Sculpting - it’s scary

[Brother Lutheriel]

@WBRBloom that looks awesome. Better than some modern GW sculpts honestly!

[WBRBloom]

19 minutes ago, Brother Lutheriel said:

@WBRBloom that looks awesome. Better than some modern GW sculpts honestly!

 

It does, doesn't it? Just to clear out, this is not my sculpt. I believe it was made as a project by the collaboration of some people here in B&C (or even in Dakka), but I cannot recall for sure.

 

In addition, if memory serves, this was ultimately cast properly and copies were sent out to people who backed the project, or it was sold as a fundraiser.

[kabaakaba]

1 hour ago, WBRBloom said:

 

It does, doesn't it? Just to clear out, this is not my sculpt. I believe it was made as a project by the collaboration of some people here in B&C (or even in Dakka), but I cannot recall for sure.

 

In addition, if memory serves, this was ultimately cast properly and copies were sent out to people who backed the project, or it was sold as a fundraiser.

Well, it looks great anyway. 

 

 

Edited October 6 by kabaakaba

[Dr_Ruminahui]

On 10/6/2026 at 10:37 AM, WBRBloom said:

So, after I rummaging through my documents, I found some tutorial PDFs on sculpting, possibly even from B&C back from 2007 (no idea if correct though) that has some stuff that you are looking for, @Brother Lutheriel.

 

With the permission of the Admins, can I upload it here? In addition, I also found this. I THINK it's an Inquisitor that was the 'collective' child of a collaboration, that some people sculpted back in the day here at B&C, but correct me if I'm wrong:

 

I'm a mod, rather than an admin, but go ahead - just upload it to the "Downloads" section, then link that to here.

 

I've done a tiny bit of greenstuff molding using molds made out of greenstuff rather than onnimaru/blue stuff, and it worked pretty well for bigger and/or chunkier items - here are some photos:

 

 

I've also done some sculpting onto models (so, rather than creating a model from scratch), most prominently on my defiler conversion and my various capes.  For such work, organics are much easier to sculpt than hard surfaces (particularly for things like mutations, where the organics can be more unrealistic), though both are possible.  For things like trim, I found that getting the desired thickness was more important than getting the width exactly right, as it was easy enough to trim the width with a sharp knife when the greenstuff was partially cured (too soon and it was hard to get a crisp edge to the cut, fully cured and it was laible to shatter or detach the "good" portion from the model).

 

Finally, for simple smooth surfaces, imbedding plasticard can get you better results than trying to sculpt/carve crisp objects. 

For example, I've recreated this chaos star a couple of times, and was much happier when I used plasticard rather than sculpted it.

 

For sculpting, I just use a somewhat dull hobby knife that's lost its tip lubricated by saliva - don't know if that's recommended, though, as I occasionally cut my tongue.  

Edited October 7 by Dr_Ruminahui

[kabaakaba]

On 10/8/2026 at 1:21 AM, Dr_Ruminahui said:

For sculpting, I just use a somewhat dull hobby knife that's lost its tip lubricated by saliva - don't know if that's recommended, though, as I occasionally cut my tongue.  

cutting yourself with dull knife is so Slaaneshy....

but yeah. using hard parts like plasticard and embedding them with putty is a good way. 

 

I like to share my sculpting progress. I even have got feedback from inso!

square base is an accident and squig is fully 40k compatible...

Spoiler

 

[kabaakaba]

my new sculpting shapers has arrived today and it's game changer. it's very small polyurethane shapers with standard brush handles. they dedicated for 25-30mm miniature sculpting and they just great. they don't stick to putty even dry. with water it's like magic.

 

[Brother Lutheriel]

Where can I buy firm shapers? The ones I got are very soft. 

[kabaakaba]

I think you best bet is green stuff world color shapers they are extra firm. and they are pretty good for our scale and have nice reviews

https://www.greenstuffworld.com/en/clay-shapers/615-clay-shapers-color-shapers-size-2-extra-firm.html

Edited Monday at 12:50 AM by kabaakaba

[Blissful Brushes]

I sculpt something on about 75% of my models, and my biggest takeaways are:

 

- Think of it like you would drawing: break everything down into its component shapes: an arm is a tube at its core, so stage 1 is get your tube shape, then add refinements to the shape. 
- Unless you’re actively chipping/cutting away, all you’re doing is moving material into a better shape so you need to be mindful of how much material you put in X.

- Reference material is extremely important IMO

- if you’re building from scratch wire frames are your friend.

- Tool-wise, I use the generic Amazon clay shapers and I have a metal tool which is my workhorse for 85% and I use the clay shapers for final smoothing. 

 

I mostly use milliput right now and it gets pretty good results for fairly minimal effort. 
 

Depending on what you’re doing, having a bit of a factory line is a big thing, as is a good eye for symmetry.

[kabaakaba]

I'm currently working on mangler squigs(two huge squigs) and have head challenge of building their bulkiness. I use 1,5mm twisted cooper wire for carcass. initially I wanna build them with cheap putty and with shell of Tamiya with fine details but it's terrible to work with this putty. I'd trying build their bodies with wire and foil but they weight like hell. 

in result I'd sculpt bodies with polymer clay and add hard shell of putty over it. it's dirt cheap and easy to sculpt.

[Blissful Brushes]

On 10/12/2026 at 8:45 PM, Blissful Brushes said:

I sculpt something on about 75% of my models, and my biggest takeaways are:

 

- Think of it like you would drawing: break everything down into its component shapes: an arm is a tube at its core, so stage 1 is get your tube shape, then add refinements to the shape. 
- Unless you’re actively chipping/cutting away, all you’re doing is moving material into a better shape so you need to be mindful of how much material you put in X.

- Reference material is extremely important IMO

- if you’re building from scratch wire frames are your friend.

- Tool-wise, I use the generic Amazon clay shapers and I have a metal tool which is my workhorse for 85% and I use the clay shapers for final smoothing. 

 

mostly use milliput right now and it gets pretty good results for fairly minimal effort. 

Depending on what you’re doing, having a bit of a factory line is a big thing, as is a good eye for symmetry.

One thing I forgot and I think might be the most important part of sculpting that doesn’t really get talked about: visualisation.

Can you visualise that blob of material that you squished on the chest of your marine as the basic shape of a MkIII torso without the cables, trim, gorget, rivets and shape it? I don’t necessarily think my technique is fantastic, but I do have the ability to know that certain bits of material are in about the right place