February 08, 2024 @ 18:34
An awful fleshy thing (sculpture)
Recently, I wanted to get better at sculpting. I eventually want to sculpt my own miniatures for tabletop gaming. I did this project to learn some things.
Here's what I made:
I'm not quite sure what it is. It's a fleshy thing with 3 mouths and some legs. I imagine that it shambles around eating whatever gets in its way.
How I made this
I got most of the ideas for this from a Youtube series of videos, by Modern Synthesist.
Also I used homemade tools. I think I can get away without buying tools in the future. One is a nail on a dowel, and it works great.
I used petroleum jelly as lubricant, so that my tools didn't stick to the miniature as I was sculpting.
Basic shape
First I started with some scrap wire:
Then, added some thermoplastic to bulk it out. Thermoplastic is cheap and is very easy to use. You can get 1kg for $20 on Ebay.
When the thermoplastic is still warm, you can taper it towards the end, like a leg.
Leg textures
Next, I used a 1:1 combination of Apoxie Sculpt and Kneadatite (aka Greenstuff) for all sculpting. I'll call this "putty" from now on.
I added texture to the legs:
I did this by adding a layer of putty all over. Then I used a homemade tool to make grooves everywhere.
Teeth and mouth shapes
I did all of the steps that follow at the same time, for the three mouths.
Next, I made some teeth of varying sizes.
You can make this shape by rolling a small ball of putty to be round. Then, lightly roll it on a bench on one side. One side should get pointed and the other should be round.
Then, I pressed the teeth onto the model where the mouth would be:
When it was all in place, I left this to dry.
When that had set, I covered the teeth with another roll of putty:
And then smoothed that out to look like gums:
I repeated the process for the three mouths
Blemishes
To make it look organic, I added some blemishes:
These are little balls I rolled up to get somewhat round (and almost cured), and then pressed into some recently mixed putty.
Result
I painted this with standard mini painting techniques, like drybrushing and using washes.
Something I learned is that I should clean the sculpture before priming next time, because the primer had a hard time adhering to the miniature.
