Oh hey guys! Like a lot of folks on these boards I've been inspired to take a stab a making my own mini-figs so I thought I'd share with you some of my stumbling first efforts at sculpting from about a year ago... (...this is also a challenge to myself to get off my butt and start making things again!)
The first thing I slapped together was KRAGGU! who's a character from a jam comic I made with a friend of mine a long time ago...
I made him out of "standard" Sculpey which I quickly learned was not the best choice seeing as how it was too soft and a bit like trying to make something out of warm Velveeta. Once I got my beginner's kit from the good folks at Brick in the Yard molding & casting I was ready to go! Despite there being some air bubble issues (look at that right hand!) he turned out not too shabby!
I planned on getting ahold of some Super Sculpey. Now I didn't want to just throw away the bit of regular Sculpey I had left so I used it up slapping together a little figure that had the head of a dollar-store GI Joe I had lying around... FUTURE DUDE JAKE!
My intent was for his body to look kinda Microman-ish... Oh well... The head casted great tho'!
So yeah, I got myself some Super Sculpey and I was going to take a stab at making something vaguely keshi-sized/styled. I built a super-simple frame for the head and legs out of very thin sculpting wire and got started on creating the first iteration of GUTSTOMPER!
Now on the plus-side of things I managed to get the proportions right and nailed some tricky things I was really worried about like the eyes, nose, and ears. On the down-side... The size of the figure got away from me, his feet were awful, the pose is terrible (he can't stand at all), when I built up his face he ended up looking like Homer Simpson, I didn't build up his back which was practically concave, and I don't have a picture but the hair I tried to make for him ended up looking like some kind of horrible Elvis-Trump hybrid. Oof.
Soooooo... That brings us to GUTSTOMPER v2.0! IE: where my avatar image comes from...
The lessons I learned from making the previous guy helped make this one a lot better! As you can see it's keshi-sized (and the fact that the Super Sculpey makes it keshi-colored is an unintentional bonus!) and I'm proud of a lot of the little touches (the belt buckle, the skull shoulder-pad, the ties on the back of his armor, and I got the hair right!) Of course there's still a TON of room for improvement... The character design is weak in places and needs fleshing out, I'm not happy with the boots, and what was I thinking when I made those arms? They're TOO BIG!
And that's it. My first attempts at making stuff from about 10 months ago. Ideally I'd love to make some guys, package them with minicomics... We'll see what the future holds...