Adventures into Hand Sculpting

There are a few new things coming up for Dark Heartwood..

But none as new as handsculpted miniatures! I’m going to cast these in resin, with will act as masters for both resin AND METAL miniatures. If you don’t already know, we handle the full process here - everything is sculpted, printed and cast here. We can add metal cast and hand sculpted to that list now!

SO who are these guys? Well this is just a sneak peak at what we’ve been working on, but they are Froglodytes and they will form a new little warband in the making - they have a champion in being sculpted as well as a few familiars…

and… a big guy… a troll? a fish troll? these guys feel a bit swampy, but you could easily paint them as a desert animal or anything really - even all luminescent from the deep deep ocean.

I’m really looking forward to these ending up as resin casts, and I can’t wait to paint them! As it stands these are the first few miniatures I have hand sculpted, I think if you count the few tests I have done over the years these are probably the 5th or so?

I am really digging hand sculpting again, I have done so much digital over the past couple of years I had started to enjoy the process less and less -it felt too… perfect? I don’t mean that my work was perfect (far from it) but the sculpt to print felt too free from imperfections - real materials have imperfections, they have mistakes and they take patience and flow to work with.

It’s a funny thing - it was the widespread use of AI in art that pushed me to work on hand sculpted things - AI 3D assets are just around the corner - I don’t think it will really impact this kind of stuff… As I don’t personally do much freelance work and I’m very unlikely to outsource myself :)

But it did make me question why I make art - I was definitely using digital because it is faster, more efficient and cleaner. But sculpting on the screen felt like I was missing the important parts out… less of a meditation… Will I stop digital? no! will there be more hand sculpting? YES.

Stay tuned for some more!