Sculpting Tartan Sashes for Trollbloods

The first step is admitting you have a problem so here goes.

Hi… I’m Autumn Stone and I love tartans.

Phew – it’s good to get that off my chest. The wonderful sculptors at Privateer Press have given us so much greatness in the trollbloods – their characterful models, their fine sense of humour, and TARTAN. Almost every single model can show their true colours provided you can bear to paint them. And that’s where it all starts to fall apart.

There are some models that just don’t want to get into the plaid. Or more to the point, they DO want to, but have been cursed with minis that don’t have a scrap of material with which to show their gang colours.  Slag trolls, Pyre trolls, swamp trolls, a couple of whelps, and sadly the greatest hero of the entire trollblood army (the pyg who rides the bomber*) all suffer from this curse.

(* – Why is he a hero to be feared and respected?  Well mine wears a kilt.  Does no one look at the occupational health and safety angle? – well no – these are trollbloods after all – but if they did they’d realise – He’s holding onto a frenzied dire troll for dear life with one hand … Holding an open flame as big as he is in the other …Wearing a kilt …And we all know what a trollblood wears under his kilt …)

Oh I know you can argue that the slag troll would just dissolve his sash, and the pyre troll’s clothing needs to be kiddie safe and non-combustible, but really – these are trollbloods – known for recklessly trying the insane-est things.

So I made my pyre troll a sash

And it caught fire. Bother.

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Tags: Hordes, Miniatures, Modeling, Privateer Press, Sculpting, Tutorial

Theme and Variation

“But wait a moment there Autumn Stone”-I hear you say.

“It’s all well and good you showing us techniques to make this one sculpt – we want to make our own personalised sculpt, and we don’t like the way you’ve chosen to do the [bodice/hair/trim/waist/arms - add or delete as appropriate]“

And you know – that’s a fair enough call.  I’ve done my best to stick to generic principals that I’ve figured out doing all this sculpting, and using the WIP of what I’ve done to demonstrate, but when all is said and done, I’ve just shown you this one sculpt being done.

In today’s episode, I’m going to try and show some variations that you might want to try out – and specifically I’m going to talk about first principals of how to do them, so you can try out your own themes and variations.

!!  Disclaimer  !!
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I’m no amazing/professional/talented/artistic sculptor.  I’m just some shlub who gave it a whirl.  There is no reason you too can’t give it a go.  What have you got to lose – the worst that will happen is you’ll have a small piece of greenstuff to throw away that never amounted to much.

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Tags: Hordes, Miniatures, Modeling, Privateer Press, Sculpting, Tutorial

The Torso

So less sculpting theory today, and more general guidelines on building and conversion.

First to add on the arms. If you’ve made the same mistake I made, then the shoulders are too wide.

… Bother …

So a simple snip in the middle of the bare wires between the shoulders and we’re back to the right length. A pin hole between the two dents you made for the shoulder sockets, a little superglue and our torso now has arms.

Next it’s time to add some detail to the torso.  If you haven’t read this already, stop reading the ramblings of a neophyte like me, and start with the wisdom of an expert.

Roll some crazy thin worms of greenstuff to outline the neck and make the straps for the armour. To stick them in the right place on your model and to snip them at the right spot, use a pin ended sculpting tool to place the end exactly where you need it, then pull it to the next logical attachment point, and use the same pin ended tool to pinch off the worm at it’s other end.

Back to the bluetac from last week …

Roll your crazy thin worms of greenstuff and just drape them over the area they need to go

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Tags: Hordes, Miniatures, Modeling, Privateer Press, Sculpting, Tutorial

Boys and Girls

I mentioned in episode 1 that the most important step is planning.  This still holds true, and so I’m going to take us on a short detour from sculpting to talk about the shape of boys and girls.  We’ll start with a look at the feminine form, and then compare it with the masculine form.

If you don’t have a feminine form of your own to look at, or if you do but don’t have a mirror to admire it in, then it will help to have some reference.

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Tags: Hordes, Miniatures, Modeling, Privateer Press, Sculpting, Tutorial

Sculpting the Girls’ Heads

So the hardest part of the project was always going to be the heads. Heads naturally draw the attention and they are going to be some of the finest details to sculpt, and let’s face it (no pun intended) it’s the original faces that launched this project in the first place.

Whenever I had a bit of greenstuff left over, I had a go at sculpting a face.  And failed and failed again – but eventually I got a bit better. I recommend that if you want to get into sculpting, this is a good way to start.  I always mix up more greenstuff than I need to.  This way you don’t feel you’re letting it go to waste.

However, despite never really managing to make a perfect face, I got to the point where I could sculpt individual details, but struggled keeping them as I wanted them while I built up the rest of the face.  Thankfully I did manage to figure out a few tricks for some of the individual facial features over time

For these Articles, I’m actually using bluetack as I didn’t want to mix up some greenstuff just to throw it away after using it. Bluetack isn’t a bad way to practice, as it doesn’t set, and is nice and cheap.

Sculpting eyes.

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Tags: Hordes, Miniatures, Modeling, Privateer Press, Sculpting, Tutorial

 A beginners guide to sculpting – part 2

Last time, when we talked about planning – I began with a rant about how I am not an expert, and that you can do this stuff too. It is still just as relevant today – This is something you can have a go at. To that end, I’ll once again give my disclaimer…

**DISCLAIMER**

I am not a sculptor. I don’t know what I’m talking about. I have no training, nor anyone but myself to teach me. There will be endless other tools that I know nothing about, techniques for using them that will achieve higher quality products than I have. Same goes for the material I’m sculpting.
All I can talk about is what I use, how I use it, and what I’ve done. Anyone with other ideas is welcome – encouraged – begged – to share their tips in the comments below

We’ll begin by looking at the tools I use…

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Tags: Hordes, Miniatures, Modeling, Privateer Press, Sculpting, Tutorial

Sculpting seems to intimidate a lot of people. I know it still intimidates me.

For most of us who struggle to simply create a smooth finish as we fill a gap with greenstuff, the fine details we see on the greenstuff sculpts that the experts produce seem like something we could never achieve in a million years.

I, too, am in that boat. And that’s really important to realise. There’s nothing special about me. I have no art background, no special skills or equipment, no training whatsoever. About the only thing I have in my favour is I that discovered our fantastic hobby, and have embraced the attitude of “Bite off more than you can chew, then chew like crazy”

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Tags: Hordes, Miniatures, Modeling, Privateer Press, Sculpting, Tutorial

There are a lot of great Kara Sloan conversions out there.  A large part of this is due to the unusually static and awkward pose of the original sculpt.  I wanted to add Kara to my army, but as with most the default pose didn’t make a lot of sense.  Having never converted a model before I decided not to jump into the deep end by cutting off both arms and sculpting new body parts, instead I started simple.

This is a confidence building project, for those of us who have never converted but always wanted to.

I spent some time looking at the model.  Kara comes with the main body, her sniper rifle “Spitfire” with an attached right hand, a sheathed sword and the stacks for her warcaster armor.  The stock pose is to have the rifle pointing straight up in the air.  Most conversions deal with making it look more like the original artwork in the FoW:Cygnar book so that she’s looking through the scope.

Eventually it occurred to me that her rifle didn’t have a strap.  The book states that Spitfire is over six-feet long.  So Kara just carries a six-foot long sniper riper in her hand at all times?  What about while using her sword?  She either throws the most finely crafted rifle in all of Western Immoren on the ground or she holds it with one hand while fighting with the other?  Neither of those seem likely.

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Tags: Beginners, Cygnar, Miniatures, Modeling, Privateer Press, Tutorial, Warcaster, Warmachine

Asgrimur Trollkin Alchemist

There has been much more talk about the Iron Kingdoms Roleplaying game recently and with 2012 bringing the release of a shiny new system ever closer I thought I would end the 2011 with an article on a conversion that I have been dabbling with over the course of this year.

I have been taking my time and adding to it slowly as I feel inspired and when the creative juices are flowing the strongest. The Idea behind the project was to bring to life my vision of Asgrimur a young trollkin in the prime of his life making his own way in the world as he claws his way up from obscurity in the city of Corvis.

Thinking about what sort of exposure to culture he has had and what sort of role models a Trollkin who lives in the city would look up to it struck me that likely Gunnbjorn would be someone whom he would likely know about and respect.

With this in mind and looking at the character that was created to play in a recent Iron Kingdoms campaign using the current d20 rules I decided to start off with Gunnbjorn as my base model.

Lets take a look at what alterations were made to bring this model to life.

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Tags: Conversions, Hordes, Iron Kingdoms, Roleplaying, Warmachine

From Sword Knight to Journeyman

This is Part II of the Sword knight Journeyman Warcaster conversion articles. As I am not a master sculptor I will admit I had a few false starts in the second half of this project. However as you will see I think it all worked well in the end.

One thing you need with sculpting and model bodging is patience. Take your time, measure twice cut once, and dry fit everything before you assemble it. If you’re trying something new with putty then try it out on a flat surface until you can shape it how you want.. You don’t want to put the putty down on your previous work and then have to scrape it off when something goes wrong.

The second thing you need is a good bitz bin. Having a ton of random miniature pieces, do dads from electronics equipment, pieces of children’s toys can come in surprisingly handy. so find yourself a little tool box and start tossing spare stuff in it as you never know when it will come in handy

Now lets take a look at what I did in to bring this model together!

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Tags: Conversions, Journeyman Warcaster, Miniature Conversions, Modeling, Privateer Press, Sword Knight, Warmachine