Space Marine

- another budget-sculpt, this one built using an action man (euivalent to GI Joe or similar) as a basis for the proprotions and such, this saves me a lot of work in figuring out and building up a body 'blank' from scratch for a figure, and hence saves on costs; anyway, he's advancing gradually, though I'm really not getting much time at all to spare of late - but it's hopefully clear enough that the main mass of the guy is starting to come together now: in real terms to majority of the work involved is with the guns and other equipment, a lot more intricate detail and edge-work is necessary - for such considerations I'll generally create the forms of these pieces from wax and then cast 'em up in resin (I use a re-usable wax, so the originals for these pieces will doubtlessly have been utilised for something else by the time you're reading this folks - but meanwhile I've got meself a set of moulds of some very particular equipment that'll be bound to come in handy at a later date...

- right, time to start laying up and carving out some of the detailed bits on this thing: this is the kind of stuff that adds a lot of time to a project; here I've also gotta figure out the making of the work in such a way that it can be deconstructed for moulding and casting, preferably in a way that does something towards hiding any join-lines that might otherwise be seen in the finished kit-ready model; so at some point I'll be hacking these arms off the body again to sort that out. As you can see I've already removed the hands again for the purpose of modelling 'em onto the gun better (said I'd get a slightly better pic of the weapon, didn't I?) - you can't just stick a pair of action-man hands onto a gun and expect it to look like anything other than two bits of plastic kind of hammily stuck in place, a chap's gotta try and make it look a bit more realistic, don't y'know. Meanwhile, my saw is getting itchy for a bit of limb-chopping...

Something seems to be up with the pic-source at the moment for some of that last lot, hopefully these next few will show up okay though:

...well, the legs have been lopped now, so's I can get to doing some of the detail a bit easier - you can hopefully see from the torso-shots here that I've been adding various bits of baggage and strapping too for the clutter these dudes traipse around with; on the hacked-off shins meanwhile I've been sorting out the armour a bit more, again with various bits of strapping and buckles, as well as working in some detail for the boots; I'm adding a bit of modelling to the hands too(which I've also meanwhile removed from the main piece), essentially sculpting them onto the gun to make one whole piece of the lot of 'em so it's less of a pain trying to get all the bits together again at the end. I'll be whacking the arms off pretty soon too to get finished with them - and after that, I guess it'll be time to start thinking about a head of some description for this fella...

Pretty close to the end of this guy now, I'm at the stage where I'm going over the whole thing doing a bit of gap-filling and whatnot so's it should work right for moulding and casting, as well as sorting out some nice jointings for where the various bits go together so's whoever ends up with a kit shouldn't have too much filling and faffing about to deal with. Meanwhile, a pic of the head at last - again this is just a slightly modified 'action-man' noggin, rather than an entirely newly-sculpted head, since the latter takes a lot more work and thereby brings on the whole time and money issue which nobody likes to have to deal with; anyway, hopefully only another week or so of fidgeting about with this lad should have him done and ready to be meet his new owner...

- and so, here he is more or less done, currently blu-tacked together to show how he's gonna look when assembled from the various bits: all I've gotta do now is a bit of tread-detail on one boot and a bit of a hairdo, and I think that's him ready for off...

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