Frankenswine

Here is the latest figure (that I can talk about) that I did for Privateer Press; the War Hog. It's rare that I feel good about my sculpts after finishing them, they usually look like so much chaos with an upwards of four to five different mediums to get the desired effects. It isn't until after PP posts pics of the finished painted figure that I end up feeling a little better about it. This guy was an exception and I had a satisfied feeling of accomplishment once he was ready for shipping, but that didn't mean that I was without doubt...
For me, when sculpted a monster its fairly easy. I make the armature, bulk up the body and start the anatomy. By the time I get to doing the details like hands, face armor, etc. I already have a good idea of what he looks like overall. When sculpting a jack its bass-ackward; all the pieces are done separately and then put together to make (I hope, I hope) the finished figure. Things get more difficult when you end up with one piece that acts for both a left and right part to get a complete picture of the figure as a whole. The War Hog was something of an amalgam of both which ended up with me putting in late nights and early mornings questioning my skills and choice of vocation. All the cybernetic limbs had to be sculpted first, assembles onto a piecemeal armature and then the meat parts sculpted around it. If I screwed up the scale of the limbs it would mess the whole thing up.
I was even more happy to see the painted pics, the painting crew at PP did a great job. I hear this mini is going over decently with the Warmachine/Hoards players so I'm looking forward to lurking about on the forums to see what kind of paint jobs and conversions people will do to him.

Picture provided by Privateer Press, painted mini by Privateer paint team, concept art by Chris Walton

Coming full circle...

So here we are at the latest incarnation of Hordes and I was asked to do the Dire Troll once again but this time with artwork to go off of. No real story behind this guy except that he is a new beast type for the Trollblooded faction. I know this guy was designed by Chris Walton who is now the primary concept artist at Privateer Press.
Picture provided by Privateer press, figure painted by Privateer Press paint team.

Hello, my name is... MULG?

I think it was around Halloween of '08 when I had gone up to visit with the crew of PP for a party they were throwing; I had just finished the Juggernaut EX and was pumped about the response it got from Matt Wilson. By the time I got home I was itching to start a new personal project and I knew just what I wanted to do; I wanted to do a dire Troll character. Over the next 4 days I was in a sculpting frenzy, since I was between business projects I could devote all of my attention to the new sculpt. Usually when I sculpt something a story begins to form about it to explain why does he look the way he does. In this case I liked the idea of Hoarluk Doomshaper and his ties to dire trolls, if I remember right he disappeared into the wild and came back with a strange hold over the dire trolls, the idea I had was that during this time he went on a quest to find an ancient Krielstone high in the frozen cliffs of the mountains, little did he know that it was attached to the back of the most primeval of trolls. The beast had been waiting for him as Hoarluk's comming was prophesised, bestowed the name Dommshaper upon him and performed the trollish blood bonding ritual as well. The idea being that the dire tolls smell the ancient blood of their elder running through Hoarluk's veins and it is this blood that gives him such an affinity for the warbeasts.

The Concept that formed around the Dire Troll was that he was one of the most eldrich of his race and his massive stone like growths upon his back had some ancient and forgotten text carved into it turning him into a walking Krielstone. Whether the runes' power bestowed a greater-then-average intelligence or it was because of this intelligence that he was chosen to receive them was a mystery. But he was a walking artifact of a time before man and the trollblooded were still young.

The three things that I focused on for his character was his scars, his krielstone and his pose. Since dire trolls regenerate they don't bear scars, but this guy has a huge one going across his left side. His left eye, chest and arm have a trench of stone growths protruding from puckered flesh and originally his arm (where the club is) was a mass of jagged rock turning his fist into a savage living mace. I was attempting to make it look like he had his hand wrapped around something that might have exploded, something magical and volatile that did such damage to him that his regeneration could not cope, instead replacing his flesh with the calloused stone-like protrusions that usually form on the back and joints. The huge growth from his back (his quills of youth replaced by the mane of shards to signify his age) was turned into a krielstone, he would be the guardian of whatever knowledge had been carved into him until his death. The last was his stance and this was tricky. Practically every dire troll is rushing to get at the enemy, all pissed and yelling. That didn't seem right for something venerable like this guy, to reach his age he would have been more clever and maybe because of his age, more grim. Sure he was still dangerous and easy to anger but I wanted him more wise and battle hardened. Instead of flipping out I imagined him stalking across the battlefield, implacable and inevitable, saving his anger for the mighty blow that would surly come once he arrived at his destination. So for this, instead of a charging motion I went with a stride and a look of impending doom on his face like someone was going to get it.

Once I finished I told Matt and Ron about it, sent it up with the proposed idea and awaited their response. They liked the sculpt but sent it back with one correction; his left arm that was the mass of stone was to be replaced with a whole hand and was to carry a club. Some sketches of what they wanted was provided and in a couple of days was sent back up with the new bits. By December of '08 painted preview pics were posted and that is when I learned that he was to be called "Mulg.' I still don't know just how much of his character concept was kept as I have yet to get the Hoards book he is in or have been able to read his fluff, but I'm pretty sure that's him on the cover of Metamorphosis.

So, how cool is that? For a lowly sculptor to whip up a mini in 4 days and get to have rules made for him and to appear on the cover of a rule book? I seriously doubt that any other company would have done that, so my hats off to Privateer Press for putting up with my patented brand of spaz, it was a nice little ego boost to think that one of my own ideas would influence the game.

Pictures provided by Privateer Press, paints by Privateer Press paint team

R.I.P. Frank Frazetta

Frank Frazetta died today due to complications from a stroke at age 82. This man's work was a constant companion for me growing up and a source of inspiration to this day. He will be missed.

Dire Troll Mauler Extreme

This guy was the first in the "Extreme" line of minis put out by PP but that is not how it started out as...

In my last post I talked about how it had been 3 years between when the Dire Troll Mauler was done and its release, three years of sculpting in a production capacity and expanding my repertoire of techniques. I was on a hiatus from sculpting after my move from the Seattle area and was working as a temp elsewhere.

One of the perks about working for Privateer is that you get SWAG for the projects that you worked on, one day I got a package in the mail from PP that had the brand-spank'n new Hoards Primal book in it and I was blown away by the artwork on the cover. The Dire Troll Mauler was on the front getting ready to put the beat down on a Titan and it was glorious! THAT was a picture of a Dire Troll; texture, dynamics and rage. I had begun to think that if I had some conceptual artwork to do the original DTM how different would it look? The picture inspired me to give the sculpt a second try and this time since it wasn't going to go into production I could use whatever material I wanted to make it.

This time I started the guy out of Fimo; an Aluminum armature with Greenstuff to bulk up the general shape and finally Fimo for the detail. I did a little work for Randy Bowen of Bowen Designs and read a kick-ass article about sculpting concept Maquettes for movies http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=18287 and I was eager to try out a whole new bag of tricks . Also, I planned to cut him up as you would for production as I was attempting to teach myself mould making with room temperature vulcanizing materials and I thought this could be one big self taught lesson for me.

Rough sketches were done again but the whole thing was sculpted with a more free form whatever-looks-good approach to it. Besides the book cover what was really inspiring me was Peter Jackson's movie King Kong, I always thought the Trollblooded were pretty apish looking so this movie was perfect inspiration to help add to it all. In fact, the facial expression I used for the Troll was inspired from a particular scene in the movie where the crew is attempting to escape on their landing boats from Kong as he chases after them through a seaside cave. Some of the crew are firing their rifles at him from the reefs and as Kong passes by one the crew mate manages to piss Kong off enough that he grabs the guy and bites his head off. I loved the look he had on his face and I kept rewinding that part of the movie so I could see it over again all the while mimicking the facial expression and making adjustments to the sculpt.

Since this guy was mine I didn't worry about size restrictions, I could make him the size I thought he should be. Normally you have to make sure the width of the feet have to stay within the inner bevel of the plastic base which can lead to some awkward looking poses but again that was something I didn't have to worry about. I could get the dynamic stance I wanted and to get around him fitting on a base I would just make a piece of terrain to go on top of the plastic base. Problem solved.

I also decided to make a couple of weapon variants for his forearms; one was a set of crude looking blades that would replace his natural forearm spikes made to look as if they had been riveted directly into his flesh and I made a couple of stone obelisks attached by a length of chain that was bolted to his arms. His upper body pose could look as if he was punching with his standard arm spikes, slashing with the chunky blades or whipping wighted chain in a spinning arch. (The alternate weapons were not used as the marketing strategy they were shooting for meant that it could not brandish anything that they didn't already have existing rules, but if you own the DTMX and wondered about why the forearm spikes were separate, that's why.)

Just at the time that I finished sculpting the DTMX it was time to attend one of my favorite conventions. The Portland Lovecraft Film Festival is my chance to catch up with friends from out of town and previous PP coworker Jason Soles is a regular there. I mentioned the Troll to him and he said he wanted to see it so I bought it with me the next evening to show him off. If any of you have met Mr. Soles you know he usually has a slightly evil smirk that could mean just about anything, well, I found out what that smirk meant about a week later when Matt Wilson emailed me.
Matt said that Jason had told him about the Troll and wanted to see it, maybe make a limited run of it for the PP crew. I sent it up and Matt responded with a desire to purchase it. Ironically this was just before Christmas and my temp job laid everyone off to save money over the holidays. With my first freelance sculpting check in hand I began to seriously contemplate sculpting as an actual job. My girlfriend was totally behind me and I have been doing it since.

So, this guy who started as a personal project turned into my gateway as a freelance sculptor as well as kicking off the Extreme line of alternate gaming minis for Privateer Press.

Pictures provided by Privateer Press, paint by Team McVey

Back in the day...

So I thought that I would give a little back story on some of the minis that I've done for Privateer Press since what most people get to see is the finished product. The first one I wanted to talk about is the original Dire Troll Mauler since it was one of the first production figures I ever did. This guy was done sometime back in '03 and unlike most of the other figs I did this guy didn't have any conceptual art to work from. Usually the sculptor is provided with artwork that shows off the details, poses, multiple angles, size and sub notes; all the info the sculptor needs to get the figure done how the client wants it. This guy however was a test.
Mike McVey had invited me over to his place to talk about a future project that he wanted me to work on, when I got there he broke out the Monsternomicon and showed me the picture of the Dire Troll and asked what I thought about sculpting it? Funny thing was is that since I was trying to get Privateers attention I had been sculpting figs that were inspired by their work to show to them and when I had picked up the Monsternomicon and saw the Dire Troll I had already decided that I was going to sculpt one anyway so when Mr. McVey gave me the project I jumped on it with genuine enthusiasm. This project was to see what I could do with an actual figure assignment and since Hoards was projected so far out they were safe if I screwed it up as they had plenty of time to reassign it to a more competent artist.
I am not a fan of sculpting with Greenstuff, I've rarely ever gotten what I intended when using it but it seems to be a current necessary evil in the industry, (if you don't know why I'll talk about that in a later post) and at the time PP didn't have a standard system for dealing with Fimo (which is primarily what I use) so Greenstuff it was. Mr. McVey had given me a rough size restriction which was to make him no bigger then a Warjack, that he had to fit on a large base and that the pose had to be dynamic. we talked a bit about what would look good with me stomping around the McVey's living room striking poses that we thought might work for the sculpt. I did some rough sketches when I got home and then I went to it. Because there was no due date There was a lot of experimenting and corrections done to him, I think it took around 6 months to finish him off and even then there were issues with certain bits on him, specifically his quill-hawk which had to be redone several times to ensure good castings.
I had gone to work directly for Privateer as a caster then a mold maker and sculptor and moved out of the Seattle area before this guy even went into production for Hoards. By then I had done a bunch of figs for PP and had gotten more familiar with the whole process but this figure is still pretty special to me as he was my first sculpt.

Picture provided by Privateer Press and paint job (I think) by Team McVey.