Sunday 29 August 2010

Harkers squad got greened.

I thought it'd be a pretty simple idea, just a bit of dremelling and green stuff up some t-shirts and berets, how wrong can you be. It's taken quite a while to get these guys up to this stage, it's been a steep learning curve but well worth the effort.

First off, I dremelled away all the catachens headbands, bandanna's and arm bands. This went pretty well although I did get a bit over zealous at times and this resulted in me having to rebuild up some of the guys arm muscles. Once I got rid of their rockstar look, I started to build up their t-shirts to match their leader VSgt Harker and once they'd cured, I worked up their berets. Initially they came out a bit clunky but by the time I was halfway into the squad, I got the technique right and the last few turned out quite good, well at least to the first ones.

So, here's the squad so far ....



Next three .....



Last three ....



Now all I need to do is do their cap badges and give them cloaks. I'm not looking forward to do the cap badges as I remember how fiddly it was to do VSgt Harker's. The cloaks are going to have to wait until I've figured out a way to do them, so it's time to start hitting the net for tutorials. Anyway, here's the squad so far ...


Overall, I'm pretty pleased with them, yes they've taken a while to get to this stage but it's been a good learning exercise. I've found that I'm getting better at using the metal sculpting tools, it amazing how quickly you adapt when you force yourself use a different tool or technique.

What I've learned this time ...
  • A little bit of green stuff goes a long way.
  • Use the metal tool to get the basic shape you want, then the clay shapers to smooth out the shape and then back to the metal tool to sharpen the details.
  • The more reference material you have to work from, the better your sculpt.
That's it for now, I'll post more as I get more done, hopefully the next post will have them finished.