Creating a Free Standing Maquette pt 1

I told someone on the Sins of a Dark Age forum that I'd post sort of a how to the next time I made a maquette. So here it is.

First things first, if your character is going to be free standing, you'll need some kind of a base. I usually use a small cutting board from the dollar store, they are made of thick solid wood and always have a nice finish. Not to mention they are pretty cheap. I'm using a sanded cut of wood provided by my fiancee (Natalie Brash, check the blog to the right!) whose father just happens to be a cabinet maker ;)

Secondly you need an armature like the one in this screenshot. I'm using like, 2mm steel wire or something. About the width of a traditional pencil lead. You'll notice that I've coiled the wire. This makes it sturdy and can still be easily manipulated with pliers. To coil the wire simply bend a length of wire in half, about 8 or 10 feet worth. Then, have a friend hold the open end with a pair of pliers. Insert the bent end into a handheld drill and twist away until it looks kind of like this.



WireSkeleton



Before I screw anything in I'll pose the skeleton by hand getting it to look as close as possible before moving on. To do this I start the foot with the looped end of the wire and bend out a leg from there. The scale of the leg will dictate the size of your whole model so try to imagine how many inches you're prepared to sculpt at this moment. I'd recommend less than 9 inches so you can easily bake your maqueete in your home oven. keep the bend at the top about halfway up the face, leave yourself some breathing room. Twist the wire down the spine making it double thick and bend out the other leg and clip off the rest of the wire. you should be at a point where you have two legs and a spine like a two prong pitch fork. At this time I would screw the feet into the wood with the smallest possible screws.
                


Pre-arms, time to screw this guy down.



Cut another length off your coiled wire for the arms, remember the wingspan is about the height of the character. cut off a little more than you need you can always trim them a bit if the arms are too long. Do a preliminary pose of the arms then, attach them using some of that smelly, quick drying plumbers putty stuff. Or like that crazy putty stuff that the oxi clean guy is always raving about.

The last thing I do before actually adding the sculpey is applying a few chunkels of that putty stuff around the skeleton. Keep it crude but not too thick. and leave empty segments so you can still bend the skeleton to tweak your pose. This prevents the sculpey from wabbling around the smooth wire. Which is maddening!

Chunk it up!