Small Soldiers sculptures
Hey everyone!
This is my first post on this
website, so first of all:
Thank you for giving us all the opportunity to watch all the amazing
professionals working on their creation, learn from you guys and thus improve
our own skills. It was about five years ago when I found the book about the art
of the Stan Winston studios, and since then I can neither get my hands off clay
anymore nor put anatomy and spezial effects books away... Since I live in
Switzerland (sorry for my sometimes weird English), this website offers me the
unique opportunity to learn parts of a craft that is still mostly unknown in my
country. So thank you for all the inspiration you give us and the dreams you
make become a reality (be it on screen or in real life; one of my dreams has alwasy
been to develop skills as a sculptor...).
This is my first real project; I've started to create 1:1 replicas of the commando elite of the movie „Small Soldiers“ for my 4 year old (nope, he was not allowed to watch the film, but he found an old poster and the hasbro toys weren't good enough for him...). Don't laugh, its my first project of that kind... and, yes, I know, the whole thing is only still pretty rough... The heads of the soldiers are pretty difficult to create. At the moment, I am working on Brick Bazooka and Butch Meathook, since they seem to be based on the same body (pursuant to my lengthy research, that is...)
Maybe some of you have some inputs regarding the shoulder and hip joints... I have slaughtered a barbie doll I bought in order to find out how its joints work, but I think these are different.
I bought whatever I could find in order to get references. The trading card set, even an Italian sticker album from Merlin (like Panini) which was complete in order to see the exact sizes of the figures...
The eyes are made with baked super sculpey, makes things a lot easier.
If you have any ideas how I could
improve my sculpts, I would highly appreciate your inputs.
All the best
Florian
Comments
Thanks for sharing your work here. Your sculpts look fantastic!
Here is one example of an action figure shoulder joint design:
Some older toys that I've taken apart used a strong rubber band at the shoulder that connected to a small hook inside the torso. This allowed the shoulder to rotate like a normal ball joint, with the rubber band holding the ball joint in the socket. The arm is held in posed positions by the tension of the rubber band.
Your project is off to such a great start, I can't wait to see how these characters turn out!
/Chris
/Chris