The Ghug

After working on 15s the monster sized Gug was a nice break. Also the fact that it is all organic and I don't have to worry about straight lines and hard details made it easy to sculpt.

I like the way he came together and I'm happiest with the texture on the skin. I stumbled on it accidentally while working on the torso and ended up redoing the legs afterwards. But in the end it was worth it. I used a square clay shaper to lightly work the texture in and tried to use it to emphasize the underlying shape. Then I came back and added some more random lines kinda crosshatching it. I think it gives a nice elephantine texture.

First encountered at the Siege of Delhi during the Mutiny the creatures known as "Ghug" can as quite a shock to the British troops. This particular creature was called Bhaksaka Gaja which roughly translated to " Eater of Elephants." British troops later came to discover that the creatures were summoned in a bloody ritual at Cawnpore by a sect of Thugee sorcerers. The Ghug were only matched by the steam powered Colossi that the British had been using as mobile siege weapons. The battles between the savage creatures and the clanking giants became a recurring story throughout the Indian Mutiny. 

Professor Emil

This is the first of my more steampunk style guys. I think the more caricature style definitely comes across better at this scale. At least with my current skill level. I used some plastic rod for his cane/pipe and it worked pretty well. I might try making a mold of him so I'm gonna hold off on painting him for a while.

Professor Emil 

While a famed mycologist and vocal socialist Professor Emil is known mostly for his role in the Walloon Jaquerie or as the British call it the Liege Incident. It is still unclear if he undertook his experiments understanding the outcome or was simply insane. The end result of course was carnage and the almost entire destruction of the city of Liege in an effort to eradicate his "Fungoid" creations. 

Gug

I'm not really happy with a setting unless it can feature huge monsters fighting with giant robots. So it was inevitable that I was going to add some creatures to my steampunk setting.

The Gug is a classic if lesser known creature from the Cthulhu mythos. I've always liked the distinctive and very alien arms on them. I wanted the creatures in my setting to have that same bizarre, alien feel without looking too extraterrestrial. More warped and beyond human imagination instead of creature feature or men from Mars.

My designs are strongly influenced by Guy Davis's artwork on BPRD. A must read as far as I'm concerned. And of course by Mike Mignola and Hellboy. My Gug is inspired by the creature that attacks Seattle in the epilogue of the first BPRD: Hell on Earth arc.

Sketch of Gug creature seen in Delhi during the Mutiny. 

Architectural Details

I need to start making some terrain to go with the Victorian 15s I've been working on. The problem is that buildings at that scale aren't that easy to make. Victorian buildings have a lot of detail to them and replicating it at that scale can take a lot of effort or money to buy HO scale details.

My plan instead is to make castings of details for myself. I've done this before when making buildings for Warhammer 40k. Though those pieces were obviously larger and easier to make.

One of the windows I cast.

And the same window used three times together.

On my list of pieces to make are doors, windows, shingles, and probably stone walls. I might do some cobblestone sections to for roads, sidewalks, etc. Still debating on doing chimney parts or just making them as I go. The advantages of all of these are that they can be made with a one piece mold, which are far easier and cheaper to make.

A set of steps and shingle patch with a Prussian for scale.

With these parts I can cast up pieces to make more complicated pieces. Dormers come to mind as combined with mansard roofs they are pretty typical of late 1800's architecture but fiddly to construct each time. This kind of thing would require a two piece mold though. I could cast each face separately but then I would have to deal with assembling it. It would allow me to mix and match pieces though. I'll have to play around with some mockups and see which way I want to go.

Inspector Collins

Overall, out of all my sculpts so far this is the one I'm most satisfied with.

Inspector Patrick Collins has always been the odd man out at the Yard. Promoted from constable after finding the kidnapped Lady Byron, and taking a bullet in the shoulder for his troubles, he has never really been accepted by his comrades. It's no wonder then that he has has been assigned many of the bizarre crimes that have been occurring in London. Certainly not thrilled by the assignments he is too much of a professional to not devote his full capabilities to the so called U cases. 

Mrs. Amelia Pelham

Many distractions and delays later I finally finished the Victorian Lady. I'm happy with her face but hands are still my downfall. I thought I would start adding a small story about each figure that would help breathe some life into both the figures I'm making and the larger world I see them fitting into. Most of this I make up as I'm sculpting. It keeps me interested and motivated to finish them. After all it is easy to stop creating some random sculpt but much harder to finish work on the imperious Mrs. Pelham. 

Wife of Reginald Pelham, owner of Pelham Dry Goods And Mechanicals, Amelia Pelham is one of many middle class women very much involved with the spiritualist scene of London. Here she is hurrying to a seance with the renowned medium Antoli Keerard with little concern for what the neighbors think. And certainly none for what Mr. Pelham thinks. 

 

 

Steam Armor

Normally when modeling I work more or less on the fly. But recently I've tried to plan things out a little more. Part of my new method has been making sketches of what I want to work on. In the past I've done some rough sketches for terrain I've been working on but I've been trying to go a step further for my sculpting. I'm not the best artist by any means but working this way lets me focus my ideas on what I want to make.  Although I'm pretty sure it will evolve as I sculpt it.

So this is the sketch I made for my first more steampunk miniature. I wanted to make a steam driven power armor or steam armor as it were. I decided that it would be of Prussian manufacture, probably from the Krupp factories.

And here is the beginnings of the sculpt.