Scratch built tau allied detatchment and chaos conversions

I am so tired of my flip flopping between armies in 40k and my buying and selling armies and half painted armies. It almost made me swear off GW for life, it is expensive enough without rebuying things because of idiot decision making. Anyway, due to this bad habit of mine I am not re buying tau for a third time so am sculpting my allied detachment of one crisis suit commander and 6 man firewarrior squad from scratch(wire armatures from modelling wire bulking with miliput and greenstuff for everything else) It is ambitious and I'm a little nervous but going beyond your abilities always seems to improve them... so don't be faint hearted all of you out there sculpt your hearts out it's fun and alot easier than it looks( not to be taken to GW store or Warhammer world, they might not like that)

Here are my tau allies so far 

These were my designs for the tau sculpts. Hopefully how they will look if I pull it off but with more dimensions

 I also have been sculpting a Second Hq for my cultist heavy chaos force he is about half way to completion I started with a marine torso and then greenstuffed arms legs feed and torso detail I need to go over alot of it to add detail finish off the lightning claws as they look crap as they are in their first stage of sculpting and the face.... I'm looking forward to sculpting a really crazy face but the jump pack is going to be hard, things with proper circles or straight lines are very hard to get right.

 Just for a bit of fun I converted this guy....he is a slaneeshi cultist with heavy stubber I made him from a guards man's legs and torso and one arm the rest is greenstuff except the gasmask head is from maxi mini.

I love the thought of him shuffling about around the hive in dark corners or whatever before the chaos insurrection took place hiding his monstrous mutation under his ragged cloak until the time came to strike when he joined his fellow cultists and picked up a heavy stubber with his hideous tentacled limb and gunned down the pdf or local enforcers or whatever lol. 

Not sure if anyone reads the blog anymore as I let it decay for a while but hope if anyone is they got something out of it hopefully the idea that greenstuff is awesome :)

28mm Boba fett sculpture finished 'BLAST EM!'

So I have finished my second attempt now and I'm really happy with the finished mini I'm going to paint it up soon and it's gonna be amazing hahahaha. So here is the youtube video detailing all the steps and work that led up to the final completed mini that im going to paint. If you wanna see the end result skip to the end of the video... Here is to an absoloutly bloody fantastic 2013 everyone may the force be with you in all your hobby endeavours.

Sculpting miniatures for star wars update

Last post we showed you my improvements to the boba/jango fett inspired mandalorian mini.
The improvements were minimal but made a big difference because at this early stage in my sculpting.... well let's just say every little bit helps! I'll be honest about this because I have nothing to be ashamed of, I knew this was over ambitious and was going to be impossibly difficult lol. If anything I have even for respect for Citadel/forgeworld and all the other countless studios sculpting all the amazing looking miniatures that make the hobby so great. To be honest I was feeling like it was alot of work for not much success so instead of chipping away at such a depressing sight I would take what I had learned from the experience and start afresh. Here is the work so far on mr Fett two point o ...

He is already more proportioned, lean and dynamic. He may look like a power ranger right now but just wait till he's rocking a kick ass jet pack and mando blasters you bunch of rebel scum ! Note what has been sculpted of the left arm so far.. I'm getting better at detailing such things as the folds in his sleeve material and the shoulder pad. If my camera weren't so crap you might even notice I added some battle damage to his helmet.

As far as the helmet goes I have only completed the front of it. This method is what you use when sculpting faces aswell, it helps you to get the detail of a minis head done more easily. With the tricky part done you can easily attack it to the body via an intermidatary blob of green stuff which can be sculpted to form a neck and the back of the head/helmet of the miniature. The legs and body also need a tad more filling out and a load of detail added to them plus he only has half an arm and no hands.. so all in all along way to go but all good exciting stuff.

I also tried sculpting a face just to see how tricky it really is .... the conclusion very tricky so very fiddly it's infuriating. the green humanoid face is my effort and S tried her hand at sculpting a rodians face (greedo was a rodian)

May the force be with you ... and don't get too drunk over christmas ;)

updated progress on 28mm Star Wars sculpture

Got Loads of awesome sculpting tools the other day as well as modelling wire and some milliput 'fine' for bulking out etc. Here are some progress pics of my first ever mini sculpted from the ground up with putty and paper clips. 

 The tools have helped considerably as you can see the helmet now has a clear shape and is more detailed and in proportion than before. The mini is starting to look like a Mandalorian !!

I made the jet pack and jet pack mounted rocket with the milliput because it has a nice smooth finnish if you apply a little water and go over it with sculpting tools.  This is also because mlliput is alot cheaper than greenstuff and as long as there is not lots of detail to be worked in it works fine.

I still have yet to make a cape or the dual blasters he is to wield when work is complete. Before that however I have decided to thin out the limbs considerably and just generally make the miniature more lean and less blocky in appearance.




Here is The sculpt so far next to a 28mm pre painted collectors figure of Jango Fett for comparison and to give you an idea of what  I hope to achieve. Got the collector model today so now I have a good reference for scale and anatomical proportions. Wish me luck ;)

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy new year !!!!

Entirely Greenstuff Mandolorian (Boba/Jango Fett) miniature sculpture 28mm

I am just doin this quick post to show you my progress on my first ever mini i have sculpted from scratch using greenstuff and paper clips. It is a mandolorian from starwars  I am getting some wire and tools and better putty tommorow but this dude is not bad for a first if i say so myself lol Heres what he looks like so far

Very bulky and un-detailed but close to correct proportions and only a few things that look plain wrong (like every arm and leg joint) This mini is GW size so 28mm or whatever. I'm going to purchase some diamond files as well so I can smooth out some areas that have already hardened and make them less blocky.

 As you can see from this angle the pelvis is kinda wrong. It is at an angle that would suggest a Rancor had shaken him about by his left leg until his pelvis broke in half leaving his leg dangling behind him lol He is still missing his Jet pack and dual blasters. Also the view from the back is pretty sparse right now I have barely added to it there is no detail and alot of bulking up to do before I even attempt adding any.

I recently read loads and loads of starwars books (Damn you Kindle App!!!) I've been unstoppable in my obsessive reading of all things starwars I even attempted watching some Clone wars tv episodes lol I actually got all nostalgic and bought a gamecube (amazingly cheap on ebay ..12 pounds guys !)  and purchased star wars bounty hunter the game where you play as Jango fett. All of this was the inspiration I needed to start sculpting which is something I've always wanted to do since I did pottery classes as a 8 year old with my father. I would make little clay models of the evil villains I liked from Power Rangers, I left the pots to him.



I went on youtube where there are some great step by step tutorials on how to sculpt fantasy miniatures by a channel called 'epicfantasyminiatures' The guy does all kinds of awesome stuff like blacksmithing (he makes replica weapons from video games !) sick terrain.... like whole medieval towns and stuff! with moving watermills and houses that light up from the inside like their stove or hearth has been lit.
I skipped like 5 of the steps he suggested but did the first step and the last. This was not me being arrogant, I'm just extremely impatient to the point of stupidity lol The first step was very very useful though so I decided I could not afford to skip it. The first step was the above picture which shows my design, He broke up the proportions explaining that the human body is about 8 heads tall and how to draw a grid to help with anatomical correctness. From there I drew the pose I wanted (which I never used .. typical) and started smashing bits of green stuff to a paper clip skeleton. This is tricky without the right tools but I think everyone should try sculpting their own minis as it is so much fun and you are only limited by your imagination and time constraints. Merry Christmas :)