| Brood Brother |
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Joined: Thu Feb 13, 2003 3:18 pm
Posts: 40
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HI,
Finally I get around to doing the third part of this little article.
After presenting my principal tools and relating some of my experiences with different materials in the first two posts, in this one I would like to talk about some points that are part of the sculpting process itself.
It is basically a jumbled collection of various pieces of advice derived from my own (albeit still rather limited) experience, grouped into a few distinct categories so as not to let this degenerate into wholly disorganized rambling (yeah, like it works...) ;-)
Before I start, I want to apologize for the lack of photos which
might have been quite handy in some places. The delay of this post is partly due to the fact that I wanted to wait for my digicam, but since it hasn't arrived yet I decided to make do without it (for now). I have, however, made a few rough diagrams in MS Paint, to accompany the stuff on armatures which needed some illustration in a few places, I think.
They are numbered, and I will refer to them when necessary.
Now, enjoy !
ARMATURES:
An armature is so to speak the "skeleton" of any sculpt, determining it's basic shape/pose/size. It is necessary in order to provide a rigid core, on which to build the miniature from putty.
I think there are basically four ways of building an armature:
carving it, glueing it, soldering it and sculpting it.
For epic scale infantry options two and three are generally the best, although I only have personal experience with gluing armatures. However in theory soldering should work equally well, provided you have soldering equipment for such a small scale and that you have ?metal rods/wire thinenough, yet at the same time not easily bent. In case any of you remember, the classic Battletech mechs used to come (not sure if they still do, since I stopped playing about six years ago) with quite thin separate metal rods (to be used for antennae I believe) which probably would have been great for this.
I only carve armatures -from pewter- when assembling them -from plastic- is too difficult, and more importantly when they would be too fragile or the small rods too thin to be easily made. I have never carved armatures in Epic scale, but I did it for a few minis I which were about 5 mm.
Sculpting an armature makes sense in the case of vehicles, though it's probaly better yet to build the hull out of plasticard if the shapes are not too organic. To give an example, I once sculpted an armature for an Eldar waveserpent / falcon chassis [which I never finished, and likely never will].
For epic infantry, I always assemble the skeleton from plastic rods carved from sprue (see my post on materials). Using plastic cement these can be joined together quickly and without too much of a mess after having been cut to precisely the right length and if necessary even at the necessary angles for a given joint.
My armatures for humanoids usually consist of one piece for the "backbone", one for the "pelvis" (usually very short, since the upper ends of the leg pieces represent the sides of the pelvic area, see Fig. 1), two for each leg, two for each arm, one for the head/neck and sometimes one each for the feet and one or more each for the hands. Hands and feet are flat (unlike the others which are rounded) and the hand parts are *very* thin, just enough to support the application of putty.
However, I mostly sculpt the hands freely or make the fingers from tiny plastic rods, so I can often do away with an armature here.
My feet (well, not *mine*, you see..), too, are frequently fully sculpted. If they are, the rods for the "lower legs" have to be somewhat longer than for the "upper legs" (for my life I can' t think of the proper term right now ;-)), since they have to include the height of the feet as well (Fig. 2).
Also, unless both halves of the joints are cut to fit, in the cases of both arms and legs one part will have to be a little longer, to represent the elbows and knees (Fig. 3).
I usually keep the arms as well as the head separate from the main armature so as to keep them from obstructing the torso during work and to enable me to work on several pieces of the same miniature alternately (which, arguably, brings with it the risk of slight disproportions, but helps with detail and also seems to be psychologically more satisfying IMO ;-)).
There is also the charm of multipart miniatures in general?
Each of those armature parts is glued to a thicker piece of sprue for handling, usually with a flat bar or a round base between the feet of the main armature and the handle and some extra length of plastic rod in the case of the arms and neck (Fig. 4).
That's it for the making of plastic armatures.
Just one more thing: Plastic armatures (at least the kind of plastic I use) are not very heat resistant. So you have to be careful with hot lamps while accelerating curing of putty (see below). I think on some of the WIP pics of my SoB one might be able to see that I wasn't :-)
(just affected the handle, fortunately...)
This can also turn out to be a problem if you want your minis professionally cast since high temperatures are used in vulcanizing the rubber mold.
HARD AND SOFT TECHNIQUES
There are basically two ways to shape putty:
You can do it when it is still uncured and pliable or when it is already cured ( and in fact there is a third stage in between, when it is already mostly, but not quite fully, cured, but that is more useful for smoothing, not for shaping).
*Never* underestimate the importance of "hard" techniques.
Those include sanding, filing, cutting, drilling, scraping and carving, and probably others I can't think of or don't even know yet, but those ought to be the main ones, I think.
Some people I know think of sculpting as "pushing putty", that is: working the putty as a pliable mass. Now this is not too far from the truth (but not quite that) in the case of Green Stuff (or similarly flexible putties), but with my current mix of Green Stuff and Milliput I find that a substantial part of the work is done in the cured stage. Let's try to look at this in a pseudo-statistic, where we separate the sculpting process into several stages and look at the part hard sculpting plays for me, as opposed to soft sculpting:
[1) Armature: well, in the case of epic infantry: usually 100% hard sculpting. But this doesn't really count, I think ... :-)]
2) Bulking out the basic shape:
On thicker body parts, such as the torso of most miniatures: Mostly soft sculpting. This is because there is no need to achieve a precise shape in this stage, since there is still some room for further sculpting.
On smaller parts, most notably the head or the hands/feet , on the other hand, this involves a lot of hard sculpting to make the most of what small amount of ?putty can be used there during the entire sculpting process, since they largely preclude working in many layers. About 50% of the work is hard techniques.
3) Detail: in my case this is generally a case of providing a fairly precise basic shape with soft putty and then mostly sanding it to give it a more precise shape. Again about 50/50, I think.
4) Smoothing/finishing: except for some burnishing when almost cured, I do this mostly by sanding with a very fine grid, so this is at least 70% hard sculpting.
Outside this order: I do some pieces, such as small detail and (at least the basic shapes of) weapons, blades in particular, usually in plastic, which means hard techniques exclusively.
For example, the sword of the WIP Eldar ranger is made purely from plastic.
So you see that while (in my case at least) "pushing putty" dominates the basic stages of work, a proper finish requires hard sculpting. Just look at the fire dragon WIP (discontinued^^) I posted in the collage towards the end of the thread "My personal sculpting "challenge"", which has not seen any hard sculpting.
I find that the most basic tools for hard sculpting are small slips of abrasive paper with different grain sizes, where you work your way down from rough (like a 200 or 400 grid), to first get a clearer, more defined shape than generally possible with soft putty alone, to smooth (800 or 1000, which is the finest grain I can get here) ?in order to finish the surface.
The rougher grain paper is particularly useful for defining things like belts and similar detail that stands out from an otherwise relatively flat region of the model, while fine grain should be preferred when the aim is to just give some better definition or some slight touch up, such as with folds in clothing or the basic shape of the face, hair, fingers etc...
Anything that can be used to scrape or cut is also useful for hard sculpting, but not so much for finishing as for helping with basic shapes, and those instruments are mostly used when working in plastic instead of putty. I don't think there is much to be said about that, beyond what I wrote in my mentioned post. One thing to keep in mind when cutting small pieces of plastics, is that knife edges will not create a perfectly vertical cut, since they are themselves slanted/wedge-shaped, but razorblades minimize this problem.
It is also important to keep in mind that you need a hard curing putty to do proper hard techniques, unless you use extremely fine sand paper exclusively and don't really plan on doing many hard edges, which are next to impossible in putty like Green Stuff (it *is* possible, of course, but if you try to do that on a (non organic-looking) vehicle of some size, you can probably spoon-feed your brain to the cat afterwards...).
LUBRICANT
Generally use some kind of lubricant on your tools, as well as on the miniature's surface itself during the smoothing stage.
Don't use too much, since this will obstruct your view and, worse, if you are just in the process of adding new parts it might flow between the miniatures surface and the new part, which basically ruins any chance of getting it to stick, until it's dry again.
I use water, since it dries easily, doesn't create any kind of mess, leaves no residue and is plentiful and cheap (unless you live in a desert, of course).
If you use something oily like vaseline (or the oil from their foreheads as some reportedly do...:O)  ) you will have to remove that stuff, if you want to add anything over it, which in my book is a big inconvenience.
It does have the advantage, however, that you don't have to reapply the lubricant all the time, much for the same reason...
The choice is yours I guess.
ACCELERATING CURING
You can accelerate the curing of epoxy putty using heat, and slow it down using cold, as I mentioned in the materials part.
A good way to do this is using a light bulb at about 1 to 5 cm distance from the parts to be cured. Some sculptors build so-called "putty-ovens" out of some cylindrical, not too big metal container, such as a can, by cutting a hole into the top and inserting said bulb. Creates more heat and distributes it more evenly, but I haven't used one, so I can't really discuss it here.
Just one word of warning: As mentioned above and in other places, I have had some plastic parts melt even under a regular light bulb, so proceed with special care if you try a putty oven.
Generally 20 to 40 minutes under a light bulb will cure the putty to a degree that ought to be more than sufficient to add new layers/detail, though it won?t be quite *fully* cured yet at that point.
Finally you might want to know that under the influence of heat, the putty will at first get *softer*, before hardening, so you'd better be careful about touching it during that time (of course properly timed this can also be used to positive effect).
HOW TO START
If you have never sculpted anything before, is it better to start with a full blown mini, or is it better to do some conversions first?
Is there any kind of mini-type particularly suitable for your first tries?
Those are two questions that are often adressed in tutorials at the beginning, and I've read several times (and likely so will you, if you decide to seriously look for some starting info on the web) that one ought to do some minor parts first, and that the first full sculpt ought to be something like an ork or a similarly brutish, big, and -most importantly- malproportioned and distanced from "true" or "proper" human shape as possible, so as to minimize the visual impact of mistakes.
Me, I never did a single piece of conversion before I started full sculpting, and my first sculpt was an approximately 15mm scale Eldar Harlequin-style mini - go figure...
Now I'm not saying that the abovementioned points don't make some sense, but from my personal experience I can say that it works the other way too.
Now, even though this should teach me (and you) to beware of generalizations when giving such recommendations, I nonetheless would like to raise a few issues that I think are worth consideration before your first project:
-scale: You don't have to start in a bigger scale, just because it's easier. Actually I think (and I'm going with Will Hayes of Forgeworld-Grey-Knights-and-Tau-and-much-more fame here, so I'm in good company :-)) that smaller miniatures are easier. Now I don't know why Mr. Hayes thinks so, but I do because there are so many details that just have to be hinted at, and they will still look great since no one expects them in that scale. Also (and this is somewhat reminiscent of the Ork argument above, I fear) slight problems in proportions are less obvious. To see what I mean, just take a look at just about any IG infantry model and how big their heads, hands and feet are ! If such proportions were found in 54mm Inquisitor scale the sculptor would likely be laughed out of the room!
Just start in the scale you would like to work in, that's it.
I'd probably not try to learn "the basics" in a bigger scale and then switch to Epic, since you can learn them there as well, and at the same time get used to the peculiarities of small scale from the start, but if it works better for you the other way, go for it.
-Quality: go for the highest quality possible, but be prepared to accept that it won't work out the first time. For me it did, but that's probably because I've had some prior experience with *carving* small scale miniatures (and I assure you, the first one of *those* looked horrible by my present standards...).
Don't try to artificially limit your quality from the onset, to raise it in steps mini by mini; your pace of improvement will come by itself.
-Choice of design: Choose something you like, possibly something that you will really be able to use in gaming and thus show off. That way chances are much better you will actually have the motivation to finish the mini.
But whatever you choose, I would recommend having some kind of visual input to work from, as extensive as you can manage.
And whatever it is, the more professional - that is the closer to your ideal goal - the better, since this will fulfil the *extremely* important task of reminding you of the big picture, so as not to get lost during the sculpting process.
What I mean by "getting lost" is that in the beginning, if you are remotely similar to me, you might really find it difficult to imagine that the unshapely bits and pieces you are working on will ever begin to resemble a finished miniature, but having source material will enable you to place the part you are working on in the ?big picture? of the mini as it is supposed to look when finished.
-Tools etc.: don't go overboard on tools from the beginning, don't try to build a tool for every possible application beforehand.
And definitely don't buy any tools at 10$ a piece before you know they really will be handy (if you desperately want to get rid of the money send it to me instead, I won't mind...).
I have read accounts of people on the net who invested heavily in a set of high quality sculpting tools (which aren't all that cheap), only to find that they can do 99% of their work with a single tool and a few household items, and if they hadn't gotten ?that tool in the first place, as likely as not they could have made do just as well with some different needles etc.
Particularly in our scale some of those tools are just overkill, out of scale and thus no longer properly suitable for their original purpose.
-Finally: Unless you are under some kind of time constraint, have the courage to scrap anything - be it a small skull or the complete torso- if you are certain you can do better. Believe me, it is quite annoying to know you could have done better but didn't when looking at a finished sculpt . Of course this will still happen all the time, by the very nature of self improvement, but you can at least cut down on it.
Well, that?s it from my part for now, but if you feel there is something important I haven?t mentioned, or want to hear more about some particular subject, just ask :-)
Cheers,
Drasannar
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"...and they taught me terror. How to use it and how to face it."
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; well, lucky me if that's the only thing I forgot...
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