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Hedningen posted:
Threadomancy, but I've recently started sculpting. I first planned out to just make a few bits of green stuff additions to cover up my kitbash jobs, as I wanted to do more historically (early renaissance) looking hobbits. But it turned out that sculpting was more fun than I expected, and now it's eating up all my hobby time. I'm cheating a bit by using plastic bodies (the Wargames Atlantic halflings), but I plan to gradually sculpt more and more parts. I've reached the point where I make entire arms, and at the end of this army project I plan to make at least one hobbit completely from scratch. So the initial idea was simple conversions to make heads from Perry Miniatures fit:   Then I covered up some arms with puffy sleeves:  Then I found out how fun it is to add breastplates and armour, and went completely overboard:  The platelings needed some leadership, which made for the most extensive sculpting yet:  And some lighter infantry, wielding daggers and bucklers:   After this initial rush I finally decided to do some proper work, and now I'm putting in wire armature in some torsos to attempt my first entirely sculpted limbs:  I'll also take a stab at making heads from scratch, which I expect will be one of the first major obstacles for a scratch sculpted mini.
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Dec 10, 2020 13:34
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 11:18 |
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Hedningen posted:Those are looking really good! Sculpting is just converting models with parts that are a little harder to assemble, anyway, so that’s a great first step towards total scratch sculpting - plus it helps get the proportions drilled into your head. Thanks! Yeah proportions on things like legs and such are a big worry once I get to it. I started with heads this weekend, and even half a millimeter too small or big shows a lot. Some of these first guys look like absolute pinheads, but I'll improve as I practice.   Do you ever try to combine different materials? I'm thinking of picking up some super sculpey and try out.
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Dec 13, 2020 23:07
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Hedningen posted:Absolutely! I'm going to order some supersculpey and procreate to try out new stuff. I'll try to not spam this thread with daily progress, but here are some more italian wars halflings. I'm trying to make heads as well now, and I've been binging youtube videos about helmets all week. I had no idea just how little I knew about late medieval/early renaissance helmets and their construction and design.  Newest batch has better proportions overall I think, for halflings that is. I'm going for helmets that are kind of in the tranformaton from bascinets to barbutes. Later on I might try to make some actual bartbutes.  Main issue now is that I only have four bodies left! I ordered forty more. I'm also thinking of making some scratch built gendarmes after this. Edit: Ok so what's more renaissance than puffy clothes? Maybe rediscovering a profound love of ancient Greece philosophers, but it's close. So I took a break in trying to sculpt helmets, and instead made some puffy hats. Turned out it's easier than helmets. This is great news for any future halfknecht units. They're hard to photograph though, as it's all just slightly glossy green.  Close-ups    
lilljonas fucked around with this message at 09:55 on Dec 16, 2020 |
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Dec 15, 2020 14:47
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Well, I did it! My first scratch sculpted mini. Of course there are dozens of things I want to get better on the next one, but the first step to being a good sculptor is to be a sculptor at all. This halfling pikeman will join my growing early 16th century halfling army.    Now I want to make more halflings, but I'm also kind of wanting to make some Glorantha style ducks that want to purge Italy of the Undead scourge, or maybe some turtle mans.
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Jan 22, 2021 08:51
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I had a hiatus where I painted a lot and stopped sculpting. But some new club members are starting up a Frostgrave campaign, so I thought I’d do something weird. Why not a group of duck adventurers? First out is the main mage. Still not done as I think I’ll give it a hat of some kind to make him properly magelike.   
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Apr 8, 2021 21:16
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This weekend I continued work on the ducks. First off, the mage got a fancy hat, and I consider it done now:   I also made an apprentice. This guy is tiny, with the haunched stature he's just 18mm to the top of the head! It's hard to tell from the pics, but he's holding a backpack full of scrolls and books in place with his hands.    The third duck out will be a proud knight. I still need to give him a cape, I already sculpted a shield on the side that I'll put on his back after the cape is done.    Finally an overall view of the rest of the gang, slowly approaching the next sculpting phases. Since they'll be used in Frostgrave I'll need a lot of unarmoured basic thugs and thieves, which I realized I feel less inspired to do than the more specific types. So I might blast through them to get them over with if I don't find an interesting take. 
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Apr 11, 2021 21:32
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My hankering for duck sculpting is rapidly overtaking my halfling project. Ok, so next batch will focus on some unarmoured or lightly armoured ducks. I'll need plenty of these for Frostgrave, and they should be suitable for an adventurer gang or for RPGs.   This is probably my favourite in this batch. I like his face and his stance, and the mail coif. The kettle helmet is just started, I'll work more on it when the base has cured. I'm thinking of giving him a big stonkin' polearm.   I nicknamed this "The Brute", because of the menacing pose. I'll give him a big club.   Finally a dastardly thief. He'll get a knife and maybe some kind of mask or similar disguise, or just a hat. The pose ended up a little bit wonky with the legs, but it might work out in the end. The growing gang. It feels great to have them lined up and see how they organically develop. It's like I'm forming tories in my mind when I work on the ducks. Now I'm wondering if they don't travel around with some kind of wagon, maybe with a mule-driver goose? Who knows! 
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Apr 16, 2021 20:53
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It's Summer time threadomancy! Sculpting was slowed down by work and picking up a whole bunch of old Orcs & Goblins second hand, but I've had some progress and if I dare say it myself, some of my favourite results this far:   This magnificient barbarian warrior is huge! Almost human size! :O   This billduck also got the last touches.   A thug duck, staring down the next victim of its big club. This pose come up by coincidence, but I really like it.     Two thieves. I need these to be able to play Frostgrave with this gang of adventuring ducks, but I'm not sure I really hit the spot with these sculpts. I might try some more ideas for more thief sculpts.  Finally some WIPs, including a sorceror, a crossbowduck and an archer. And here are the finished sculpts so far ranked up: 
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Jun 25, 2021 19:26
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Hedningen posted:Your ducks are goddamn incredible. Thanks! I think next step will be to try to work on more dynamic poses, like you do. My minis this far have been quite static, which makes it easy to focus on basic shapes and details. But in the long run they'll end up a bit boring in the long run. I've also started trying to find someone interested in casting copies, but no luck this far. On the other hand, I picked up two working lots of WHFB Orcs & Goblins, so maybe it's time to actually roll my own goblins too. :P lilljonas fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Jul 1, 2021 |
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Jul 1, 2021 08:13
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Hedningen posted:Yeah, dynamism is one of those things I’ve started playing with a bit more. I tend to do a once-a-year sculpt repeat by making a fencer and seeing how/if I’ve improved, and that time has rolled around again. Thanks for the inspiration. Anyway, since last post I've done some legwork on finding a caster on my side of the EU border, so now I'm looking at the various hurdles I would have to cross to get some of these casted for resale. It's not easy, but it's a big motivation right now and it made me set up a more ambitious sculpting plan for this summer. Some new sculpts:   The Scarred Veteran Guard, always on the lookout with a trusty crossbow. For this one I had to actually look up medieval crossbow bolt quivers, and they looked nothing like bow quivers at all!   Archer Duck. I'm not 100% happy with how the pose ended up, and I think it's really unsuited for casting. So I'm working on a new version. The bow is bad too, and now I've learned not to do weapons in greenstuff, but in magic sculpt instead that can be filed down. Like this flamberge that will eventually find a home in the hands of a landsknecht duck:  Anyway, here's the next six sculpts I'm working on:  Trader Duck, Archer Duck MkII, Knight Duck, Backpack Duck, Tanky McGoose and Wizard Duck.
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Jul 15, 2021 20:00
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So duck sculpting is going well. I've finished 19 sculpts now, working on putting integrated bases on them. There are four more to go. Making these bases might be the least inspiring part of miniature sculpting... so not so different from painting minis I guess! :P
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Aug 18, 2021 20:54
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Hedningen posted:Your ducks are fantastic, and kinda make me want to sculpt ducks as well. Oooh, that hand is just really great. Well done. Thanks! I'm messing with all the bureaucratic stuff (registering for FA-skatt, VAT etc), but once that's done they're hopefully off to the caster! Now I'm thinking about next project. Might be to either make a more unit style ducks (maybe the city guard?), or some postapoc animals/hybrids.
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Aug 29, 2021 13:55
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Hedningen posted:One of the players in my Blood Bowl league needed a star player, Hakflem Skuttlespite, but couldn’t find one. So I chopped up some Skaven and got to work - everything but the heads is scratch-sculpted. Whoa, looking great! Needing a mini that you can't find is a great motivator for sculpting. In other news, I finished my last ducks (up to 23 now) and sent them off to Germany for master casting last week. I'm super nervous now about what they'll think of them when I'll finally get a professional check on them. Final line-up: 
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Sep 28, 2021 08:20
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Hedningen posted:Scrolling down this thread is always a trip. And now, bottom of page: "Hey here's the master molds of my first range!" :P What's this?  A box of minis from Germany?  A box of master copies of lilljonas duck adventurers?  A box of a lot of master copies of lilljonas duck adventurers?  A box of a horde of master copies of lilljonas duck adventurers?!  Super stoked to see these, Hagen Miniautres did a great job in making the molds. Out of 21 sculpts, only one could not be recast due to the pose. Now I need to clean these up and paint them ASAP, and then it's off to try to flog them. :P
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Oct 22, 2021 13:12
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Good job on the 3D sculpt, I have no plans to get into 3D sculpting myself but I can really see how much more practical it can be for so many reasons.
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Oct 22, 2021 13:12
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Nice work, I think I like the goblin coach the best. I find it really hard to juggle sculpting and painting. Now I've been painting for a few months, and my sculpting completely stopped. I'll try to get going again soon, I think I want to start on a set of duck pirates. Mixing Drakar och Demoner ducks and maybe some inspiration from the Asterix pirates? That should be fun and interesting.
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Dec 29, 2021 20:52
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Hedningen posted:Whoo, sculpting! That's a nice initiative! I wish there was something like that here, having some kind of workshop to pick up new techniques sounds great. Personally I'd add a few more corks since it's cheap. I bought a huge bag of 'em from Slöjddetaljer and got more corks than I'll ever need, so splitting one of those would be an easy way for everyone to have a lifetime's supply of corks. When working with green stuff, I find that I need to work on 10+ minis for it to be worth it. But that might be my work flow, I do a tiny part on one mini (like one greave) and then leave it to cure, and move on to the next mini. If I had just one or two minis I'd work on, I'd get stuck really quickly. Just starting up a new set of sculpts after the kickstarter, I set up 12 armatures to get started. As for shapers, I got around it with just a dentist tool for quite a while. Especially if you're just working on shapes and not looking for that super smooth texture that will look great on a cast. If you have a wax #5 or similar, you can get by without a shaper tool IMHO. I think it's one of those tools that some sculptors use as their main tool, and some just use for smoothing out textures. So yeah, I'm back to sculpting again, after being on a painting binge during the kickstarter. So most of these are just starting out, so maybe 2-3 sessions in or simply the armatures. Then I work from inside out.  The plan is to continue to make some more skirmish/RPG style ducks, to make few other animal type minis (like the owl ranger I've started on), and also some duck units. I want to end up being able to field a SAGA army of my own sculpts. I've also gotten a request to work on a landsknecht style set of greenskins, so doing research on what kind of goblins or orcs I'd like to sculpt. But that sounds like a long term project as those clothes and armour are super fiddly!
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Mar 18, 2022 15:50
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SkyeAuroline posted:Stepping away from painting for a couple days to prepare the next few batches of stuff to work on, decided to break out greenstuff today and try to handle the more complicated things. Every piece except the chestpiece abjectly failed to accomplish what I was hoping for, but every failure turned out to be good enough so far, so I'm hopeful that's a good sign. Have not yet figured out the art of sculpting so I'm pleasantly surprised where it went right and not shocked where it went wrong. Good job! That's pretty much how I started sculpting, just adding smaller stuff to plastic minis and working my way up. As a coincidence, I think armour plates were the first items I managed to pull off on a mini to a degree where I felt confident enough to start making bigger details from scratch. My own progress is slow, as I might get 2-3 sessions per week. This time I try to draw some images first for inspiration, and I found that it's sometimes helpful to have a picture to work from instead of just making stuff up as I go. I've revised this bunch of mercenary duck troll-hunters a few times, and now it's time to start to sculpt them:  
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Aug 26, 2022 10:45
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The Demilich posted:Does anyone have any tips for working with texture rollers for air clay? It's not sticky enough to stick to bases during rolling and the clay itself keeps clogging the rollers details. I have no experience of texture rollers, but have you tried rubbing some vaseline on the roller? That tends to be the go-to solution for not getting clays to stick to sculpting tools. Also, sweet plaguebearer! On the sculpting front, the last week or so I've finally been able to set aside sculpting time each night (1-2 hours) while the baby and mother are sleeping. So I've been picking up some nice pace on the next set of ducks. Unfortunately it's far easier to BEGIN a sculpt than to FINISH it, especially since my main production bottle necks are heads and weapons. So every day there's just more and more half-done landsknechts assembling on my desk.  But soon I'll have a handful of finished pikemen, which feels great after half a year of no sculpting.
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Oct 11, 2022 07:30
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Hedningen posted:I really like this dude and he came out really well. You’ve got some really fun textures in there. Nice work, congrats on getting commission for sculpts! That's a big step. First couple of ducks for the next wave are done. The basic infantry will have open hands to fit either spears, pikes or halberds. Some 20 sculpts are in various stages of WIP.   
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Oct 24, 2022 10:26
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Hedningen posted:
Thanks for the reminder that I needed to catch up with taking photos of my duck mercenary project. I think making the Star Players might be a chance to challenge yourself even more, I've been thinking about doing something like that myself: going back to WHFB and try to make my own take on some characters from the artwork. Mercs chugging along, the last few weeks a bit slower but I'm getting close to about 30ish minis, or roughly 2/3. There's also like, 30 half-sculpted ducks in the pile right now, from basically covered armatures to stuff needing a head or a weapon. I had to get these off from the corks as I was running out of decent corks at home. Horizontal pikes:   45 degree pikes:   Straight pikes:  Two-handed swords:  Half an artillery crew:  Misc. tross and hang-arounds:  I'm getting a lot of practice on slash style sleeves.
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Dec 10, 2022 23:22
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Hedningen posted:Crossposting! Saw them on facebook, huge congrats! It’s a great feeling seeing them in metal after working with greens for so long, right?
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Mar 8, 2023 10:53
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Hedningen posted:
Nice to see that you're keeping up the sculpting. I've been busy sculpting too, and closing in on finishing off the first wave of landsknecht ducks. I'm at 50+ finished sculpts now, and think the final tally will be just over 60. I should do a proper photo session at some point. My favourite this far, a gunner duck:  Handgunners:   Casualty markers:  
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Aug 11, 2023 13:54
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Hedningen posted:Your ducks are stunning as always! Any recommendations on armatures or scaling for them? I’m tempted to try making one myself. Thank you! I'd love to see your take on a duck. Here's how my armatures are done, they are super simple: I cut two pieces of wire. Put them side by side, grab with pliers, and then twist:  Using the pliers, I bend out the legs into a very rudimentary pelvis, just to get some spacing between the legs:  Then it's posing time! The ducks are pretty squat, so the butt is bent a lot further back than on a human, and then I make the spine sloped in a low curve.  I tend to first bulk out the lower torso to create a big ol duck butt. Once cured, I'll sculpt a feathery texture on the butt as I typically don't cover that up with armour or clothes. Then I make outlines for legs, and go from there depending on what kind of duck I'm making. I don't really have heads on my armatures, I make the heads separately and then stuck them on the shoulders, typically as my last step.  Sizes vary a lot, my smallest ones are about halfling sized and the biggest about human sized. This means that the twisted armature between the pelvis and the arms might be 10-15mm and the entire armature from bottom of foot to arm might be 17-25mm or so, again depending on how big the duck is.
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Aug 22, 2023 22:08
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Swashduckler looks great! One question: how did you go from big chunky swords go those super straight swords between the picks? Making good looking weapons is still a big problem area for my sculpting, are you filing them? I found filing anything with GS in it won’t leave that smooth a texture.
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Aug 25, 2023 20:28
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Hedningen posted:Also, side note - I’ve been trying to sell more sculpts, and I wanted to get your permission before listing this guy, because it’s such an obvious derivation of your style and I don’t want to be seen as ripping you off. Thanks for the tips on filing. I'm mostly just using a single set of small files and using finer grit sandpaper as well should be helpful. And hell yeah, knock yourself out and get your ducks out there. It's not like I'm holding back because I'm using Carl Barks as my main source of references for facial expressions. 
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Aug 25, 2023 22:46
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Hedningen posted:The sanding sticks are the best way to do it, as you can get them thin enough to maneuver, but wide enough to get an even edge. Lol I had the same idea, doing the four heroquest ducks and maybe the chaos sorcerer. But then I guess it is one of those most obvious things as a fantasy sculpter. I’d love to see how yours turn out. I’ll probably be stuck doing other stuff for a long time anyway, I want to do some gallowglass ducks next and then maybe try sculpting some lizard folks that are more like newts or sand lizards than the classical dinosaur looking lizardfolks.
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Aug 26, 2023 07:59
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Five more ducks leaving the workdesk. This means I have two full sets of twohanded sword ducks, three full sets of command and a paymaster's bodyguard.
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Sep 8, 2023 10:08
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 11:18 |
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I'm taking a little bit of a sculpting break as I'm talking to my caster and starting to plan the production phase for what is finished. However, it might take a while and so I could probably squeeze in a few more ducks, so potential stretch goals for a KS is on my mind. I took the time to bring out all the ducks of this wave thus far and take some photos. Crossposting from Lead Adventures: First out where the basic rank and file. I made these without weapons attached, so that they can easily carry spears, halberds or pikes. A lot of them could easily be given crossbows or arquebuses too if you don't sweat it about quivers and powder bags (or add those afterwards). I quickly decided on making two versions of each group, one with breastplates and a higher ratio of helmets, and one lighter armoured with jackets.   First sets holding weapons straight up   Second sets holding weapons somewhat lowered   Third sets holding weapons straight forward  Examples with various weapons The pike/spear ducks of course need support.  Two handed sword ducks  Arquebus ducks. I plan to expand the ranged part of the army later, but I just wanted enough done to at least form a minimum of shooting.  To do this I also made a small artillery crew. I plan to get to making actual cannon later, but I need to learn how to sculpt those first. Now it's starting to look like an army. But I needed someone to lead them:  Three command groups with flag bearer, champion and musician.  A paymaster, it's bodyguard and trusted bagpipe player  A wealthy conduckttieri, ready to marshall the mercenaries This nascent warhost has even started to attract all manners of ducks. In the baggage train you can find:  Civilians following along  Weird egg cultists?!  Upset wounded mercenaries So, it's quite a gaggle of soldiers! Let's get a group shot: 
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Oct 20, 2023 21:50
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