Tuesday, December 25, 2012

A Sculpt from Christmas Past....


Has it really been that long since I've posted? October? Mortarion? Well then. 

This girl (her name is Sirius) has sat on the shelf overlooking my hobby area for well over ten years, and despite being a conversion that required some effort, has never occurred to me to feature here until recently. 

No, really, an hour ago this entry was going to be about Ghost/Doomsday Arks. 

Yes, I've already had Christmas morning. My family celebrates in the afternoon. 

Anyway, a recurring character in sketchbooks of mine throughout the years, her appearance has changed slightly, but overall she's remained quite the same. The figure itself I made for a 3D design course where we were required to make character maquettes prior to CG modeling . I bought a quantity of Green Stuff and delved into my bits box, then set to work running a coat-hanger armature through some parts. A few days of sweat and cursing later and you get this. 


The face is rubbish, I know. I never claimed to be a great sculpting talent, plus there was a deadline, and I was in a "how hard could it be?" mood. The ankles are kind of awful, too. She's based around bits from an EVA model, along with a few other odds and ends. I textured the wraps on her thighs with the handles from my sculpting tools, and there are fingerprints on some of the rougher spots (which turned out to be a blessing, as they lend a rough look to some of the armor bits). Her pose is meant to be halfway between guarding and coming around for a strike with that wicked forearm blade, and she stands freely quite by accident. 




Yes, by accident. Really, I should build a base for her, because she's not that stable. In fact, the blade shown here is the second one, installed quite recently, after she took a tumble off the shelf and the original one broke. Green stuff is so wonderfully flexy that it doesn't break after a big fall, like everything else in creation, and a figure incorporating much of the stuff, it turns out, is quite durable. Not that I'd go tossing it around, mind you.



So much of her weight is on that front leg, though, and she really should be bending a bit more at the waist, but oh well. As imperfect as she is, she's probably my most favorite creation, simply because she came from a sketch. Because of the bits I used, she doesn't even follow most of the details, so she is, in fact, another iteration of the design, and probably my favorite one. 



Even now there are a dozen things that I would do differently if I had to make another one, and yet, there are so many other things to do I wonder if I'll ever find the time? This thing is ten years old, after all, and here I haven't made enough time for regular blog entries. Well, shame on me. I'll try to be more timely, with everything. After all, if you never make time, you'll never have time, right? 

Anyway, Merry Christmas, everybody. 

4 comments:

oniakki said...

Nice work. I haven't done any truly custom builds sense grade school (18-20 years ago), and they've all been inadvertently ruined from being made from wax and stored in a hot shed. >.<

Mark said...

Aw :(

Come to think of it, wax wouldn't be such a bad way to practice technique, though .

I've been thinking of trying to do a jointed action figure version, since Max Factory makes a "blank" version of its Figma series, but I haven't quite figured out how to do those shoulder plates so they'd move properly...

Mordian7th said...

Interesting stuff, man! I am always blown away with the colors and patinas you get out of your metallics. Masterful work!

Mark said...

Some of those colors were helped along by extra coats of varnish. I almost didn't use metallics on her, since I fell in love with chalky look of the chest plate, but her outfit had to look sort of cobbled-together. Glad you like her!