Back To Reality

After returning from Las Vegas and New York City I am shattered, my body clock is all over the place and I have been ill. Nonetheless I am hoping to start some new work soon and get my paintbrush back in hand. I have been sketching, both in my pad and on the computer, only little heads and mainly goblins, I'll post them up when finished.

Grey Matter Figures, have a painted version of  their "Bad To The Bone" sculpt I produced for them a while back. A wonderful job by Rob Hendon. The photo is a little small, I'll see if I can get hold of some bigger versions to post, but in the mean time here it is...

A great paintjob I'm sure you'll agree. The bust is available from Grey Matter Figures  website HERE.

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Joaquin Palacious Norse Lord

Here is a recent work by Joaquin, Norse Lord on a throne. Not so taken by this one in all honesty. I think the Santa Claus sculpt he did will take some beating - that was truly amazing and the dark elf rider remains my favourite. Nevertheless, I would say that Joaquin is in my top three favourite mini sculptors. Here is I believe, his latest piece and some other older pieces for those who might not have seen them.

This is a small selection of Joaquin's (Freeman) work. You can check out his gallery on Cool Mini Or Not HERE

Thuggorre Paint Job

I was looking through some old photos I needed to upload for the new Cool Mini Or Not 2010 Annual submissions and I realised I hadn't posted all of the photos of the fabulous paintjob done by SkelettetS from CMON (Stefan Johannson) on the Thuggorre bust. The original pictures were made into a flyer type design so I havn't posted them in their full glory. So here they are.

Stefan done an amazing paintjob and photos on my sculpt for which I am very grateful.

Thats all on a personal note, I am feeling my artistic desire increasing so I hope to start some projects soon and get back to painting now the winter is over. Unfortunately I did not get around to doing much over winter - it was a lot colder than I expected in my garage studio due to a poor quality door and the frame. An issue yet to be resolved.

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Superman Vs Darkseid - FIGHT!!!

Here is some fantastic work from my numero uno favourite large scale sculptor Ray Villafane. This time some DC Comics, I prefer Marvel characters as they are more in your face and dynamic, but the DC line up have a more classic old school feel to them, which I like to.

Without further ado..........

 

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Wolverine For Starters

Wolverine has become a fairly iconic superhero character over the last few years due to the popularity of the X-Men movies and the back story movie - Origins. The success of the various superhero movies has brought the comic book characters to a wider audience which is a great thing. Many characters from the Marvel Universe along with the Star Wars universe have been given the miniature treatment over the last year or so by a company called Knight Models. The sculpts are amazing, the characters are carefully selected and represent the most popular and I'm sure they will expand the range over the coming year. A good deal of you reading this know all that, but I am saying it anyway for the sake of those who  of course! Here is a link to the models in the Cool Mini Or Not shop - please check them out.

Knight Models

The market for superheroes in resin has unfortunately had to be met by the "Garage Kit Industry". Essentially unlicensed models sold in small numbers illegally by talented sculptors and producers. The official merchandise has always tended to be prepainted statues and busts of a much larger scale. Not my cup of tea really, so here I am going to show off some cool stuff I have found. Wolverine for starters, a few traditional sculpts and some computer sculpture in z brush.

This one has to be my all time favourite sculpt of wolverine - hands down easy. Sculpted by the awesom Mark Newman. Click for larger images.

This one sculpted by a forum user known as Morhawkee. Sorry I don't the sculptors real name! I like this rendering for managing to capture the mood nicely.

 

I like the piece above for its fantastic energy and bursting colour that makes it seem like a comic book page come to life.

Obviously these three sculpts dont even begin to scratch the surface of the amazing work out there, but I chose them each on their own merit, its not always about technical perfection of the sculpt itself. I have seen some less sharper work convey feeling beautifully. Here is an example of that. It is a paperclay sketch of Logan. Done by the Shifflett Brothers.

Very simple but the face conveys a lot of expression and also offers a slightly different look to him which I like.

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/printthread.php?t=61535

An amazing z-brush rendition of wolverine in a classic comic pose. This looks utterly amazing. Lets hope that gets produced.

Anyway, hope you liked these ones - there will of course be more over time.

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X-Men Kids

Just a quicky post today, here they are - sculpted by the brilliant Troy McDevitt. Enjoy the picks and now I have to dash..................
(Insert blinding flash special effect)

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Steam Punk Sculpture

I received a personal message from a fellow CMONer the other day containing a link to some rather cool steam punk sculpts . After a quick search I found the artists website and  found some very impressive work which should be of interest to those that visit these pages. Steam punk is a very interesting style that allows for great innovation and imagination and I love the vibe of old mixed with new. The Pictures below represent a small selection of the artists work. The artist is one Pierre Matter and you can visit his personal site HERE.

Enjoy these and the Pierre Matter website. Tomorrow some comic book stuff and then some more steam punk....

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Beast Rider

This is a sculpt from a while back really from a competition run on the Shiflett Brothers forum. The challenge was to create a monster and its rider and it attracted many big name sculptors to do an entry. The prize was pretty sweet to being a vast array of resin kits all signed by the brothers, pretty much their whole range I believe it was. Anyway, this was one of the entries. Sculpted by Ryan Firchau - a character and creature designer who works in the video games industry. So yes he's awesome. I will be posting some more of his stuff soon to. This piece is entitled "Earth Shaker".

Enjoy.

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One Shot By Soda Pop Miniatures

Many of you may have seen the Soda Pop Miniatures new release "One Shot" model. A girl and her mech is a nice design idea and the sculpting of the piece was done by the masterful MIKH, a freelance sculptor responsible for many Rackham and Helldorado pieces amongst others. I asked MIKH if he moulded the symmetrical parts for purposes of speeding up the process and symmetrical precision - he did not!!! All individually sculpted, with the use of a simple sculpting trick of doing the symmetrical parts back to back to keep a check on the symmetry itself.

Here is the model, there are no details on who painted it unfortunately, should I find out I will update the post.

This model is available from the CMON store, direct from Soda Pop and is available at many other miniature retailers.

The purpose of this post is to highlight the interesting article on MIKH's blog about the creation of this piece. There are plenty of the original technical drawings to see and a description of the process. Part 1 is up on the blog now and a second part is to follow, if you're interested in checking it out head on over here.....

MIKH's Blog - One Shot Creation Part 1

Enjoy.

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Wild Troll By Romain Van Den Bogaert

Many of you will have seen some of the wonderful busts sculpted by Romain Van Den Bogaert and distributed by JMD Miniatures. Well, here is the latest peek I found on another forum. There are no details as yet as to who will be producing it or doing the studio paint job for it. But enjoy these photos in the meantime....

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