Blog Rich's log of lizardy sculpts (Now with more Gor-rok)

Thank you! I will do so, shouldn't be too long for a second update.

 

Nice to have you back Rikard it's allways a plesure to see your work

 

Well after the 15th I should have a lot more time back (my big electrical exam finishes on the 15th, it's three days long! )
I'm hoping I'll be far more creative and active after that.

 

Well have a look here, you'll see that like you and me, it's not one blob, but a series of tons of tiny blobs (like atoms), that make up the whole piece. (This is copy pasta'd from my DA account).

This the first and possibly last (depending on how well it goes) tutorial on how I sculpt a piece from start to nearly finish (nearly finish, because I haven't finished this piece yet). In order to try and keep this small I've used thumbs to decrease the overall size of the tutorial.

So how does it all start? Well for me, due to a severe amount of impatience and complete ineptitude when it comes to illustration, I adopt the small kid in the candy store approach, I have a look around for things I think look awesome and when I find something good I sculpt it or take aspects from it and sculpt it. In this case it came in the form of some D&D artwork I found on google images whilst looking for something else.



I really like the ferocity of the piece as well as the dynamic quality of the pose. So with that in mind I started building an armature right away and decide on the limitations and proportions and scale I'd be using. One thing I like doing for example is increasing the arm length and especially the size of the hands and width of the forearms on lizardmen, playing around with anatomy is fun, as long as follow the rules that are always constant in anatomy (You can extend limb length if you want to, but you need to be mindful of how this will affect soft tissue and the bones themselves).

So part of the character I was adapting is described as being big, very scaley and having a large head which allows him to literally bite off heads. With that in mind, rather than go for a crocodile shaped head or a spinosaurus one I figured I'd adapt the current heads, so I start by making the muzzle longer. I start adding in some detail to the face to make it look weathered too. I then put in the lower eye lids when dry and then the eyeballs slide into the eye lids when those are dry too.

I then add the top eye lid and stick in the brace in the mouth which will be very useful for adding in teeth at a later stage. There's still a lot of work to be done on the upper parts of the head as well as various scales and spikes.






So continuing on from the head, I know the last stage looks weird, but that's how it works, layers, layers and more layers. I now work on the top of the head, adding in the smaller, more basic scales, this helps give shape to the head and allows a thicker, stronger base for adding bigger spikes. It also means I can make any changes more easily afterwards. I also begin with the teeth, I place a small amount of green stuff on my thumb nail, I can then easily pull off small amounts and roll them into individual teeth before sliding them up against the tooth brace (which you should be able to see in the photos).




Now is the stage where masses get added to the armature, this gives it a very basic sense of shape and structure for me to work with, it also allows me to mark out my boney prominences (clavicle, acromion process, scapula boarders, etc...) it also helps me work out which muscles are going to be contracted and which ones will be lengthened, having the rib cage basically constructed will also help with this. This is incredibly more important with dynamic poses, like the one above; the position of the arms alone means a huge number of back muscles will be in stark contrast from one another, the right hand side will be shortened and bunched, the left hand ones lengthened.




So I begin making some of the shapes, big muscles like Traps, lats and teres major get marked out, though there will be cutting back of some of the shapes to help sculpt deeper layered muscles around the front (like internal obliques).

 

Technically the best place to start with a sculpture is from the feet up, while this is good practice I always beginning with faces, because they're hard, they make of break a model and I like doing it at the very start, mainly to get it out the way, but if things go well it also means I have a lot more enthusiasm for the remainder of the project. I begin with the feet and slowly work my way up, this is a skinned down layer system at the moment, getting the muscles right at the moment is what matters so a detail layer becomes all the more easy. Lower leg completed I then move up to the upper leg and the torso.




From here onwards I begin to lay down some more structure work.

I begin by adding in the costal cartilage of the rib cage, this is done as that side of the torso is stretched, especially with the raised are which means that you will see the bottom boarder and a series of lumps that look like smaller muscle but are in fact cartilage.

This will be added to both sides as it will help my balance the position of the rib cage, which in turn will help me with all the surrounding, connecting and supporting muscles, even the chest. A small note to add here, is I have made a mistake by making the protrusions of the cartilage far too thick, they would in actuality be much thinner than this.




From here I've provided you with another view to give you an idea of what I'm aiming for.




Next step(s) is to work on the abdominal layers, but I start on the outside with the internal obliques, these are responsible for pulling the torso up and to the side (as shown by arrows).
www.yorku.ca/earmstro/journey/…

External obliques by contrast pull in the opposite direction.

I then add in the seratus anterior above and the points of the costal cartilage (I ending up blocking them out when I got carried away) I can highlight them if it helps?



I also add in the rectus abdominus, the six pack muscle and here I make a few changes.
The first is that the muscle itself usually comprises of four "six pack" muscles and two lower ones which don't have a split down the center of them and are much longer than the other four.
I also make sure that the ones on the left hand side of the body, bulge a little more with the supporting muscles (because of the rib cage tilt, they will be shortened in length, as will the supporting obliques on that side of the body).

I also take this opportunity to add in a touch of my own...

Saurus as standard come with natural thick armour, so it seems a bit silly to me for this vital area at the front to be exposed, so I pull a slight edge on each Rectus abdominus muscle to make it more thick, scale like and like natural armour where the muscles can slide over each other like inter locking plates (will smooth out the detail more once I have got the chest work completed)




As for the anatomy of with the arms, I had to start off by cutting away a good portion of the pec muscles and then sliding in the bicep. The next stage is to check the angle, the position of the bicep depends on the position of the hand holding the weapon, as everything changes. Once that was sorted I added in the supporting muscles, heads of tricep and then the elbow joint and epicondyles. I then add in the anconeus (triangular muscle which the other forearm flexor muscles tuck in to) as well as the brachioradialis as it would be very prominent in this position.

 

As for the anatomy of with the arms, I had to start off by cutting away a good portion of the pec muscles and then sliding in the bicep. The next stage is to check the angle, the position of the bicep depends on the position of the hand holding the weapon, as everything changes. Once that was sorted I added in the supporting muscles, heads of tricep and then the elbow joint and epicondyles. I then add in the anconeus (triangular muscle which the other forearm flexor muscles tuck in to) as well as the brachioradialis as it would be very prominent in this position.

Getting the deltoid to conform is very difficult in this position as parts of it are much longer while some are shorter.


Ironically the same will apply again with the other shoulder, though in reverse.





Here's an additional part including how I go about making weapons.

This is the first phase of the working with weapons, I start off using apoxie sculpt to make a vague shape of the weapons and make them as flat and as close to shape as possible, the closer I get it now, the less work (namely sanding) I have to do in the second section.

At the top of this photo you can see two advanced pieces that I will be using on my saurus.



Here's the second section for weapon work, it involves lots and lots of filing to get the shape and smoothness on both sides to get a smooth and uniform shape (that's all for now).


Now comes some of the harder work, working on the arms with a highly exaggerated (not to mention different) pose.

At this stage I'm not going too mental with detail or striations, as much of what I've adding will be covered or changed, the important thing at this stage is anatomical accuracy.



Hands follow soon afterwards, luckily I have loads of reference material, as hands are weird things and there's a lot happening around them.

 

I did that a few years back.
Don't be amazed, or awed, there's nothing amazing about it, everything you see in those posts is ACHIEVABLE for anyone determined to try.

 

I've seen the original post just today while googling for some sculpting tutorial today in college... Business lessons are so boring, so you saved my day!

 

Well first off I have ADHD, so long winded is not something I like dealing with (both having to sit through and create) and secondly you're welcome.

 

I know... feels unfair doesn't it? I must have been born with two defective arms or a deficiency in skill.

 

Must be the skills. My mother has one defective arm and both when she was a child and when I was a child created some small pottery and food out of clay for her/my sister's dolls... So at least for me lack of hands is no excuse!

 

Good point! I just lack the skills... but I have gotten at least a little better. Baby steps I guess.

 

I guess what we both need is a profound knowledge of anatomy... When I read about all the stuff @Rikard is taking into consideration... That's amazing! If I'm making arms I just look at the lengths and roughly can give it the shape of upper and lower arms...

 

Rough shape is a good start, and may lead to a very stylized version of something. Instead of the similar musculature that is expected, you may end up with a wind waker style instead of a twilight princess, which has a lot of charm. Practice, work and reworks, you can get there with some time and focus.

 

Don't make me pull out Yoda again.

Anatomy helps so, so, so, so much, first piece of pro feedback I got (on my very first scratch build) was from Felix and he mentioned about he could see I knew anatomy. I could do something along these lines, but it depends on whether people seeing skin or not. The size of the various anatomy folders on my computer is huge.

It helps, but is not a bread winner a big part of muscles can be summed up simply be Newton's third law.


Or in this case, for every muscle that shortens, one lengthens, if your bicep (remembering of course that bicep means "two heads" "bi" and "cep") is all bunched up, then your tricep, the opposer, lengthens (and remembering that tricep not only has three heads, but is much bigger).

I think people can become too focused on some muscles groups (like chest, rectus abdominis and biceps) and completely forget about the other surrounding muscles, some pro-sculptors with buckets of wonderful minis to their name get areas like the rib cage and intercostals/costal cartiladge completely wrong.

Here's two photos to help show what I mean (keep the wolf whistles to a minimum please, I rarely ever post topless photos of myself online).




Now without going into too much info (at the moment), you should be able to see that you have plenty of other shapes and land marks around the abdominal region, especially on the first photo (where I'm attempting to hold a vacuum pump), you should also see that the six pack, although not the most visible in this photo, I do have better ones, is not simply six squares, they are different shapes and will always be different on different people (power lifters when they're lean enough have very wide abdominals, so much so they look like bricks stacked one on top of the other). Remember your bony prominences, they are you landmarks for building the whole body.

Basic shape is better, even if it just loosely covers the frame, then start from the shoulder (if we're talking arms) and work down.

 

Do you use just greenstuff and wire to make your models? they are amazing, How long have you been sculpting for, I think you might be one of the best miniature sculpting people in the world

 

I eat Green Stuff it tastes of sadness