True scale marine

[ommelette]

dear god, please tell us how you make those fantastic greenstuff molds.. I'm convinced atm you have a shrinking machine you can shrink yourself with to do it and those insanesly small letters on Charlie. Please enlighten me as I am just starting to work with GS and am trying to sculpt demonic wings. How do you keep it so clean? My GS sticks to everything including my fingers and sewing needle which I use to sculpt and is incredibly annoying.

[Olis]

Excellent GS-fu, brother. Kudos. :whistling:

[sioka]

:P Ninja returns! I am sorry for the lack of updates but life has been quite busy recently, to make up for this here is the long overdue how to on sculpting long purity seals.

First a quick look at the tools I will use for this

From left to right we have :- some G.S (Green stuff), this will be mixed so it contains more yellow than blue 60/40

my home made pin tool

a scalpel with a clean blade (you can use an X-acto knife, hobby knife or whatever as long as the blade is clean and sharp)

another home made tool, this is a small length of plastruct plastic rod 1.25mm in diameter attached to an old brush handle with G.S

two clay shaper's a size 0 flat chisel and a size 0 angle chisel

1 To start with mix your G.S to a roughly 60/40 ratio, the yellow heavy mix will be more sticky making it easier to attach to the figure. Take a sculpting tool (I used the flat chisel) and add a small amount of lube (I simply lick the end of the tool) not lots just a little to stop the putty sticking to the tool, take a small amount of your mixed G.S and using the tool press it on to the figure. This will form the wax part of the seal. It is easy to use more G.S than needed if this happens just gently remove any unwanted G.S using the scalpel, just remember to be gentle as you dont want to scratch the figure.

2 I will now use the rod tool to press in the indented area at the centre of the wax seal again making sure to apply a small amount of saliva to the end to stop it from sticking to the putty, again remove any excess putty. We now add some shape to the seal using a clay shaper (I use the angle chisel). I start by gently pushing the edges in, this will slightly flatten them and add some definition to the indented area. The final part is to press four small lines in to the top of the seal, this will give you something like this.

3 Take another small amount of G.S and roll in to a small sausage, using a lubricated sculpting tool press on to the figure under the wax part of the seal. This will form the bottom slip of parchment. Working carefully (don't rush) spread out the G.S in to a ribon making sure to work it up to the underside of the wax part (the pin comes in handy for this just dont over work the putty) and get a nice shape to it.

4 Continue to work the G.S to add more life/movement to it, it is at this point I like to run the edge of a clay shaper (angle chisel) along one edge of the parchment part of the seal to raise it slightly and give the impression of wind catching it. To add some texture to the edges gently press in some nicks using the tip or thin edge of the chisel clay shaper.

5 For this step we will add another small sausage of G.S on top and slightly to the side of the first, the trick here is to work gently making sure it is firmly attached but not to kill the bottom slip of parchment. Repeat steps 3 + 4 and remember any movement you add to this top peice needs to follow that of the first. To complete the top layer take the pin tool and poke it in to the end of the parchment close to the bottom and drag out following the line of movement, this will tear the end in a random style. Using the clay shaper move the torn ends in to a position you are happy with.

6 Go back to the bottom slip of parchment and use the pin tool to tear the end, now use the clay shaper to adjust the torn ends.

This is my finished seal, the edges of the parchment are quite rounded and not so sharp. This is due to me going and cooking dinner for the Mrs, on my return 3 hours later the putty was set. If you wish to get the sharpness in the edges simply wait an hour or so and go back in with the clay shaper, the putty will offer more resistance but it will also form sharper edges.

I hope you folks get some use out of this :o

Any how I'm off to ride my bike

Ninja out :)

[Razerz]

Might be a bit late, but do you have a tutorial for those chains?

I needs it! (Imagine that sentence in your best Gollum-impersonation)

And you have some amazing greenstuff skills!

[Master of Asgard]

Dude, with the magic in your fingers, your Missus is one lucky woman.

[sioka]

:) Ahh this feels more like it, back to sneakin round the B+C late at night ;) .

Might be a bit late, but do you have a tutorial for those chains?

I needs it! (Imagine that sentence in your best Gollum-impersonation)

And you have some amazing greenstuff skills!

Thanks mate :) , as of right now I dont have a tutorial but there are quite a few out there on the net. The method used for the chain on the jump pack was to simply make the links individualy starting with the ones on the bottom wait for them to cure then add the links on top. This is very fiddly and requires time and a steady hand, there are faster ways to do a more basic chain but I wanted to match the original G.W sculpt.

This is a little figure I put together out of junk that had been stripped and odd bits from the spares pile, my main reason for doing this was to have a figure to take measurements from. :lol: you got to love the length of marine arms and the size of the hands :lol: Obviously the arms will need some work to make an apropriate size but this is a 'stock' marine straight arm, having the hands balled as fists will help to look less ape like.

When you straighten out the figure the amount of exposed flex joint around the hips is quite scary and some extra armour in the way of longer upper leg protection to the sides and plates aka grey knight style at the groin would be very usefull.

And here is a little scale comparison shot

I guess this is another variation on the True scale theme!

Ninja out. :ph34r:

[Rafen_2]

Extremely well done brother! If that is his final pose I actually like it! He looks like he is walking through the middle of a battle like in one of those slow scenes in the war movies.

[sioka]

Extremely well done brother! If that is his final pose I actually like it! He looks like he is walking through the middle of a battle like in one of those slow scenes in the war movies.

 

Thanks mate, the pose is just a copy of the standard anatomic pose used in life study (apart from the arms) to be able to take measurements from key points on the body. I like the idea of the last man standing surveying the carnage wrought upon the victims of battle.

 

Besides fixing the arms does the figure look about right for a marine in terms of proportion (the obvious sizes of some of the armour plates dont match but are the knees, hips, size of the chest and width of the waist more convincing?)

 

:P

[Brother Masariel]

sweet!..and you don't even use termie parts there?

since there's a greenskin there..power armour space marines are supposed to be same size of orks bosses...

still smaller than warboss tho..

..so that's perfect. :P

[sioka]

:huh: Ninja returns with another night time mission. This post will shed some light on my reasons for making my straightened marine from the previous post.

This is a test sculpt made with a wire armature bulked with fimo this is then sculpted on to with Green Stuff for any bio forms (clothing etc) or Green Stuff + Milliput for any hard edge stuff (Armour). As you can see although the scale is right there is not enough muscle mass, the idea is to use this test to see what parts of the sculpt are hard to accomplish and or need tweaking before commiting to a cleaner sculpt.

Some scale shots for you

The next part of the quest

Well with my test sculpt out of the way it was time to start working up some armatures for the next stage, these legs are going to be used for Custodian Guard in relaxed poses but the ones for the scouts will be made in the same way. My choice of putty was fimo over wire for the armature followed by Milliput for the muscle mass, I like to use the Milliput because it makes it easy to remove set putty if needed. There is more work to be done on these before they are ready to make a start on the armour but only minor tweaks.

Ninja out :ph34r:

[Dark Apostle Thirst]

Only minor nitpick, the head is huuuuuggggeeee :)

[sioka]

Only minor nitpick, the head is huuuuuggggeeee :)

 

What head? :)

[Dark Apostle Thirst]

Only minor nitpick, the head is huuuuuggggeeee :)

 

What head? :)

The latest true-scale marine's head (as in the plastic is huge, you should fix it).. and I just went through this thread... :)

[sioka]

:rolleyes: Yeah you are right it looks huge, not sure if I could sculpt one of those although maybe....

There are two ways of looking at the helmet size issue, its Bloomin Massive or it would actualy need to be that big to fit a head in plus all the sensor gubbins not to mention an airtight seal for the neck to attach to. I'm not sure if I would say I favour one idea or other the only thing I do know is that space marine necks are way too long! The space marine head size issue was one I hadn't thought much about yet. I am consideing getting the £5 imperial guard starter box (5 guardsman) just for some human size figures to see if there is much difference in hight etc.

Almost forgot about this but just remembered, I did have a go at sculpting heads. This is my second try :-

I should probably have another go again soon

;)

[Doghouse]

Fantastic work mate! Was wondering where you disappeared to. ;)

 

I think that if you could extend the length of the waist it'll being the proportions back into line. The main problem with heroic scale stuff is that they exaggerate the size of the heads, hands and length of the arms which is generally why they are all in crouched positions because it creates an illusion that works but once you straighten them up the heroic proportions become more obvious.

Typically speaking you want the elbows to end just below the rib cage, midway between the waist and the fingers when the arm is fully extended should end up a smidge just below the groin.

 

Can't praise you enough for the GS work, seriously professional looking and seriously fantastic stuff. The head for a second attempt is really nice as well and the GS work is incredibly smooth and shape which is brilliant.

 

One way around the large helmet size would be to use FW heads as they are a tad smaller.

 

Keep at the GS work mate, you are definitely going to be one to watch as far as I'm concerned. :(

[Terminatorinhell]

Wow that is an amazingly sculpted head!

[sioka]

Thanks Doghouse :P that is very kind of you as you are a massive ispiration for me in my sculpting (especialy after having a look at your Agents of the Imperium Thread). The scale issue is quite difficult because I would like to be able to produce a set of 5 scout legs to use with the standard scout kits to give a more action look to my figures, the problem is to get it to fit in with standard figures without my scouts looking too huge. Part of me is leaning towards the heroic scale just to make this project work, its not quite the best solution for accurate proportion but it will make it easy to swap kit parts out for the conversion pieces. The FW idea sounds cool I will have to look in to that because it would be a pain in the bum to make that many heads :lol: ! Sadly the head I sculpted is the same size as a standard GW marine head so that will have to change a little to get the scale right.