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Monday, August 20, 2012

Sculpting an Elven Sentry Post: Step by Step part ONE

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Now that I am getting around to creating my army board for the Lord of the Rings Elves, I had to start considering building Elven terrain.

It got me thinking about one of my projects from back in the "Glory Days" of dioramas, when I used to make something like this every week.

This Elven Sentry post was made almost entirely from Sculpey.

Step one was to create an armature.

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You can see that I used a few different types of wire.  The heavy wire is sculpting wire.  It is designed to be flexible enough to bend into place, but strong enough to support the heavy sculpey.

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I used the softer white sculpey for the lower sections, since I knew it would be very thick, but also have the most texture.  The softer sculpey was much easier to turn into that heavy bark texture.

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I also had my wooden display base handy, so that I could judge how large the roots would be.

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Now it's time to extend those branches!  I used the stronger less flexible sculpey for these sections.  That is the pink color.

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The pink Super Sculpey is much harder when baked, which will be essential for supporting the sentry platforms.

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Here's another image showing this next stage of branch sculpting:

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For the tips of the branches, I bring out the hardest sculpey, which is the bright orange.  You really want this to be very strong, but light.  This will carry most of the foliage.

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You can also see the wires added that will hold the sentry posts in place...

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Stay tuned for the next episode, which will detail how the sentry posts were created!

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