Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Can you spare some sculpting feedback?

With 3D sculpting becoming commonplace in the production of wargaming miniatures I thought it was time to take a chance at sculpting some figures myself. I've never sculpted anything before, but I'm not one to let gross ignorance stop me from pursuing my hobby goals.

I've been tweaking my first full body human model, and before I start creating variants running, gunning and getting up to no good, I was hoping you could provide any feedback to help me refine this base model. Any suggestions you have to improve it will be welcome, whether you are a sculptor, caster, 3D modeler, printer or miniature painter.

1) This is a static pose, with some unfinished wrinkles and detailing in the clothing. Final sculpts will be more dynamically posed, with less obvious mirroring of body parts.
2) I intend to send the models to be SLA printed to create masters for eventual spin casting. Do you see any red flags I need to keep in mind when reposing? I'm a bit concerned about the undercut that will be necessary for the back of the helmet.
3) I like big chunky minis ala Games Workshop circa 1988. The head and hands are intentionally scaled up for this mini, but not sure if I need to enlarge them even more to give it a proper old school, comic book inspired panache.

Thanks for any feedback you can provide!

7 comments:

  1. What program did you use?

    Did you start with a stock figure?

    In general, I like this figure, but me, I’d give him some proto fascist regalia like helmet, color and sleeve insignia. I love big and chunky as well, I think the proportions are on target for that goal.

    He seems a little generic to me. Not bad at all, but like a lot of existing SF infantry figures. I’d give him something unique for headgear, and some form of goggles.

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    1. Thanks Walt! All of this is sculpted by me, from scratch. No stock figures or equipment were involved.

      I like the idea of sleeve insignia. Maybe I'll add a blank patch or something for the painter to customize. He is a bit generic, but I wanted some fairly stock cannon fodder troops that aren't wearing head to toe combat armor. I'm thinking of keeping the heads separate, so maybe I could create some with different head gear.

      Thanks for the feedback!

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  2. I have no experience with 3D printing band such, I'm pretty old school and still sculpt everything by hand.
    I think the model looks great as a member of a generic bad ass faction, there's also bit of a dystopian Future cop look to him.
    I can even easily envision one with a flamethrower to root out dissidents
    The one thing I'm not sure about are his shoulderpads, these look a little broad and perhaps even unnecessary, though they will provide a great surface to paint insigna and such on.

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    1. Thanks Wouter! I just took a look at the shoulder pads again, and I think you may be right that they could be scaled back a bit. Appreciate the feedback!

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  3. I was going to give you this feedback bilaterally and then got distracted and then sick...so before I forget.

    I love this figure, and I think it's remarkable that you've taught yourself how to use the digital sculpting software and produced something this cool. It didn't bother me at first, but now I do wonder a little bit about the dimensions of the helmet when I start to scrutinize it all. It looks like it might be awfully tall for where it actually rests on his head. More specifically, if I guess where the eye sockets are based on the visible facial features, there seems to be a lot of expanse before you get to the top of the helmet. Maybe the helmet has a lot of padding in it, but it strikes me as a little off. I also like the visor, but again, guessing where the eye sockets are located, it seems like you'd only need one or at most two of those visor segments. The third one is at the height I might expect the top of his head to be located. Again, I know you're going for some chunky exaggeration, so take the above only if it doesn't disrupt your vision for these guys. But overall, I really like the general aesthetic you have going here, as I too am a fan of that older style.

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  4. From the front the figure looks very good (I like the potentially Judge Dredd influenced frown).

    From the side, I tried to hold my arm in that position (with the gun in line with the side of my body and it put a LOT of strain on my shoulder).

    You should have the arm more forward and not as far back - the hand should be just in front of the face when you are looking at the figure from the side.

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    1. Thank you for the feedback! I'll be working on incorporating all of the updates in the next version.

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