Precinct Omega sculpts... Schoolboy Wizards

[precinctomega]

N1S asked me, given a shortage of funds in the Precinct Omega household for birthday parties, if I would run him and a half-dozen friends through a Hogwarts-themed RPG over birthday food and pizza. It's hard to say "no" to a request like that, and I set to designing an adventure structure and a handful of player characters. Then, thinking that a bit of tactical play would be fun, I discovered a massive dearth of schoolboy wizards on the market.

What with me taking on more of an "agent" role, distributing work within a pool of freelancers in return for a percentage of the net, I'm doing a lot less painting than I used to, so I've been turning my hand to sculpting with a view to developing an exclusive Precinct Omega range of miniatures (and saving me the expense of paying someone else to do it). I began with a couple of contemporary sculpts, which I'm still working on, but decided to put them aside to build a small selection of schoolboy wizards, guessing that, somehow, there might be a market for that sort of thing...

Here's the first.

He's not finished completely, but needs to set for a few hours before I can continue work. I've got a second in progress, although I'm not so happy with it. *I'll be starting a third mini later today.

R.

[mdiscala]

You need a fat one and an ethnic one.

[Caiphas Cain]

What makes a character ethnic in this scale? Squinted eyes? Big lips? No. At this scale it would just look cartoony and mildly racist. I think it's best to let the painter decide what skin color their models have.

[benvoliothefirst]

Very cool! Looks great so far.

The real question is, when're you gonna get around to sculpting on the wireframe glasses?

I'll be keeping an eye on this thread.

[precinctomega]

Well, the first two sculpts are actually loosely based on N1S and ULF (my boys), so no glasses yet. The third one should be a little on the hefty side, though!

Although none will be explicitly ethnic in any particular fashion, there should be a variety of hairstyles. The big plan is to have the basic sculpts cast (and painted for N1S's party), but then to remove heads and some arms in order to sculpt a selection of alternate heads/arms for each one.

R.

[precinctomega]

Well, the first two sculpts are actually loosely based on N1S and ULF (my boys), so no glasses yet. The third one should be a little on the hefty side, though!

Although none will be explicitly ethnic in any particular fashion, there should be a variety of hairstyles. The big plan is to have the basic sculpts cast (and painted for N1S's party), but then to remove heads and some arms in order to sculpt a selection of alternate heads/arms for each one.

R.

[precinctomega]

Here are some WIP shots of the next two minis:

The plan, as mentioned elsewhere, is to cast these in resin then to take them apart and sculpt alternate heads/arms for each one. *The chap on the left in this picture is a First Termer, whilst the one on the right is a bit older. *And no, his left hand won't be flicking the bird.

R.

[Hideous Loon]

The first one looks kind of the Tenth Doctor, what with the coat, the suit, the hand-in-pocket, the small tube in one hand...

[Caiphas Cain]

That head looks a bit thin, other then that, good work.

[precinctomega]

The thin head is just the face. The rest of the head hasn't been sculpted yet, so with his cheeks, ears and hair, the head will get a lot bigger.

R.

[precinctomega]

So, I got the first two done and ready for preliminary casting:

Obviously, the first one still needs the details sculpting on the tab, but these are otherwise all done. I can't pretend that they're perfect sculpts, but as I'm very much learning my way into the art of miniatures sculpting, I'm pretty content with how they've turned out. I've nearly finished the third one ready to cut him off the random piece of plastic he's currently attached to, chop him up with the razor saw and glue him to a tab, and I've just started a fourth sculpt. Once all four are done, I've arranged to have them cast up in resin so I can get them assembled and painted for N1S's birthday party (which is in less than a month!). As soon as that's firmly in the past, I'll go back to the resin casts, fix the bad sculpting, add at least one alternate arm/hand to each sculpt and possibly remove the heads to add alternate heads, too. Longer term, I'm looking at doing some schoolgirl wizards, too.

These should go up for sale in the next couple of months, just as soon as I've bolted a decent e-commerce package onto the Precinct Omega website.

R.

[precinctomega]

So I got number three finished and mounted for casting:

And last night, after a very long day of nursing my sick family, I sat down and watched both parts of the Deathly Hallows whilst I knocked out Number 4:

He's not quite finished. He needs a bit of work on his feet and I'm in two minds about removing his arms for casting. They don't need to be removed, so I'll probably leave them, as I'm against the clock. At the moment, it's still looking good to put these into commercial production in May.

R.