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nuklearangel
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That wire looks like the trick for that kind of work. Excellent so far, thanks for showing the early wip! Cool idea too 
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Old Schooler New to Lizzies
- Thread starter T`hinker`er
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Salamander
T`hinker`er
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Thanks for the comments and inspiration folks! I'm having a bit of fun with this one to be sure 
What I've been working on over the weekend is animating the fingers the way I want them, then locking them into that position by covering them with putty, forming a palm and texturing tendons into the back of the hands. The use of the twisted wire has indeed proven itself to be a good solution for the fingers.
Once the hands were done to the correct size and shape, I added a bit of putty to form the masses of the forearms and upper arms. These masses perform two important functions: (1) holding the wire armature in place and (2) giving me a solid surface to work on so that I can add the muscles, skin and scales - details that are coming up soon.
While the arms are curing, I've taken a few more WIP photos:
Things are still a bit rough at this stage, but I am just focused on getting the proportions correct. Surface texture will come later.
You may have noticed that it was necessary to position this mini's head a bit higher up on the torso than a typical saurus due to the length of the instrument (even after cutting off the top of the charm and using a file to reshape the mouth piece). In order to blend the head and torso naturally I'm reworking the anatomy a bit on his upper back and behind the head:
Not entirely pleased with this...I am going to try reworking it just to see what else I can come up with. I know it will hurt to destroy part of my work, but IMO, there is no more important principal in sculpting! If I can be allowed to step on my soapbox for a second ("ahem"), I firmly believe that anything I make can be made again just as well, if not better. You should never be afraid to take risks, cut into your work, throw stuff away and even start over again from scratch. When you give in to fear, you start to believe that anything good you make is just the result of dumb luck, and you stop improving
Unfortunately, because of the way pages "break" in this forum, it's a little hard to compare these photos to the last batch...but hopefully you can still follow what I'm doing and will continue to find this helpful and interesting
What I've been working on over the weekend is animating the fingers the way I want them, then locking them into that position by covering them with putty, forming a palm and texturing tendons into the back of the hands. The use of the twisted wire has indeed proven itself to be a good solution for the fingers.
Once the hands were done to the correct size and shape, I added a bit of putty to form the masses of the forearms and upper arms. These masses perform two important functions: (1) holding the wire armature in place and (2) giving me a solid surface to work on so that I can add the muscles, skin and scales - details that are coming up soon.
While the arms are curing, I've taken a few more WIP photos:
Things are still a bit rough at this stage, but I am just focused on getting the proportions correct. Surface texture will come later.
You may have noticed that it was necessary to position this mini's head a bit higher up on the torso than a typical saurus due to the length of the instrument (even after cutting off the top of the charm and using a file to reshape the mouth piece). In order to blend the head and torso naturally I'm reworking the anatomy a bit on his upper back and behind the head:
Not entirely pleased with this...I am going to try reworking it just to see what else I can come up with. I know it will hurt to destroy part of my work, but IMO, there is no more important principal in sculpting! If I can be allowed to step on my soapbox for a second ("ahem"), I firmly believe that anything I make can be made again just as well, if not better. You should never be afraid to take risks, cut into your work, throw stuff away and even start over again from scratch. When you give in to fear, you start to believe that anything good you make is just the result of dumb luck, and you stop improving
Unfortunately, because of the way pages "break" in this forum, it's a little hard to compare these photos to the last batch...but hopefully you can still follow what I'm doing and will continue to find this helpful and interesting
Salamander
Lord Tsunami
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i understand why you had to reposition the head like that, but it does look a bit weird to me. however, i do LOVE the hands. man you really have a talent for the fine detail work! very impressive! how thick is the wire you used as scaffolding?
Terradon
FavoredoftheOldOnes
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Not entirely pleased with this...I am going to try reworking it just to see what else I can come up with. I know it will hurt to destroy part of my work, but IMO, there is no more important principal in sculpting! If I can be allowed to step on my soapbox for a second ("ahem"), I firmly believe that anything I make can be made again just as well, if not better. You should never be afraid to take risks, cut into your work, throw stuff away and even start over again from scratch. When you give in to fear, you start to believe that anything good you make is just the result of dumb luck, and you stop improving
Unfortunately, because of the way pages "break" in this forum, it's a little hard to compare these photos to the last batch...but hopefully you can still follow what I'm doing and will continue to find this helpful and interesting
[/quote]So does this mean the new one is gonna be rocking an electric guitar!!!!?
Salamander
T`hinker`er
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So I went and resculpted the back of his neck to make his head blend into the torso better, and now he just seems like a slightly taller-than-average Saurus...with more delacate hands and some other talents, no doubt...or so the lady Sauri say!
Here are the final shots, which are as good as they can be until I get my camera back (next Friday!):
I think I'm done now with this musician, unless I've really missed something. The jewelry looks better in real life than these photos show, but until I get it painted and put a wash into the crevices you'll have to take my word for it. Other things I did are finalizing the musculature on the arms, smoothing out any errors on the hands, forming lips around the mouthpiece and adding those Dizzy Gillespie cheeks
I pretty much used a different color of putty at each step of the way, so you can really see what was done at each step and how everything fits together. I went overboard on the shoulder musculature, as usual, and was really sad to have to cover it up...but it really didn't look right to leave it uncovered by scales next to the rest of the guys in the unit. I did take a couple quick photos of the shoulders before the scales went on, just so I'd have something to reminisce over...
P.S., Tsunami, I don't know the thickness of the wire as the paper label on the spool came off years ago, but it's very thin indeed - thinner than a Saurus' finger I have a couple spools in varying thicknesses (this being the thinnest) and they are all big enough that for miniature work I can't imagine ever running out.
P.P.S., Favored, no plans currently for an electric guitar saurus, although I was thinking about doing an upright bass at some point as well as some other jazz instruments for a Games Day diorama. We shall see...
Here are the final shots, which are as good as they can be until I get my camera back (next Friday!):
I think I'm done now with this musician, unless I've really missed something. The jewelry looks better in real life than these photos show, but until I get it painted and put a wash into the crevices you'll have to take my word for it. Other things I did are finalizing the musculature on the arms, smoothing out any errors on the hands, forming lips around the mouthpiece and adding those Dizzy Gillespie cheeks
I pretty much used a different color of putty at each step of the way, so you can really see what was done at each step and how everything fits together. I went overboard on the shoulder musculature, as usual, and was really sad to have to cover it up...but it really didn't look right to leave it uncovered by scales next to the rest of the guys in the unit. I did take a couple quick photos of the shoulders before the scales went on, just so I'd have something to reminisce over...
P.S., Tsunami, I don't know the thickness of the wire as the paper label on the spool came off years ago, but it's very thin indeed - thinner than a Saurus' finger
I have a couple spools in varying thicknesses (this being the thinnest) and they are all big enough that for miniature work I can't imagine ever running out.P.P.S., Favored, no plans currently for an electric guitar saurus, although I was thinking about doing an upright bass at some point as well as some other jazz instruments for a Games Day diorama. We shall see...
Bastiladon
Old Mossy
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Absolutely love it T'hinker'er. Between this guy and your krox with a club, you may have inspired me to have a crack at my own sculpting. The detailing on the tendons of the chest looks spot on. Guess you're glad you re-made the little fella.
His cheeks are brilliant, too
His cheeks are brilliant, too
Salamander
Lord Tsunami
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haha. love the puffed up cheeks
just as totzro said, i am not a huge fan of the "funny" stuff either, and i would never do anything similar myself, but it IS a really cool piece of work. gotta admire both the skill and imagination required
just as totzro said, i am not a huge fan of the "funny" stuff either, and i would never do anything similar myself, but it IS a really cool piece of work. gotta admire both the skill and imagination required
Salamander
T`hinker`er
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Funny? FUNNY? There's nothing funny about this guy - he's playing a requiem for all the dead elves and dwarfs I've left in my wake during the current campaign!
BTW, I checked against my mirco drill bits and it seems that the wire on the fingers was 30 gauge. Hope that helps!
...."And now for something completely different" -
Do any of you recall my chameleon conversions? This is going back a while, so here's a link: http://www.lustria-online.com/threads/old-schooler-new-to-lizzies.5025/
Well, I finally have them painted, so I thought I'd show off some pictures:
Sorry about the blurry photos! Unfortunately I do not have access to a good camera at the moment, but I snapped these pictures with my Droid phone. Any way, I was going for something striking, but also naturalistic and found some great reference photos of actual chameleons for inspiration. I actually like mine a lot more than the GW one that I have (included in the photos above for reference), but I need 2 units FAST, so no time to be picky, I have to use everything I have. I am inspired however to make some more now, and I plan to make the conversions on the next batch even more dynamic than these, as despite the use of different plastic arms at different angles, they all look a bit too similar to me.
Of course I also need to get back to my Saurus Spear and my Krox sculpts...but I'm going out of town for the weekend to celebrate my engagement on Tuesday to my most awesome girlfriend (whoopie!), so no sculpting for me this weekend
BTW, I checked against my mirco drill bits and it seems that the wire on the fingers was 30 gauge. Hope that helps!
...."And now for something completely different" -
Do any of you recall my chameleon conversions? This is going back a while, so here's a link: http://www.lustria-online.com/threads/old-schooler-new-to-lizzies.5025/
Well, I finally have them painted, so I thought I'd show off some pictures:
Sorry about the blurry photos! Unfortunately I do not have access to a good camera at the moment, but I snapped these pictures with my Droid phone. Any way, I was going for something striking, but also naturalistic and found some great reference photos of actual chameleons for inspiration. I actually like mine a lot more than the GW one that I have (included in the photos above for reference), but I need 2 units FAST, so no time to be picky, I have to use everything I have. I am inspired however to make some more now, and I plan to make the conversions on the next batch even more dynamic than these, as despite the use of different plastic arms at different angles, they all look a bit too similar to me.
Of course I also need to get back to my Saurus Spear and my Krox sculpts...but I'm going out of town for the weekend to celebrate my engagement on Tuesday to my most awesome girlfriend (whoopie!), so no sculpting for me this weekend
Salamander
Lord Tsunami
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wow! they look great!
very nice choice of colors. a bit unusual, and thats what makes it stand out. i must say you really transformed the original models to look like chameleons. top notch as always
very nice choice of colors. a bit unusual, and thats what makes it stand out. i must say you really transformed the original models to look like chameleons. top notch as always
Salamander
T`hinker`er
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Thanks guys, coming off a weekend of celebrating, and daylight savings time, so I'm a little out of it right now, but here is my latest addition to the new command group, to go along with the Saurinette player, a standard bearer for the new spear unit. You may recognize the standard as being one of the choices from the CoC box, which I have cut and repositioned so that it hangs downward as opposed to streaming back:
The other thing necessary to make this miniature is to completely remove the Saurus' left arm, as I don't want him to just be holding a shield. This involves some carving away at the body. I'll have his left arm sculpted and more photos to post soon!
P.S., I'm not sure why these photos are so large - I did try to reduce them on Photobucket...frankly that site is slow and the interface is annoying!
The other thing necessary to make this miniature is to completely remove the Saurus' left arm, as I don't want him to just be holding a shield. This involves some carving away at the body. I'll have his left arm sculpted and more photos to post soon!
P.S., I'm not sure why these photos are so large - I did try to reduce them on Photobucket...frankly that site is slow and the interface is annoying!
Salamander
Lord Tsunami
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I use photoscape, since it is free. it is also easy to adjust size and white balance in it. donno what photo program you use. i wouldnt use photobucket to actually manipulate photos (can you even do that? )
anyway. looks exciting as usual
)anyway. looks exciting as usual
Salamander
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I only used Photobucket this one time because my computer was crashing today and I couldn't do it "locally" - anyway, hopefully this will be resolved for the future. Also working on a unit champion but no photos of that yet. This new unit is going to rock, I just hope it can fight
Salamander
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Yep, that's true for width, but these were exceptionally tall because the mini is a standard bearer. Anyway, I think I figured it out now and the photos should be appearing on your screen side by side and large enough to show details, but not so large as to be obnoxious 
