A long time in the making the Mammoth was the last project I worked on for Privateer Press. Originally started in January of '12 this was a co-project between myself and one of the PP in-house sculptors, (not sure who there got waylaid to work on it otherwise I would post his name. Could be Sean, could be Brian. I just don't know.) My job was to sculpt the nekkid body. No armor or weapons, just the body. Once the body was done it was shipped to PP where someone else would have the task of putting all the complex Skorne armor on it. Since it took me about 5 months to do just the body I think I would have killed myself if I had to do the armor as well, and if I had ground my way through the whole project then it wouldn't have turned out as nice as it did.
One of the major problems with sculpting large things like this is the threat of the miniature collapsing under it's own weight while you are making it. The armature can support only so much before bad things begin to happen, using lighter, non bakeable puttys or clays like Chavant or Castilene is a way to combat that, or using armatures that are much more rigid will support it. But considering it would have to be cut apart and the armature removed for production as well as shipped in the mail then that restricted my materials to work in. Super Sculpey would have been ideal due to it's light weight but is kind of brittle after baking and Fimo is far tougher but much more heavy so I ended up making a mix of both in hopes of getting the best of both worlds. It sorta worked... Sorta. One other thing was I didn't break the model down when done. Normally the main body would be split open and hollowed out to cut down on material costs and shipping weight but outside of the arms and head/tusks being separated from the main body he was left intact otherwise the sculptor after me would have to reassemble it just to add his work. I did what I could to keep it as close to the concept art while making sure there would be enough space for the other sculptor to add the armor. I hope it went all right.
Regardless, my hats off to the other person who worked on this project for making some stellar armor to put on my dude. He looks a whole lot better then when he left my hands.
Picture provided by Privateer Press, painting by Privateer painting staff, sculpt by me and... Someone else...
Edit: Sean Harrison did the armor, thanks to http://daughteroftheemperor.blogspot.com/ for tracking down the info.
