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About a year ago, I sculpted a model. It was a very simple joke<\/a>:<\/p>\n And we all had a good laugh. In the closing notes for that writeup, some thoughts passed through my mind:<\/p>\n An interesting thought occurs to me in the aftermath of this piece. Sculpting and painting the model took a grand total of like\u2026 a week? And I was procrastinating pretty hard (specifically, playing a whole bunch of X-Com)<\/em> throughout a lot of that time. But given that time as a base unit, in theory I could do an entire 10-model army of similar chibi Infinity models (i.e., adapting canon uniforms over a cartoony body)<\/em> from scratch in like two or three months.<\/p>\n I have no idea what to do with that realization, exactly, but it\u2019s interesting to ponder.<\/p>\n \u201cHrm\u201d, mused the potato.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I pushed the thought away for a few months to focus on other priorities, but my brain kept coming back to it. During a particularly conference call-heavy week at work, I found myself scribbling out fun pose ideas on sticky notes:<\/p>\n And like… I really<\/em> started liking the idea. What if I did<\/em> do a whole army of these silly bean-headed folk? I’ve honestly never been that huge of a consumer of other people’s chibi art– it’s fine, but in and of itself it’s less interesting to me than traditional real-scale art– but I’ve always found it a pretty entertaining scale to draw and sculpt in myself. The huge heads and cartoony style give you a huge canvas to play around with expressive faces and dynamic poses, and the scrunched body proportions minimize the exact parts that tend to be boring and annoying without adding much interest– namely, legs. Also, one of the fundamental challenges of sculpting is usually fighting with clay’s desire to be soft and round, and laboriously working to force it into sharp and hard-edged shapes. With chibi, that initial roundness is actually exactly what you want, so you can skip most of the refinement. So in the end, working in chibi scale just ends up being “normal sculpting, minus the misery.”<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n It took me about four months to make up my mind that this was actually a path I wanted to walk down, but a new problem took another few months to work out: what army, exactly, did I want to make?<\/p>\n I tend to be pretty picky about my army projects, only picking up models if I’m pretty confident that the painting and gameplay for the army will both be enjoyable (though I’m sometimes wrong on one count or the other<\/a>)<\/em>. And while Spain has been firing out new sectorials every few months for years now, many of which contained models that felt like they had the ingredients to become personal favourites, there wasn’t one single army with a critical mass of amazing models that really got me excited to adopt it.<\/p>\n The closest I came to making up my mind in the first two thirds of 2019 was after I made up a set of concept sketches for a potential Varuna army:<\/p>\n I loved how the ORC and the Zulu looked at this scale, and the SCUBA Kamau prompted some major giggles. And for a month or two, I started telling people in my group that this was finally the army I was going to pull the trigger on after six months of hemming and hawwing.<\/p>\n But… honestly, deep down, I was never that excited about them. There was more to like in Varuna than in the other candidates I was considering, but ultimately it was still just three or four really solid character designs that I liked, and everything else I was planning really was\u00a0 filler. I really just wasn’t that excited <\/em>about them, which was then only exacerbated when I realized that the list I was coalescing around for visual reasons– a mixed ORC and Kamau link backed up by a lot of Camo troops– was also alarmingly competitive, which is something I try to avoid with my lists. I always have the most fun when I’m piloting pure trash, and it was actually kind of hard to build Varuna lists including the models I enjoyed that didn’t feel really over-tuned.<\/p>\n And then… I kinda just randomly changed my mind. Going back through e-mails from last October, I don’t really see any particular inciting incident that drew my attention to Foreign Company; just, one day, I off-handedly mentioned to the unfortunate recipient of my continual stream of daily e-mails that the merc sectorial looked interesting, and then over the course of the next few days, the idea just seems to grow. I put together sample army lists, almost immediately settled on a colour scheme, and mused about how to keep such a character-heavy sectorial looking cohesive.<\/p>\n I don’t know what initially triggered the line of thought, but it’s really clear looking back over those e-mails what made the thought stick: I was excited. Finally, after months of indecision and failing to find anything that generated enough interest in me to drive a project forward, I was bubbling about this new army I’d discovered, and all of the weird and cool models it contained.<\/p>\n And that was that. My new army for Adepticon 2020 was going to be a chibi Foreign Company army with every character model they could play. I made up my mind in October, drew concepts in November, and sat down to work in January. And true to my initial prediction from last year, it really did take about one week per model, and just under three months overall.<\/p>\n It’s done now, and it’s one of the best things I’ve ever made. I literally can’t remember the last time I smiled this much about something I built. Except now, at the end, two things vex me:<\/p>\n Vexation Number One:<\/strong> I did all of that work, and then… the pangolins attacked<\/a>. As I write this, the world is huddling in bunkers, trying desperately to convert gym socks into face masks. While I was upset about the cancellation of Adepticon for all the same reasons as everyone else, I was also faced with my own unique bonus tragedy: I would be robbed of my opportunity to bully my way into multiple Best Army medals. My ego is not small– see the title at the top of the blog for evidence– and I burn praise the way y’all burn food to stay alive. And while I’m sure the Internet will say some nice things about all of this, my incredibly selfish reaction to the entire COVID-19 mess continues to be: “It sucks that I can only show my army off online and can’t blow people away in person.” Yeah, I’m that<\/em> asshole. My biggest problem isn’t the dying people, it isn’t the cratered economy or the chain of personal financial apocalypses… it’s the fact that I don’t get to hear praise to my face.<\/p>\n And I know that’s stupid, but… it’s really hard to explain to my brain why it doesn’t get its tasty treat at the end of the agility course tunnel.<\/p>\n *sad sigh*<\/em><\/p>\n Vexation Number Two:<\/strong> While that first problem is really only my<\/em> baggage to work through, the second item is something you’ll need to deal with too: this is a ten-model sculpting project<\/em>, and there is just no way<\/em> to blog about that and have the resulting article be short. For reference, a typical project on this blog usually ends up with somewhere around 50 to 70 photos to frame the narrative around, with particularly large projects having as many as 120 or even 150 pictures stretching out page after page.<\/p>\n This one has… more. Like, way more. All together, the process photos for all ten models amount to 870 pictures<\/strong>. After<\/em> cutting down to just the important parts. There’s just… so many steps<\/em>, you guys.<\/p>\n And while the obvious answer would seem to be “just don’t show the full process every time, and only show the bits that were interesting about each model”, that approach runs up against a philosophy I’ve tried to hold onto since I started posting here exactly 101 articles ago: I always assume that every article I write is someone’s first visit, and so I don’t rely on an expectation that anyone is familiar with “my usual process” or “the typical steps”. And while that assumption usually only matters for one model at a time since that’s usually the scale of my projects, even here in this multi-model article (or series of articles, as it’s turned out to be)<\/em>, the sheer scale of what I’m presenting makes it absolutely inevitable that most people<\/em> won’t bother to read the process for every single model. More likely, even if you’ve gotten this far, you’re going to fade in and out as I just keep talking, and talking…. and talking.<\/p>\n In the end, I have to assume that a good chunk of the people who bother to show up here will only read through one of these walkthroughs in detail– at best–<\/em> and that one chosen model might not be the first one, so I want to make sure that no matter which one they choose, the important details will be there for them to make sense of what’s going on.<\/p>\n But! For the rare few who do decide to make the full hike, I do want to reduce at least some of the hell you’re about to experience. And so, I present to you:<\/p>\n While the final details of each of these ten models are going to be fairly unique and interesting, the foundational steps for each model will be VERY repetitive. I’m going to explain ten times that you need putty to make clay stick to wire; and I’m going to explain ten times how to sculpt the edge of a piece of clothing. And while I think it’s important to include that text each time, I want to make it easy for those who have been through the full death march once or twice to just… skip over those parts on all remaining models. So throughout this article series, anywhere I need to repeat a step that’s been covered already, I’ve stuck those repeated blocks of text in that easy-to-spot green box. Anywhere you see that box, you can rest assured that it contains only standard steps that you’ve read before, and confidently skip past it without reading. Any text not<\/em> inside one of those boxes is unique to a specific model, so you can read those parts or not, depending on your Caring Index.<\/p>\n Oh yeah, and the article breakdown. I am usually vehemently opposed to breaking projects up into multiple articles, but it was just unavoidable this time. I’ll be posting this mess across five articles to make it easier for those who want to read the whole thing to chew through a bit, take a break, and then come back later:<\/p>\n Alrighty, that’s all the preamble I’m going to make you sit through. Go now, and gaze upon my works.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Chibi is a cartooning style characterized by extremely exaggerated body proportions that aims to maximize an appearance of cuteness.<\/p>\n Just, like… google it<\/a>.<\/p>\n Yeah, it’s that.<\/p>\n Now, chibi isn’t one specific style or scale. As you can start to see above, a million different artists do chibi in a thousand different ways. Instead, if we were to draw out a continuum of proportionality ordered by head scale…<\/p>\n Click to embiggen<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n …chibi would be a general hand-wave toward “the ones on the right”. The screenshot I took above gives some good examples of the variability– the lady in the pink sweater is about 3 heads tall, the girl in the sailor dress at bottom right is about 2.5 heads tall, and the unicorn girl at top left is just about 2 heads tall. And there’s a ton of variability even beyond the head scaling– you then have variability in muscular simplification, limb thickness, eye scale, and anything else you can think of.<\/p>\n All of which is to say that, Just saying you’re going to do “chibi” doesn’t really tell you much. You still have to make a lot of specific decisions about the particular level of exaggeration you want across the entire frame.<\/p>\n Personally, I like to draw chibis at two heads tall– that is to say, with a colossal noggin that takes up fully half of the body. I find the awkwardness of this scale to be really funny to look at, as you start to have problems where the model is restricted in their arm movement because their ridiculous head keeps getting in the way. Double-handed overhead battleaxe swings are pretty much right out the window. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n As for the rest of the body, I basically like to increase the distortion as you travel vertically down the body. My chibi models’ hair is too big for their heads; their arms are actually pretty much the right scale for their torsos; and their legs are SUPER TINY, terminating in tiny li’l bean feet.<\/p>\n With my scale decided, I drew up a skeleton I was happy with at 35mm (the height of the normal Infinity model range)<\/em> and laid out where the armature wires would go within that frame.<\/p>\n Note here the two circles for the head– the outer circle is the desired final size of the heads, and the smaller one is the size of wire loop I intended to put inside of it as support. As you’ll see a bit later on, I didn’t reduce the wire nearly enough, which caused me some problems on the first model and necessitated some emergency armature surgery afterward. But, more on that when the trouble arises…<\/p>\n Alrighty, so… let’s bend some wire! There are lots of different ways to build a wire armature (the skeleton that you build the model around)<\/em>, but I tend to build in two pieces– one piece down the middle for the head, torso, and legs, and then a second piece of wire for the arms. I then stick the two pieces together to form the final armature.<\/p>\n Here I form the head loop by bending the wire around the handle of a big X-Acto knife. The wire I mainly use for sculpting is 20 gauge galvanized picture wire from the hardware store.<\/p>\n To keep everything in scale, I hold the wire up against my skeleton drawing and bend the wire using pliers to match the limb lengths I drew.<\/p>\n Next, the arm wire. I add a dip down into the chest cavity in the middle of the arm wire to give me an overlapping area to connect the two halves of the armature together. Bend points are marked with a sharpie, and then bent using tiny pliers.<\/p>\n Rinse, repeat. I made all ten armatures for this project (plus two spares, in case of disaster)<\/em> in one veeeeeeeeery booooooooring evening. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n To connect the two pieces of the armature together, I first attach them with super glue. This won’t be strong enough on its own, but it keeps them together long enough to do the next steps.<\/p>\n Next, I use much thinner wire (26 gauge copper, I believe)<\/em> to lash the two pieces together more solidly. The wire goes around the chest two or three times, and then up over the shoulders once. I then slather lots of super glue over the entire knot to firm everything up.<\/p>\n Rinse, repeat.<\/p>\n An example of a finished armature. When making normal-scale 35mm miniatures, you have to be really careful about how much wire you put in the chest cavity, as an excessively thick wire knot will pop out through the model’s comparatively thin chest. However, chibi models tend to be quite fat, so you usually have enough layers of clay to bury the wires in even if the bundles end up quite messy like these.<\/p>\n So many skeletons!<\/p>\n The last steps to finish the armatures are to add putty around the torso knot (again, more reinforcement to keep the two parts together)<\/em>, and to fill in the head loop to make it a disc.<\/p>\n With those done, I was able to move onto the very first model. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n Alrighty, let’s get this mess properly started!<\/p>\n Foreign Company, like all NA2 armies, features a good selection of models borrowed from other factions. A lot of them don’t appeal to me visually (Kriza Boracs and Croc Men leap to mind)<\/em>, but others are longtime favourites of mine– notably the ORC troop that had been only of the only high points from my Varuna sketches, and a sneaky loan from Bakunin: the Zero.<\/p>\n I’ve always been a pretty big fan of the “plain white mask” look of the Observance models, and the Zero here is no exception. My planned army was going to contain two Zeroes as designated button-pushers, and I decided to work on those models first, as the plain heads and relatively simple costumes would let me get the hang of the general body proportioning without being forced to also dedicate brain cells to heavy detailing at the same time.<\/p>\n A big part of the fun of working in chibi scale is being able to get away with extremely exaggerated cartoon posing. Since the Zeroes are stealth troops, I opted for a cartoon sneaking pose for the first model, and a “shush!” pose for the second.<\/p>\n The generic armature was twisted into shape using needle-nose pliers. My armatures terminate at the tips of the toes, and then I leave a bit of extra slack to let me embed the extra wire in a wine cork, which becomes a handle I can hold onto throughout the sculpting and painting processes.<\/p>\n I sculpt in Fimo, which is a polymer clay available at most craft stores. Fimo doesn’t stick to metal on its own, so you need to apply a layer of Green Stuff putty over the armature as an adhesive layer. The Green Stuff is thinly applied using metal sculpting tools.<\/p>\n The first layer of Fimo is immediately applied directly over the still-soft putty. Once again, it’s pressed into place using metal sculpting tools; clean surfaces aren’t terribly important at this point, since many layers will be going on top.<\/p>\n Fimo comes in a variety of hues, but I prefer to use very faint colours like off-white or light grey because I find that detail is easier to make out against those lighter shades. Note that Fimo on its own is too tough to easily work; the manufacturer intends that you’ll also buy a companion material called Fimo Mix Quick (the white block above)<\/em>, which is a softening agent that you mix with the Fimo to bring it to your desired level of firmness. I like a mix of roughly 60% Fimo to 40% Mix Quick.<\/p>\n Clay is added to the model in shreds and slabs to arrive at the desired thickness for each part. At this stage I’m still working entirely with metal tools, as the ability to quickly jam bits of clay together is far more important at this stage than getting clean surfaces. You don’t need very much clay to bulk out an arm or a leg, but the sheer size of chibi heads mean that they’ll invariably require huge amounts of clay to be stuck on.<\/p>\n I keep applying bits and pieces of clay and blending them into each other until the model has the general type of physique I’m after. At this point, I finally do a smoothing pass using silicone clayshapers<\/a>, which are able to achieve a much smoother finish than metal tools thanks to their pliability.<\/p>\n Most models in the army will have bean-shaped heads, but the Zeroes’ helmets form a pretty smooth egg shape.<\/p>\n Once I’m happy with the basic body masses, I start adding clothes. I typically start at the model’s feet and work my way up. Thick garment breaks are added first, and then I add smaller surface details.<\/p>\n The Zero’s costume is mostly a tight bodysuit broken up into panels and areas of ribbing. The boots, however, are quite complex– not only are there multiple parallel bands with polygonal edges, there are also small grooves pressed into the fronts of the bands. For such a small accessory, it took quite a while to get the shape looking right.<\/p>\n Garment edges and fully embossed straps are both done in pretty much the same way– I roll out a very thin clay snake, and apply it either as one long piece or in smaller snippets.<\/p>\n The snake is then pressed flat and blended into its surroundings. You can achieve different effects depending on how you blend it; you can leave a stark ledge on both sides to make the new clay appear as an independent band of material, or you can blend one of the edges into the surrounding material to look like a garment is coming to an end– e.g., the bottom of a sleeve or a pant leg.<\/p>\n I don’t worry about getting the details perfectly crisp on my first pass– I typically just work in the major details, and worry about smoothing and smaller details on later passes. In this case, I was happy enough even with the slightly wobbly leg details to move up to the chest. I delineate the edge of the shirt as covered above, and then keep going up.<\/p>\n The Zero’s chest panels are pretty straightforward– a wide pectoral pad and a trapezoid over the abdomen. A thin bit of ribbing follows the edge of each panel.<\/p>\n The ribbing is a bit weird to form cleanly; the trick is to cut the edges in with a knife or the edge of a metal sculpting tool, and then to use a flat-ended metal tool to slightly press the center downward. Everything else is then smoothed with clayshapers.<\/p>\n To build the hands, a bit of clay is applied to form the entire block of fingers. Hands are one of the many elements that are easier to sculpt on a chibi model than on a normal-scale model. You can often get away with a more simplified grooved “mitten”, which then allows each finger to support its neighbours.<\/p>\n The grooves are pressed in about halfway down the mitten, and then things are smoothed out a bit. Once that’s all formed, I use a knife to separate some of the finger tips and slightly pull them away from the rest of the hand. More work would be needed to add individual finger segments on a normal model, but on chibis, a rounded finger looks just fine.<\/p>\n The extreme simplicity of the Zeroes’ heads makes face detailing almost a non-step; I’ll cover this in more detail on other models, but essentially I just press a circle into the head with a piece of brass tubing to set the general size of the eye, and then follow up with clayshapers to smooth out the surface and edges of the eye.<\/p>\n Remember earlier when I said that I messed up the armatures by making the head loops too big? This is where that error finally bit me. The hard under-structure of the head loops comes extremely close to the outer surface of the head; there’s so little clay in the way that it becomes translucent. This is problematic because the tools I pass over the head to smooth it out can’t help pinching that tiny amount of clay against the loop, which leaves a noticeable indented groove no matter how much smoothing I do. I’ll end up having to fix this with a patch of putty in a later pass after baking the model.<\/p>\n So, I really try to avoid steps that are just “and then draw the rest of the owl<\/a>“, but like… I make the holstered gun in five minutes by applying a putty blob, smooshing it into a rectangle, and then pressing different parts of it down. It goes so fast that I didn’t even get any process shots.<\/p>\n Don’t worry, lots of other models will have guns on their hips, and I must have taken proper process shots for at least one of them. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n The knife is even faster. Same lack of process shots.<\/p>\n I know, I’m a terrible blogger.<\/p>\n So hey, fun fact: the Zeroes are the one design for which I wasn’t able to track down concept art to work from, so all of my reference came from some actual Zero models I bought for the Bakunin army I’ve been failing to assemble for like four years. The lack of art reference caused me to miss a couple of things, like when I completely forgot that Zeroes have little earmuff doohickeys until after the model was finished and baked. I had to go back in and add them afterward, then bake again.<\/p>\n No big deal, just kind of annoying. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n And with that… the first model is done! \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n Painted pictures for all models will be on the last page of the article<\/a>. For now, jump to the next page to see the process for the army’s second<\/em> sneaky Nomad.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The first Zero is done, but a second one remains. I’ll be putting this one in a very different pose to clearly differentiate the two.<\/p>\n So as I mentioned earlier, my initial guess for the ideal size of the head loops was quite a bit too big, resulting in the wire poking way too close to the surface of the head. Equipped with that knowledge, I set about performing some corrective surgery on all of the remaining armatures. I want to keep as much as I can of the existing work, so I just cut the putty disc down about 25% and strip off the dried putty from around the top part of the loop.<\/p>\n This leaves a gap between the loop and my desired head width.<\/p>\n To fix this, I grab a pair of pliers, grip the loop just off of center, and twist inward to pull the sides of the wire toward the smaller disc, and yanking the excess wire toward the top.<\/p>\n I do this on both sides, then squeeze all of the excess wire into a small tab.<\/p>\n I tuck the tab down behind the head, and drown the new loop-to-wire bond in super glue. The new heads look a lot messier, but that really isn’t relevant given that they’ll be entirely hidden in the end. ^_^<\/p>\n Alrighty, with the reconstructive surgery out of the way, let’s start sculpting!<\/p>\n Over the course of this project, scientific curiosity and sheer boredom prompted me to change up the order that I applied details from one model to the next– for some I started at the bottom and moved up as I typically do, while for others I started on the torso and moved outward.<\/p>\n Results of experiment: it really doesn’t matter, start wherever you feel like. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n The detailing on the second Zero progresses in much the same way as the first– the elaborate boots are the only major detailing challenge, with the rest of the model being relatively straightforward grooves and ledges. One unique aspect to this second model is the scrunched-up pose, which limits my access to the chest and abdomen; however, it also limits the viewer’s ability to see<\/em> those areas, so as long as I make an effort to get the details to a state of “pretty good”, it’s unlikely that anyone will turn the model over to the correct angle to see the slightly less refined and complete details.<\/p>\n I started all of the army’s heads as a bean shape, but the Zero’s round helmet requires a pretty smooth egg shape, so I put a big chunk of clay over the eyes to round everything off.<\/p>\n To build the hands, a bit of clay is applied to form the entire block of fingers. Hands are one of the many elements that are easier to sculpt on a chibi model than on a normal-scale model. You can often get away with a more simplified grooved “mitten”, which then allows each finger to support its neighbours.<\/p>\n The grooves are pressed in about halfway down the mitten, and then things are smoothed out a bit. Once that’s all formed, I use a knife to separate some of the finger tips and slightly pull them away from the rest of the hand. More work would be needed to add individual finger segments on a normal model, but on chibis, a rounded finger looks just fine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The head needs SO MUCH CLAY. These things have RIDICULOUS heads, you guys. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n The body is one cleaning pass away from being complete, so I move up to the eye.<\/p>\n Zeroes only have one eye on their helmets. I determine the placement and general size of the eye by poking a circle in with a piece of brass tubing. I then refine that general guideline into the desired eye shape– generally, flat on the bottom with a rounded top. I want to sink the eye a bit, so I use metal tools to dig small amounts of clay out of the edges of the eye, which I’ll clean up in a sec.<\/p>\n Bare-headed models would have a pretty elaborate process to create eyelids, cheeks, brows, and every other kind of surrounding soft tissue, but the Zeroes just have a basic cartoon eye shape to deal with.<\/p>\n Like I said, I started with the easiest ones for a reason. Ploughing through some really fast, simple models is a great motivator for progressing into the more complex stuff later on. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n The rough eye shape is smoothed over using clayshapers. At this point I also go in and finish up the hands by adding thumbs and the “shushing” index finger.<\/p>\n The backpack was started a bit earlier in the process, but I’m pulling the pictures forward to keep the narrative easier to follow. MOOOOVIE MAGIIIIIIIC! \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n The Zeroes’ backpacks are the second-most-complex part of their costumes after the boots, though that still isn’t saying much. I start by forming the general shape of the backpack by layering on small shreds of clay, and then smush them together with metal tools.<\/p>\n I use metal tools to turn the soft, rounded shape into harder edges, then smooth them over with clayshapers.<\/p>\n I also add the back collar bit here– same basic process.<\/p>\n I do some cleanup to mimic the actual zero’s costume shapes. Also pictured here: the ribbing from the Zero’s arms and legs, which is just pressed in with a knife and then cleaned up with clayshapers.<\/p>\n This seems like a good spot to reiterate something from the introduction: chibi sculpting is DRASTICALLY faster and less miserable than normal-scale sculpting for a number of reasons. One reason is the scaling changes; parts that are usually not that complex, but which just have huge amounts of surface area to cover– the legs and torso– are shrunk down to a more manageable size, requiring less labour to cover with acceptable levels of detail.<\/p>\n The other reason, and the primary factor that specifically removes misery from the process, is the fact that the expected sharpness of the details is different for chibi sculpting. Clay naturally wants to assume rounded shapes, and most of the time that you spend sculpting is spent relentlessly pushing, pulling, and smoothing the clay into sharp edges against the material’s continual objections. However, while sharp edges are absolutely the goal of most real-scale sculpting, the chibi art style’s emphasis on cuteness means that round details are not just acceptable, they’re often better<\/em> at creating your desired effect than if you were to pull the detail out into razor edges.<\/p>\n These and other smaller factors are the reason I was willing to embark on this journey at all; an army of full-scale models would take VASTLY longer to sculpt than these chibis. Even though they’re the same height (35mm)<\/em> and ultimately have less total surface area, real-scale models just require an enormously longer refinement process that would drive me to self-harm before I finished the combat group.<\/p>\n So, yeah– if you’ve ever wanted to try sculpting and find normal-scale models intimidating, I would absolutely recommend starting with chibi models. Even if you don’t have any particular affection for the style– personally, I didn’t when I started– it’s just such a more forgiving scale to work in than typical miniature scale. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n Aaaaaaanyway, back to sculpting!<\/p>\n I added the ear thing.<\/p>\n Oh, right, that was the last thing. She’s done now.<\/p>\n Huh. Probably should’ve put that long tangent here instead.<\/p>\n OH WELL, NO GOING BACK NOW!<\/p>\n Painted pictures are, again, on the last page<\/a> if you want to jump to those. Otherwise, let’s take a look at a very different generic trooper– the beefy ORC troop!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So as I mentioned at the start, before this was a Foreign Company project, it was very nearly a Varuna SCUBA Force project.<\/p>\n I didn’t go down that route because there weren’t quite enough Varunan character designs that I liked. However, one character that I DID find quite nice-looking in chibi scale was the ORC troop; the ORC has a pretty underwhelming set of in-game stats, but HOO BOY does that armour look badass. \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n I liked how her proportions were so much wider than the other models to emphasize the bulk of her powered armour. Such a great silhouette. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n All of which turned out to be pretty fortunate, because ORC Troops are also quite happy to hire themselves out to my newly-adopted band of mercenaries. ^_^<\/p>\n One thing that’s going to be different about this model than the last two is that I’ll be modeling the model’s main firearm– a so-long-it-looks-silly Feuerbach. Now, it turned out to be quite difficult to get a proper reference photo of this gun– PanOceania currently only has a single Feuerbach available to the entire faction, attached to the ORC Trooper in the Varuna starter box. However, try as I might, I couldn’t find any reference photos of the gun from a perfect side view; all of the pictures of the 3D render and the final model that I could find showed the gun from a slightly<\/em> rotated angle, and the weapon isn’t depicted on the ORC’s concept dossier<\/a>.<\/p>\n So… whatever. I bought a Varuna starter so I could take a proper picture of it.. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n I brought the picture into Photoshop, and then traced over the contours and details with the vector pen tool. I didn’t worry about capturing every single detail; I just wanted to see where the major lines were placed to assist me in placing landmarks on my replica.<\/p>\n When I was satisfied with the design, I printed it out on paper at the scale that I guessed to be correct. I go into the process of choosing the scale for my weapons in more detail in Hannibal’s writeup in Part III<\/a>; for now, let’s pretend I just have a natural instinct for these things and move on from there. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n I stick the paper template down to a block of wood with push pins, and then scratch the contour around it with a pencil to delineate the space my gun needs to stay within.<\/p>\n Now, I’m just going to get this out of the way: I kind of hate sculpting guns, swords, and pretty much any other type of hard-edged accessories for my models to hold. There are particular challenges to these accessories that I don’t enjoy struggling through, particularly the contradictory needs to provide enough support for the clay (which requires making the accessories fatter to fit the structure inside)<\/em>, and make the end result as thin as possible (which necessitates sacrificing support)<\/em>.<\/p>\n Like… I can do it, and it’s fine, but in this project I avoided accessory-construction wherever I could. With a normal-scale army it would look pretty weird for most of the models to not be holding their primary armaments, but the cartoon style of chibi lets me get away with it as long as I occupy the model’s empty hands on some sort of evocative cartoon posing. In the end, I managed to find excuses for fully half of the army to be empty-handed, and only three of the remaining models are holding actual guns<\/em>, so I’m going to go ahead and call this part a resounding victory. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n Alrighty, I now have the contour of the gun traced out on my wood block. I get out some thin 24GA copper wire and twist it into the vague shape of the contour, leaving space on all sides to bury it in clay.<\/p>\n Just as with the models themselves, the clay on the weapons needs a putty foundation to stick to the metal. I wrap a bit of putty around the wire, and then lay shreds of clay over top of the still-soft putty and flatten it all together. Throughout the process, I’ll be continually watching the pencil contours to ensure that I don’t stray outside the weapon’s contours.<\/p>\n I continue adding small bits of clay and blending them to the outsides until I’m happy with the silhouette. Next, I look at the reference drawing I made and add in some of the interior details, pressing in small lines to define the clip and the… front… grippy bit.<\/p>\n WHATEVER, I DON’T KNOW GUN WORDS. >:(<\/p>\n The PanO Feuerbach’s details aren’t all top-down shapes; there’s some dimensionality into the Z-plane as well, with the panels around the barrel sloping upward toward the center. I add these by laying putty snakes down the center of the barrel and then smearing the clay downward toward the top and bottom. I do this in multiple thin layers instead of trying to get the perfect mass of clay all in one go.<\/p>\n I continue pressing in details until I’m pretty satisfied with my replication of the original gun. The entire process is done by pushing out basic shapes with metal tools and then smoothing with clayshapers.<\/p>\n The last step is to etch in the recessed detail– the alternating diagonals on top of the barrel, and various smaller holes and slots in the clip and the back part.<\/p>\n Once I’m happy with the first side of the gun, I bake it in my halogen oven<\/a>.<\/p>\n OH HEY WHAT’S THAT ON THE RIGHT. OH PROBABLY NOTHING. LET’S IGNORE IT.<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/alien_36.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/zerom_ref_03-600x542.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/orc_ref_01-600x607.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe blah-blah box.<\/div>\n\n
So, what the f*** is chibi?<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/zerom_ref_05.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/zerom_ref_04-600x229.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_01.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_02.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_03.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_04.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_05.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_06.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_07.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_08.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_09.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_10.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_11.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe Sneakster<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/zerom_ref_02.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/zerom_ref_01-600x411.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_12.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_13.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_14.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/kaplan_21.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_15.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_16.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_17.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_18.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_19.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_20.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_21.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_22.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_24.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_25.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_26.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_27.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_28.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_29.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_30.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_31.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_32.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_33.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_34.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_35.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_36.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_37.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerom_38.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe Silencer<\/h2>\n
![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_01.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe generic armature was twisted into shape using needle-nose pliers. My armatures terminate at the tips of the toes, and then I leave a bit of extra slack to let me embed the extra wire in a wine cork, which becomes a handle I can hold onto throughout the sculpting and painting processes.<\/div>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_02.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_03.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_04.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_05.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_06.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_07.jpg\")
<\/p>\nI sculpt in Fimo, which is a polymer clay available at most craft stores. Fimo doesn’t stick to metal on its own, so you need to apply a layer of Green Stuff putty over the armature as an adhesive layer. The Green Stuff is thinly applied using metal sculpting tools.<\/div>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_08.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe first layer of Fimo is immediately applied directly over the still-soft putty. Once again, it’s pressed into place using metal sculpting tools; clean surfaces aren’t terribly important at this point, since many layers will be going on top.<\/div>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_10.jpg\")
<\/p>\nClay is added to the model in shreds and slabs to arrive at the desired thickness for each part. At this stage I’m still working entirely with metal tools, as the ability to quickly jam bits of clay together is far more important at this stage than getting clean surfaces. You don’t need very much clay to bulk out an arm or a leg, but the sheer size of chibi heads mean that they’ll invariably require huge amounts of clay to be stuck on.<\/div>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_11.jpg\")
<\/p>\nI keep applying bits and pieces of clay and blending them into each other until the model has the general type of physique I’m after. At this point, I finally do a smoothing pass using silicone clayshapers, which are able to achieve a much smoother finish than metal tools thanks to their pliability.<\/div>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_12.jpg\")
<\/p>\nOnce I’m happy with the basic body masses, I start adding clothes. I typically start at the model’s feet and work my way up. Thick garment breaks are added first, and then I add smaller surface details.<\/div>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_13.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_15.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_16.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_17.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_18.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_19.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_14.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_20.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_21.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_22.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_23.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_24.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_25.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_26.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_27.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_28.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_29.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/zerof_30.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe Heavy<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/orc_ref_03.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/orc_ref_02-600x656.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/orc_ref_05.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_01.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/orc_ref_04.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_02.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_03.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_04.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_05.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_06.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_07.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_08.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_09.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_10.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_11.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_12.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_13.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_14.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_15.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_16.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_17.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_18.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_19.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_20.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_21.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_22.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_23.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_24.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_25.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_26.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_27.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_28.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_29.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_30.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_31.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_32.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_33.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_34.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_35.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_36.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_37.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_38.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_39.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_40.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_41.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/orc_42.jpg\")
<\/p>\n