The goals of this project was to create a high-poly detailed digital sculpture to be 3D resin printed for tabletop games or general hobby collecting and painting.
Projects often start with gathering references and detailing preproduction, this project however was done entirely in the minds eye. In the 2d illustrative world the exercise, 'taking a line for a walk' can be beneficial in creating new ideas and engaging the imagination. This project started as a digital sculpting equivalent. The intent was to create a creature that could be used as a tabletop mini or hobbyist figurine, no further constraints or directions.
The sculpt started as a sphere and as it was worked quick boney landmarks were put in place and soon an idea for a kind of bone wraith, hell demon came to mind. Rigid twisting anatomical forms that shared characteristics of armor. The idea was to have the creature look withered and malnourished, but not weak while still being menacing and evil. Work on the limbs was done separately to make sculpting more manageable.
While continuing to block out the torso and face the overall creature was lacking a strong silhouette and features in orthographic views. In some cases the face overall was resembling shapes that were not aligned to the overall vision. It needed a new approach to give its expression some pop.
Further refinements were done giving the figure a more menacing, believable face that also had similar structures to an organic helmet. After working and reworking the shape, raising details as high as possible to stick out when printed and combining everything together the model was ready for a quick decimation and export to print. The print was made of mixing a high detailed resin with a flexible resin in order to create a figure that still showed all the details, but could bend without being brittle and chipping. The figure was also given a quick brush coat of surface primer to give it a matt finish ready for painting and show more of the printed details when photographing.
The final model photographed stands ~6cm tall.
Currently the project is complete as a high quality digital .stl file for resin printing. There may be a continued retopologized, textured, and rigged version for use in animation and game development.