“Welcome to the first of a three part series on sculpting. Carmine Giugliano will talk us through the general steps for creating a creature from dummy, bulking out the anatomy to detailing. This wont be an exhaustive written account but a more visual experience, a private insight into the step by step process of sculpting a fantasy creature. Enjoy (Ed)”.

INSPIRATION

This guy is the second member of my ideal fantasy team. When I thought of trying to sculpt a troll, I wanted to create a big and powerful war machine, but that was not the “usual” big, clumsy and stupid troll. I wanted my troll to have the impression of cunning and bestial intelligence.

I started working on these basic ideas, taking inspiration from some of my favourite genres such as WoW,  Lord of the Rings, images from the internet and I tried to merge all of this together to give life to “my” vision of this troll.

FACE AND DUMMY

Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures of the complete process of creating the head and face, I always sculpt the face first because in my opinion, along with the hands is one of the most important parts of any sculpture in any scale. For this troll, to sculpt the face, I have used a mix of Milliput Standard and Grey Stuff (of Gale Force 9), and Epo Putty for the teeth.

When I have an almost finished face, I started to build the “dummy” with a wire frame, trying the pose that I envisioned. It is important to create a dynamic pose and deliver a design that is workable and believable. Even a fantasy creature or one from another universe still has to have an anatomy that would have evolved for its particular environment.

CREATING THE BASE  AND DEVELOPING THE ANATOMY

Then I start to add putty to fix joints (using Epo Putty because it dries hard as rock) and add more putty to solidify the base of the sculpt and to have a first draft of the volume of the chest and pelvis.

At this point the fun can now begin, because I start to define the anatomy using the mix of Milliput and Grey Stuff. I start to add putty on the whole base sculpt, but at first I focus mainly on the legs.  There are two reasons I work this way, firstly  to make the sculpture more and more solid and stable and secondly, it helps me to realise my idea. By focusing and working on an area I can tweak and correct as I go and I can see  how the figure will be developing as I continue the sculpt.

We will continue to develop the troll in the next part, which will be more interesting as I begin to add details and character to the basic anatomy.

See you soon in Part 2.

Carmine 😀