LATEST WORKS
...thought I'd do a more closely-followed progression of a couple of more recently-undertaken
sculpts to give a better idea of the whole process, as the previous page's assorted pics of different
sculpts at different stages don't really allow for a full appreciation of what's involved: so from here
on in you'll see a more or less complete run-down of how I go about producing a 'typical' sculpt or two,
from initial idea to finished and painted work; this will take the form of an irregularly-updated page
detailing the current progress on these two particular works - the updates will quite likely be fairly few
and far between, as the works being 'showcased' are entirely spare-time projects, meaning that I'll only
get a chance to work on the things in my spare time, which is pretty rare these days; for further viewing,
I've also set up a page showing the progress of a few of my
current commissions - but meanwhile,
without further a do-do, here's this lot:
...first of all, the rough-sketch stage - and these are often very rough,
and don't necessarily bear any relation at all to the finished project, not least since revisions of a sculpt might
be in order where the sketch depicts a pose or other aspect of the character that simply cannot be translated into
three dimensions, at least not without considerable compromise to anatomical accuracy or just for the simple fact
that a 2D pose won't always look as good when made into 3D - whether by making the figure unbalanced or ungainly
or otherwise unappealing to the sculptor's eye; conversely though, a well-posed sculpture is generally going
to end up looking a lot more dynamic than even the most exceptional starting sketch, which is generally a good thing
- when I draw for drawing's sake, I'll quite often make a preliminary sketch that's far better than the finished
drawing I later end up with, if only for the immediacy and spontaneity of the thing: but generally speaking I can
usually - hopefully - make a sculpture that at the very least lives up to the vivacity of that original concept.
Ooh, look who's been going through his big words dictionary, eh?
- anyway, here's the sketches for the initial planning of the two works we'll be watching - on the right,
a quickie of a cheetah-anthro - I've been planning to do one of these critters for a while, and putting
it off masterfully for quite some time, quite possibly in the hope of avoiding the spot-pattern painting
nightmare that will be the inevitable ending of the thing when that time comes around; and on the left,
a fighty-looking female whose identity will hopefully become more apparent as the sculpt progresses,
if my likeness-sculpting skills have improved at all since the last one of these things I did.
As is plainly visible, these pics are pretty damn rough - really nothing more than envelope-scribbles, but that's often how I get started.
Just for heck's sake I thought I'd bung in a picture of my sculpting 'kit', which is pretty elementary - I do in fact possess quite a number of 'proper' sculpting tools, various wooden, iron, and surgical steel doo-doos that are gathering dust in the bottom of one of my old tool boxes somewhere - but really I generally stick with my ever-ready set of the following: a short length of steel wire, with a sharp point at one end and a rounded point at the other; my 'lucky' knife, a sort of miniature bowie-type thing that is pretty much my main tool; and one or other end of my narrow-handled scalpel - the blunt end is sometimes useful for soer of spreading the milliput across a surface or for indenting into it, and on the rare occasions that I have a new blade at the business end of the thing, it's useful for making a sharply-defined line or cut-off whenever or wherever it might be needed; anyway, those three things, along with a pot of water and a haggard olddd paintbrush, make up my not-very-impressive array of working implements.
Right, on with the show.
The real starting point of the sculpt tends to be the head, at least that's the case for me: for a human character
I'll start with a skull - a long time back I made a plasticene skull at about 1/5th scale that I've moulded and cast
for just such small beginnings, recasting the thing a few times at reduced sizes to allow me to cover most of the
different scale-sizes I work with (the majority of my human- and anthro- figures tend to be at 1/6th, though this
one's gonna be a bit bigger; the cheetah though is following the standard). Obviously it's a bit of a cheat as not
every face can be built around the same skull, but once I've cast one up I can carve it down or build it up as
necessary to make a good starting-point for whatever shape of face I'm going to be trying to work to.
I should add that with most of my anthro subjects I tend to just go straight for making the head,
since obviously different animals' skulls are a lot less re-useable than a basic 'blank' human one.
In either case, I'll start by sculpting the features or head using ordinary plasticene, mounting the skull
or animal head onto a rod or small length of armature to make it easier to handle; obviously it's good to get as
many reference pictures as possible for the subject, especially so for a hoped-to-be-recognised human character:
for an animal head it's usually sufficient to get a front and side view, with maybe one or two additional
angles to allow a better understanding of the form if it's a little more complicated.
Once I'm happy with the plasticene sculpt, I'll make a dipped-latex mould of the thing
(I'll add another link-page here at some point to give a basic idea in the how-to of that
particular process too) and then make a casting either in resin or plaster so I've got a good solid
piece to work with: next I drill into the back of the head and glue it onto a length of armature
wire that will provide the 'spine' of the figure to be made, and then I'll build a basic skeleton
of armature-wire around this basis to make the starting-point of the figure; the cast head forms
the unit of measurement for the body-proportions - this is why I always start with the head,
as it makes everything else follow more smoothly: again, this is from my own point of view, I know
plenty of folks who start at the feet and work up, it's a personal preference rather than any kind
of absolute or commandment. In some cases I'll also make and cast hands and feet for a figure if a
particular pose has been specified or if I've decided absolutely on a particular hand-gesture or
whatever before I get started, but more often than not it's just the head alone that gets the ball rolling.
I'll start posing the skeleton next - and this is where the cast head allows greater freedom, since
I find it to be a lot less hassle to pose a relatively complete head in conjunction with the beginnings of a figure
rather than to try and build a head to fit an established pose; the solidity of the head also ensures that none of
the detail is lost as it otherwise might be if I'd gone ahead with posing using only the plasticene version:
granted, I could in theory cut out the whole moulding/casting process for the head by just going for the finished
head using my preferred sculpting medium, but again this is just my preferred method - and anyway I'm a lot more inclined to
affect any change of the head that might be necessary for the figure if it's only a casting, than I might be if I'd just gone ahead and made a fully-finished noggin to begin with.
Once the pose is more or less as desired, I'll start bulking out the body masses: generally I'll use plasticene again
here - many opt for scrunched foil as a body-base; one of my own alternate core-sources is polystyrene foam,
the stuff that comes as moulded white foam packaging whenever you buy something like a stereo, tv or whatever -
which I'll glue together into blocks and then roughly carve down to the required body-shape: but for the purposes of this page I'll be going with my preferred standard - I like the weightiness of a piece done this way, is about the only way I can put it across.
It's useful of course to have a fairly good understanding of anatomy as you go about blocking up a body
(by whatever means you use) - any figure is going to look better if you have a good grasp of the way bone and muscle
work together to make the overall form: there are plenty of good books out there to give you a hand getting savvy
with this sort of thing - I'll add a bibliography of the various tomes I've got on the subject when I next get a
chance to spend a while updating. Meanwhile, knowledge
of the body's ordinary 'possibilties' will further enable - or restrict - whatever's happening with the pose of
the figure, as you'll quickly find out what a drawing can get away with by virtue of perspectives and perceptions,
an accurately-sculptured body-form simply won't allow if the bones won't bend in a given direction without making
the figure look deformed or perhaps in possession of broken appendages - of course, that's fine if that's what
you're aiming for, but I'm assuming that this is generally not the case. With non-human sculptures of course
these rules of anatomy can take flight somewhat, since nobody can say with any authority just what an
anthro / dragon / or other fantasy creature should really look like, but it's usually helpful to have at
least some basis in what's decreed as 'normal' anatomy for any given figure, even if it's only as a
starting point (and with subjects such as dragons, it's obviously going to be more helpful to reference
bird or reptilian forms rather than the human physiognomy)
With the pose essentially set as I want to begin, I'll finally start work proper on the sculpting,
adding the skin and detailing to small areas at a time in accordance with the restrictions of my chosen medium:
as you can see the cheetah-sculpt is a little further along in this respect, progressing quite nicely now after
a bit of a stuttered start. You can see that I'll make most of the body-surface before I'll start on clothing with a
subject like this - not least because he's probably going to be wearing little more than a loincloth, but also
because I simply find it easier to work this way around, as it's simpler to sculpt clothes over the existing
body-shape rather than try to make clothes look as if they have a body-shape beneath them, if you see what I mean;
on a human figure I'll tend to do more work at the plasticene-bulking-in stage to better establish the body-form so I can
effectively sculpt the clothes directly over the body in the same way, but without having had to do the work of sculpting the body-surface in hard matter first.
The sculpting of the body-surface is generally a more important consideration with anthro subjects as their fur,
scales, or whatever other skin-texture are more likely to be 'on display' as it were, where a human character
might be more fully-clothed - unless we're talking nudes of course, but that's a different game entirely...
As the cheetah-sculpt progresses, I decide he ought to have some
'proper' eyes - painted-on ones are all well and good, but a hand-made 'real' eye can really make a figure
come to life. Again, I'll make another how-to page at a later date to show you how I make the eyes for these
things. The photo to the right hopefully shows how effective these eyes can be, even in an unpainted figure.
Anyway, that's about as far as things have gone for now, so I'll hop off and get busy getting on with things,
and hopefully I'll manage to do a little bit more to this page about once a month or so to keep you coming back.
'bye for now though...
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