24 Hour Sculpting Challenge

So, I remember reading a comic by Erik Larsen years ago, that he did in 24 hours. He cited one of Scott McCloud's book as the genesis of that challenge, and the results were a rough but fun story.

I got to thinking, "It'd be fun to try a 24 hour sculpting challenge!" The idea would be, to come up with an original idea then execute it, all in one day. I started at midnight, Thursday (October 2nd), and tried to suss out two 1.25" sculpts by midnight of October 3rd. Here's what I came up with:

I started out, by doing a whole slew of armatures, in polymer clay. Anything from Sculpy to KATO will work, but you could also utilize foil or wire or whatever. If you're using wire, and intend to progress using a polymer clay: make sure to use uncoated wire, or the coating will melt during the baking process and warp your sculpt.



I then selected the three armatures that I felt had the most potential, and started laying Apoxie (I swear by Aves) onto them. Very soon after, I realized that trying to do three would be a bit audacious, so I put the smallest one off to finish later. I decided that I could do some sort of minotaur like guy, and a biomech wearing necro priest dude. Cut me a little bit of slack... With 24 hours to complete these guys, I was going to an aesthetic and had little time to figure out back stories.
I fixed them to the tops of beer bottle caps that I have collected from my friends, so that I could manipulate/turn the figures without leaving fingerprints.

The minotaur guy was going to be layered, so I started from the bottom and worked my way up. The skull needed to come before the arms, so I could layer the texture that I wanted for his jacket/cloak onto the skull.

And here's the bad mofo, in completion. I had to make a few sacrifices on him, on account of the time constraints, so I chose to make that sacrifice on his hands. I wanted the skull to be on point, and felt that the fur ghillie suit deal was more important for his look.

Next up, is the "Necro Priest". I made the choice to go simple with the face, though the photos don't really represent the horizontal striations on his gullet well. I tried to do as much detail as I could pack on, to his tunic/robe thing, and ran out of time when I got to his left hand. Out of the two, I think he is my least favorite, but what in the hell do I know about toys?

So, that's pretty much it, for now. Part of me wants to clean the figures up, but the other part of me feels like that would be cheating. Anyways, if you've got a free day coming up, I suggest you give the challenge a shot. It was a lot of fun, as an exercise, and I would recommend it to anybody regardless of their skill level.

-R