rubbery film. You can sculpt right on top of it and pop the piece off when it has cured. You can sculpt onto it again and again, and when you're finished it peels off like a sticker.

Example: This is a multi-piece figure that is going to be manufactured. I want the casting to offer various types of arm options, so I need the shoulder parts to line up with precision.
1J9MU9K.jpg



The figure below will offer various head options. I've made a quick one here for the sake of example. I can do as many heads as I like and they'll all match up perfectly with the body when the customer glues the final castings together.
4hVWkRE.jpg


Even if you're not manufacturing stuff it can still be a good way to avoid messing up a figure. Say, if you sculpt something you're really happy with but want to try out different types of experimental heads or limbs before settling on a final look for the figure.
 
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