"Can you spare some sculpting feedback?" Topic

With 3D sculpting becoming commonplace in the production of wargaming miniatures I thought it was time to take a chance at sculpting some figures myself. I've never sculpted anything before, but I'm not one to let gross ignorance stop me from pursuing my hobby goals.

I've been tweaking my first full body human model, and before I start creating variants running, gunning and getting up to no good, I was hoping you could provide any feedback to help me refine this base model. Any suggestions you have to improve it will be welcome, whether you are a sculptor, caster, 3D modeler, printer or miniature painter.

1) This is a static pose, with some unfinished wrinkles and detailing in the clothing. Final sculpts will be more dynamically posed, with less obvious mirroring of body parts.
2) I intend to send the models to be SLA printed to create masters for eventual spin casting. Do you see any red flags I need to keep in mind when reposing? I'm a bit concerned about the undercut that will be necessary for the back of the helmet.
3) I like big chunky minis ala Games Workshop circa 1988. The head and hands are intentionally scaled up for this mini, but not sure if I need to enlarge them even more to give it a proper old school, comic book inspired panache.

Thanks for any feedback you can provide!

Make sure you master for a bit of shrinkage in the final metal figs. It can be as much as 10%.

You might want to have heads as separate castings with the parting line running vertically down the center of the face and the back of the head (not a great idea when figure cleaning, but it does minimize any issue with undercuts). Same with the cylindrical bit at the back center of the belt-- looks like a really thin bit of rubber would be left between the device and the tails of the tunic, and almost certain to tear early in the life of the mold.

I really like the look of the figure, though.

Great tips, thanks!

For shrinkage, do I just scale the figure up 10%? It's about 34mm from soles to top of the helmet. That just needs to scale up to 37mm or so?

It can vary. Speak with your caster, a lot depends on what sort of mold rubber they use. Other variables are alloy used, temperature of cast and vulcanization and altitude and other pressure settings.

Shrinkage is across the axis of moulding so if that fig was moulded back down any potential shrinkage would be front to back. Should be 3-5% per moulding.
Other wise its very GW in style.
3D printing has no problems with undercuts, better to print them with undercuts and modifiy before moulding if nesercary. Easier to fill an undercut than to create one.
L

Looks very nicely done, great job. Have you went on to print it?

Missed the last post. Made a few edits based on feedback. Some final test prints for this are on their way to me. Intend to create roughly five figures for a full squad. Optimistic I'll be able to get full squads cast in metal within months.