Having recently received an e-mail with some questions about sculpting technique I thought I’d post the answers for anyone who might be interested, the specific questions refer to the third high elf archer.
"How do you armature your figures?
I generally use an armature I cast in metal myself. I don’t do this because it makes it easier to make correct proportions or control size but merely because it saves me the time of twisting wires and waiting for putty to set. It’s a mistake to think an armature will give you correct proportions, human joints aren’t simple enough for you to repose a simple wire or metal figure and keep things very precisely right, though you’d probably be close enough for a caricatured figure.
"(I) have a hard time keeping scale exactly consistent between figures."
That’s very common, I suspect it’s one of the main reasons behind ‘scale creep’ and why many people insist figure height should be measured to the eyes. The only advice I can give is to get a good set of calipers or a small micrometer and do a lot of measuring, eventually you will develop an eye for it and not have to measure so much, though you should always check your work. Many people seem to think they can learn to orient themselves in miniature without a solid, objective frame of reference. Perhaps they can but I suspect it takes a very long time. If you are making a lot of figures with the same proportions you might make yourself a tool with wires bent in ‘L’ shapes where the short arm of the ‘L’ is the length of the bones of the upper arm, lower arm and leg bones and compare these to the appropriate parts as you go along.
"How do you achieve … perfectly smooth scale-mail"
Well to start with it’s very important not to think of anything made by human hands like miniatures as perfect, there are only flaws below the threshold of perception. Either because they are so small the eye cannot resolve them or, more commonly, because the mind is not trained to perceive them.
I wouldn’t have said the unusual characteristic of my scale armor is smoothness so much as sharpness and resolution, also I try to give an impression of the shape of the body under flexible armor. Subtle effects like this are hard for the layman to pick out but add a lot to the overall impact even for people who couldn’t say why. It’s one of the things which makes realism so much more demanding than caricature.
As to how; most of it is having a complex understanding, a sophisticated model in my mind of the thing to be depicted, this comes from lots of study and thought. The only technique I can think of that helps is, when using Kneadatite (green putty) apply it only as thick as you need to for the depth of what you are sculpting. The thicker you put it on the more rubbery it will cure, sometimes this is a good thing but not for scale armor
".How did you do the cloak? The folds are flawless"
Again the cloak isn’t flawless, in fact it’s quite fanciful, a possible but unlikely dramatized deployment.
The procedure is easy. I set a number of fine brass wires in the back, bent them to follow the main folds I wanted to make, gave them a rough epoxy coat then, when that had set, a final finishing coat.
The essential thing is to understand what you are trying to get it to look like. The better you know this the more everything falls into place and, an essential when working in epoxy, the faster. In lots of ways Epoxy sculpture is like painting fresco.
"For the face…do you have any tips on how to improve them?"
For the most part my advice is a reiteration of what I’ve already said, know the subject thoroughly and don’t apply the putty too thick but in the case of faces I’d add keeping the bone structure especially in mind. A common fault in faces is to get the surface more or less right but fall down on the underlying structure, as I said before subtle effects can have a big impact, though the viewer frequently couldn’t tell you why. It is very easy to be lazy about faces because people will perceive a face easily, it’s instinctive in us, anything with eyes and a mouth in more or less the right place looks like a face, the more challenging thing is to make a face that people can continue to find character in the more they scrutinize.
"In what steps do you sculpt, do you do an entire leg at once, or the foot, then the pants, ect?"
I’m always changing the way I do things, partly to keep it interesting and partly to learn more but the most common way I make a 30mm sized figure is as follows:
First I bend the armature to the shape I want, then roughly fill in the body volumes, the chest cavity and skull and largest muscles with epoxy putty. Then I make whatever surface is deepest, so that succeeding applications of putty overlap previous work, whether I make the legs or the face next obviously depends on how the figure is to be dressed. Whenever I make symmetrical parts like legs or arms I make them both at the same time.
You have really done a wonderful job on all the figures, and honestly, I'm glad to have you sculpt just about anything you want to.
