Sculpting hands and fingers

[ShinyRhino]

I'm currently gathering the parts to scratchbuild a Terminator Librarian. I'll be using the Chaos Sorceror Lord staff for his force weapon, suitably converted and de-Chaos'd. That leaves me with his right hand empty. There are no empty right hands of the Terminator variety, so I'm thinking of sculpting one.

 

The general plan is to have him with his hand in that classic "caster claw" pose. Palm forward, fingers arched sorta thing.

 

Sculpting the palm is easy enough, but how do you sculpt fingers of proper length and thickness? Use a series of very thin wire armatures? Individual fingers cut from small pieces of segmented plastic rod?

 

How do you keep the finished fingers from snapping off?

 

Anyone done this, and perhaps have a picture available?

[Olis]

I can't really help you with any of those questions but might I give a suggestion? Try using one of the sanguinary guard open hands (it's a lefty) and convert it, if necessary. :)

[sioka]

This is one of the top 3 hardest things to sculpt along with heads and feet, with any sculpt there are many ways to do the same thing.

 

You could try the armature route as this will make the finished item stronger but it will make getting to the inside of the fingers lots harder. Most of the people that sculpt open hands swear by rolling out a long thin (however wide you want the fingers) sausage of Green Stuff and cutting it to finger lengths then adding them to the palm. Providing that you add the fingers too the palm while the GS is in the real sticky stage (first half hour) it will bond nicely as GS sticks to things quite well, once the fingers are set you can work around the join to add detail and overlaping the area with more GS. With something like Marine and Terminator hands the armour segments would be added after the basic figers are set and the join smoothed and strengthened, so you use the fingers like an armature and add the detail to the top and some ribbing to the palm and fingers.

 

If you didn't want to sculpt the whole thing then you could use plastic rod inserted in to holes drilled in to the palm. Then add the detail to the top and bottom of the fingers in putty.

 

This link will be way usefull :-

 

http://www.sciborminiatures.com/en_,sculpt...tutorial_05.jpg

 

I wait for the putty to dry as it tends to give you more controll over the finished item but do some test hands and see what works for you.

 

;)

[Conandoodle]

As Olisredan said .. I'd take a lefty, chop off all the fingers + thumb then reposition them on the appropriate arm/hand.

 

Alternatively, you may be able to go for a mitten style lobstered gauntlet look like this.

[Terminatorinhell]

I would make a really thin wire base and work with that, adding GS as needed.