Last year at my store, I came up with a neat new idea for a tournament: everybody enters by handing over a wrapped box containing a mysterious painted mini of their choice. The box has three clues as to its contents. Over the course of the day, the games that the players play earn them “present points” that they can use to unlock hints; at the end of the day, players use their standing to swap whatever they’re holding for presents held by other people, using revealed hints to guess the contents of other people’s boxes; the lowest-ranking player swaps first, then the second-lowest, and so on; the highest-ranking player swaps last, letting him or her secure whatever present they want without any chance of having it taken away.

2012’s event was a huge success with a ton of great models entered at prizes, and I was excited to run it again this year (though with the modification of running it as a Thunderdome event; I’ll have more details about this year’s event in my next post). Last year my contribution was a pair of festive Basilisks; this year, I went with something a bit more traditional by making an Iron Kingdoms rendition of Santa Claus. And naturally, the only place such a judgmental enforcer of society’s laws would fit in within our beloved setting is in a high post within the Protectorate of Menoth.

Here, now, is how High Naughtymonger Santa Reznik came to be.

The most important part of the conversion was to create a reasonable reproduction of the traditionally recognizable Santa Claus head; fat and bearded, but with a bit of added edge to it. I took a lot of inspiration from this great drawing I found on GIS:

I have no idea who the artist is since the version on Google is rehosted, but it perfectly captures the look I’m going for. With that inspiration in mind and my green-putty-wad-on-wire ready to rock, I dug straight in.

My first attempt to build a head was disastrous; I haven’t made a head in epoxy putty in ages, and the two-hour working time and the difficulty in attaching new putty shreds to the existing work led to an awful, rushed-looking head that I won’t share here. I threw that one in the garbage and re-started, this time using Fimo as my medium to give me as much working time as I needed; here I’ve added the fimo covering over soft, uncured putty to help it grip the wire.

I blend all the Fimo scraps together using metal tools, then press rough shapes into the clay to figure out where the various facial features will go. I add fimo bits as needed; here I’ve tacked on a teensy shred for the bridge of the nose and started blending it in.

As always, I build the face one muscle or bone at a time. A slab goes on for the forehead, another small bit to enlarge the nose. A sizeable chunk goes on to form the barrel of the mouth, and then a pair of clay snakes go on to form the lips. A chunk to fill out the cheeks, a chunk under the chin, and some absolutely miniscule bits for the eyelids. As each piece goes on, I blend it into the area around it with clayshapers, and then form it into the desired shapes, pressing jowls and wrinkles in where appropriate.

The stage above had all the “angry” I was after, but it was too lean and heroic, so I threw on some fatter cheeks and a second chin. Happy with the volumes, I made adjustments to the facial features (enhancing the scowl with higher jowl lines wrapping around the nostrils and adding angry forehead lines) and called the skin layer done.

Next I added the hair. The mustache was a simple putty snake curled up at the ends; I then flattened it slightly against his upper lip and (not pictured yet) pressed hair lines into it with a knife. A similar process added the two eyebrows– tiny putty snake, blend in slightly, press in flow lines. Eyebrows are normally left as a single thin line for most models, but regardless of his demeanor, Santa just wouldn’t be Santa without big bushy eyebrows. 🙂

Before moving onto the beard, I added ears; these wouldn’t be visible at the end, but they represent an essential landmark when figuring out beard and hairline placement, so I tossed them on quickly to facilitate the next stages.

With the landmarks in place, I started adding the beard. The first step was a simple “chin strap” all around the face, standing approximately where his beard and hair would begin.

The beard was bulked out a bit. Most of the beard would be sculpted later once the head was baked and attached to the body, but I wanted at least a small portion of the beard on the model at this point to let me decide if the face overall had enough “Santa-ness”; and with no beard at all, Santa just looks wrong.

More hair. The top hairstyle was directly lifted from the concept art– long, full, and slightly dishevelled, a victim of Judgmental Santa`s active lifestyle.

All in all, the head took me about five hours to sculpt, and I was really happy with how it turned out– just Santa-esque enough to still be recognizeable despite the unconventional grimness of his facial expression.

There were, however, some complications once I baked it:

I don`t know what exactly caused it to crack open– it wasnt baked very hot or very long. All I can think of is the putty that formed the core, which was baked when only a few hours old; is it perhaps unready for baking at that point? I’ll need to run some experiments to be sure.

Either way, the damage wasn’t too bad too fix– a bit of putty on the bridge of the nose and at the corners of the eyes. I decided to leave the crack on the inside of the left eye, as it gives Santa the appearance of a badass battle scar; unintended, but now that I see it, I love it. 🙂

Once the head was attached, I immediately noticed a huge problem with the Reznik mini that would have to be corrected immediately.

Much better.

Santa’s Manly Paunch was blended into its armored surroundings, and then sculpted to mimic the general V-shape of Reznik’s armor.

Next up, I sculpted a lot of fur trim. This is very easy to sculpt; first you add some chunky putty rolls…

…then blend them together and press flow lines into them with a flat metal tool (I find picks and needles create too many “shreds” in the pattern, making it look messier than I like).

The same basic process creates the beard, albeit with much longer flow lines to differentiate his flowing beard from the short, shaggy pelt lining his armour.

Expanding Reznik’s belly drowned out a bit of his armour detail; most was irrelevant, but these disappearing chains needed to be replaced. I really enjoy sculpting chains, but unfortunately I can’t explain my process here because I forgot to take any more process shots. >_<

However, I did another project this month with a TON more chain work on it, so rest assured that I’ll go over my process in detail for you if anyone’s curious. 🙂

I added lots more fur (around the wrists, at the bottom of the skirt, and so on), and with that, Santa Reznik was basically ready to go. However, I did need to build him some accessories before I could move onto painting.

Reznik creates wracks; my mental concept for Santa Reznik was always that he should be hanging people on either pine trees or giant candy canes, and for a while I was planning to sculpt little gobber elves hanging from them to go along with the main Santa model. However, as the actual work begun, I realized how utterly insane it would be to tack that much work onto this project, so I dug around for something more manageable while still fitting into the basic theme.

The answer came pretty quickly– after all, what does one traditionally get on Christmas morning when one has been a naughty boy or girl?

Coal.

A big ol’ stocking full of it.

The coal stockings were very fun to sculpt– I formed the basic shapes out of big fimo wads with my fingers, smoothed them with metal tools, and then added cloth wrinkles using clayshapers.

I made one sitting upright, and another that had fallen over. They were very quick to make– I think the pair were done in an hour.

And with that, it was painting time. As per usual I won’t go through the process for that (I’ve never figured out how to accurately pick up colours with my camera at my poorly-lit painting table) and will jump straight to the finished product.

And of course, I just noticed that I forgot to paint the wax seal. Let’s just ignore that and move on… >_<

I finished painting it at 3am the morning of the event, then quickly threw on some snow basing and staggered off to bed.

In the morning I made a foam tray for it inside the box I was using for delivery, and hauled it off to the Hobby Kingdom to be handed off to a Mystery Recipient.

He laughed. That’s all I was looking for. 🙂

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More holiday projects to come before the month is out. Stay tuned!

-Spud