"Do you sculpt your own custom figures for your games?" Topic

There are several possibilities for this:

3D design and sculpting on the computer (creating/modifying STL files for 3D printing);
Sculpting with two-part epoxies (dollies, or mod'ing gaming figures is fine);
Sculpting with Hot Glue (creating from scratch, or modifying existing things/figures);
Sculpting with Modeling Clays [air drying, Polyforma (baking), or non-drying];
Modifying existing items, such as toys, making them useful for your tabletop war games, or RPG's, by adding bits, bobs, or hacking parts away?

I have done the following, so far:

Sculpting with Hot Glue: I've made a couple of Treants (very crude), and a couple of Elementals [Fire and Water, good enough to game with; larger, stronger (more Hit Dice/higher level), than commercially available models], from scratch;
Sculpting with Modeling Clays [air drying, Polyforma (baking), or non-drying]: made a AD&D Otyugh and a Beholder, from scratch;
Modifying existing items, such as toys, making them useful for your tabletop war games, or RPG's, by adding bits, bobs, or hacking parts away: Skeletal Dragons improved upon to make Draco-Liches, and more.

How about you? If you have done other methods, or used different materials, please share. Cheers!

Nobody mentioned "talent," at all. My Treants (living, ambulant, intelligent trees, from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings books) are crude. Dressing them up with some green foliage helps, a little… LOL! Cheers!

About the closest I've come is adding cloaks to figures using champagne foil.

Making cloaks using aluminum foil… Great technique/idea! Thanks for sharing -- I love it, never heard of it before now. That could prove very useful. Cheers!

Pretty much everything you have listed, yes.

Very rare to use a two-part epoxy around an armature, but I have done it. I actually have one of those that I need to do to make a master for making some resin casts.

I am somewhat intimidated by my lack of skill, so I haven't started it yet …

Skeletal Dragons improved upon

Halloween bat plus Halloween rat = this! I consider that more kitbashing that sculpting, though.

Head swaps, of course, and the odd arm or hand swap. Used to have a small pile of Minifigs 25mm trumpeters too small for my 28/39mm cavalry, but I could cut a hand off a suitably-sized figure, hollow out the lower arm with a pin drill and insert a hand with bugle and slightly filed-down lower arm. Looked OK, and must have been a decent bond, since I haven't lost one in 30+ years.

Never thought about kit-bashing as an option (skeletal rat-bat, and the means of piecing figure bits together). That works, too! Cheers!

Yes. I sculpt figures and spaceships with green stuff and Milliput. Then cast in metal. Very rewarding.

I typically start with an existing figure as a 'dolly' then carve and putty changes galore.

Have made Ents and various alien species by heating and twisting plastic sprues together.

Done a few from scratch with putty.

I built a 1200 scale ACW ship model once from scratch.

Done a bit of scratch building – currently working on converting WSS fusiliers to elven troopers

Somebody lost his head, so I sculpted a new one. I once took the torso and feet from a foot figure, glued them to a horse, and sculpted the legs that connect them to make him a mounted officer. Aside from that, I perform modifications to clothes with Green Stuff and do weapon swaps.

Grelber

I've sculpted & cast a party chick with a big gun, and another dozen or so minis which I haven't been able to finish yet (the zombie Dobermanns just need their slotta tabs done, it's only been about 4 years… ;-)

Forgot. Yes, there are a few Squats with metal armature and epoxy putty arms. I'm slowly remobilizing my son's classic Squats, who somehow came out of 15 years of storage with more legs and torsos than heads and arms.

The odd clock or cape and hats.

Outside of simple green stuff, the only models I could see myself realistically making would be stuff like Mycenean idols/statues for terrain, as those are pretty abstract and simplistic.

Edit: I forgot about mixing different hard plastic kits together. A lot of that is in my future.

I used to do 1/35 scale fine scale modelling. Scratch built a couple of tanks. Bunch of conversions like marder from pak40 + pz 2. More recently kit bashing. I think my most recent was felt elves.

1/5672 ships-o'-the-line, spacefaring, converted into seaborne Rat/Bat/Spiders. Using spit and dirt as sculpting mediums. Pics POA.

Yes! I needed a dozen Dark Mantles for a dungeon crawl so I sculpted my own out of green two part epoxy putty, also turned a chunky hippogriff with missing limbs, into a ferocious owl bear using said same stuff. Sculpting can be fun! 😁

I am also am scratch building, kit bashing model converting fool!😂