The pictures below show a monster sculpt I'm attempting. I've tried to sculpt 15mm miniatures before, but never finished them. I hope this monster sculpt will be different.
I know this is heresy but I've never been all that interested in Japanese giant monster cinema. Sure, I loved Ultraman when I was a kid, but I never knew what it was called at the time, nor have I seen any giant monster flicks since.
After being inspired by some great blogs out there however, I realized that the giant monster genre is perhaps the most absolutely perfect one for wargaming. Why? Well, the miniatures are so much larger, so the details should be much easier to sculpt and paint. And even better, terrain is vastly simpler to make. It takes me a few good solid weekends with a lot of leisure time (a rare occurrence) to make a single building for 15mm games. But I bet I could make a whole city block for a giant monster game in one evening. Oh, and the game board can be much smaller (a meter square at largest).
The figure is a twisted copper wire armature covered in bits of Milliput Standard. I put way too much putty on the legs and then left it in the putty oven too long, making the Milliput too hard to cut down. Oh well; I guess the monster will just have very muscular legs.
Once I add the beast's left hand, I will start the actual sculpting. I'm going to use a mix of Super-Sculpey and Super-Sculpey Firm. It should be a big project and I don't know when I'll have another free weekend, so expect this one to drag out...
The last shot is my scribbled concept art. This is what I hope the thing will look close to (or hopefully better than) when it's done.
The first shot shows the monster armature next to an unfinished prototype building. As the putty cured on the monster I came up with a super cheap way to make this building. Up close it looks rough but at a distance I think it represents a building well, especially when on a table full of similar structures.
The monster is about 50mm in its pose; it would be about 80mm if standing up straight.
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| Monster armature next to small building |
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| 50mm tall, not counting eyestalks |
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| Concept |
Your monster is shaping up quite nicely.
ReplyDeleteSo how did you make your building?
Thanks Chris. The building is made from eight 25mm squares of cheap foam board. It's not the deluxe stuff from a hobby store, but the 50 cent sheets from the dollar store instead. Much easier to cut. After cutting the squares and stacking them with glue in between layers, I pushed the indentations in the foam using a piece of scrap plastic. After painting on a grey base layer I used blue illustrator's ink to bring out the windows (indentations). A quick, sloppy drybrush finished it off. Gluing a few pieces of scrap plastic to the roof to look like air conditioning units and such helped out.
ReplyDeleteVery effective little building!
ReplyDeleteI've always wanted to sculpt my own minis, but never have (millions of excuses). I've been very impressed with what you've done with your starships and AFVs. I can't wait to see how this critter turns out!