Michael VanBenschoten's Beast Forge

Michael Vanbenschoten

Hi Guys! I'm excited about this new forum. Instead of making a bunch of separate posts for each project I'll be posting in one consolidated thread.
Thanks for viewing!

GRIM SENTINEL
the concept behind this guy is he's a herdsman of hell, guiding and preventing souls from wandering off.


Concept thumbnails






Alien bust, From a sketch I did at work



A creature I made as an audition for a competition series. I didn't make it onto season 1. But I guess there's always next year.





BEBOP From TMNT




SATYR



ROCK MAN
sketch I did during work



SPACE SALAMANDER



and just as a teaser A mermaid WIP

Mike Ruyle

Wow! Lots of great work here! My favorites are the sentinel, competition piece, and mermaid.

Michael Vanbenschoten

Thanks Mike! Glad you like it, I'll have more later and hopefully I'll get some of these cast in resin and painted.

Josh Sullivan

Bebop looks great and i really like the space salamander, great looking character and nice paint job.

Matthew Grove

Nice work. They look like they are roughly 1/6 scale. I like your use of bearings for the eyes. I started to do that on my 1/50 scale work. I think I will try it out on larger figures now too. Looking forward to seeing the mermaid completed.

Michael Vanbenschoten

Yeah, I generally work 1/6 to 1/4 scale. But that's just a general guideline.

 Matt - if you can find it at a sporting goods store, they make steel bbs of various sizes for slingshot ammo. I have a package of 3/8 inch ones that I'm using.

Josh- the paint scheme of the salamader was inspired by a picture of a fake "Roswell" Alien 'crash victim' that had some convincing burnt skin. I liked the colors and wanted to make a character out of that.

Matthew Grove

Thanks for the sporting good store tip. I was going to try wheel bearing, but the sling shot ammo is a great idea. I will try out the large sporting good store near my office. Of course they might sell it on line if I can not find there. Matthew

Michael Vanbenschoten

A new piece I'm finishing up. I call it mollusc man.

Matthew Grove

I like that paint job. The color really pops on the head symbols. Do you cast and then paint these or do you paint the clay? Matthew

Michael Vanbenschoten

I do a bit of both. If you use a polymer clay like super sculpy, you can sculpt, bake and paint in one go, then cast later.
 You can paint oil clays, but I like to reuse mine without having to scrape off a layer of paint, so I cast those first.

Christopher Vaughan

Nice work!

Jared Lee

Out of all your fantastic work, the space salamander is my favorite.

Thomas van der Veer

very nice sculptures!