faolan
02-20-2013, 10:05 PM
Introduction to the project:
These days, I'm a 3d artist. While I've been dabbling for several years - I started out making 3d Battlemechs (badly at first!) and have since moved up and on - I didn't start doing commissions until about 18 months ago, and dove into 3d printing about the same time. It's been one helluva learning curve, I can tell you - models that work for games and CGI, even if they are high poly, are completely unsuited to 3d prototyping, and I had to learn everything all over.
These days I do a lot of commissions both for commercial and non-commercial clients; in fact, nearly all my time these days is taken up with doing some pretty massive projects for Colonel Gravis and his Curious Constructs shop, and a few repeat customers who have me do private (non-commercial) scale custom jobs. Sometimes, however, I manage to say "no" to everyone, and work on my own projects, although I still haven't had any time to actually paint a miniature in a while.
This project is about Eldar, as the title may have suggested. I was going to start another Human faction army (to go with the Space Wolves, Dark Angels, Blood Angels, IG, Chaos Marines, and Traitor Guard I've already got around) with some of my ill-gotten gains from commissions, namely, some Adeptus Custodes. However, the chap I was going to buy then from was a bit dodgy on the shipping, so a mate of mine warned me off.
He then planted the bug in my ear saying "you've got enough humans and stuff, you really should do some Xenos". Orks are off-limits, as Mrs Faolan might get a bit tetchy if I moved in on her turf (or would that be fungus field?), 'Crons look like g'damned XBoxes on legs, and I really couldn't be bothered with Fish heads. Eldar have always intrigued me, but to be blunt, I hate most of the models - they're entirely too, well, sissified, gaytastic, and the sex-toy helms just don't do it for me. Dark Eldar aren't bad, but I've been around long enough to remember the old DE figures, and I still, despite the new ones, cannot get "leather bondage elves" visual out of my mind whenever DE come up.
So what to do? Well, the aforemention friend then says "why don't you sculpt your own, have them prototyped out, and then they can suck less?" Tom, you beast, you're bloody brilliant.
So the parameters are now established: to build an Eldar army that doesn't look like sissies and that don't pander to the GW stereotype: while they should be somewhat lithe, they should not look like emaciated twigs, they should be closer to male ballet dancers or gymnasts - graceful and yet have some sort of a build. And they need to, at least somewhat, look intimidating.
Only one problem, of course - prior to now ALL of my work has been on very obviously non-organic stuff - vehicles, weapons, that kind of thing. Eldar, on the other hand, tend to flow a lot more. Well, I'll never learn unless I actually try it, right?
Now, to the tools. I use 3 programs mainly - Wings 3d, a nice, free program that does well for some things, but is admittedly underpowered and doesn't do nifty little things like Pro Boolean operations. Also in there is 3ds Max, which is a very powerful tool, but sometimes things just take too long to do it in there, especially since I'm not using the animation and movie making, which seems to be a massive part of it, still, it's amazing for cutting and coring things out in a hurry. Finally, I've also got ZBrush installed, which is a great program even with it's counter-intuitive interface and sometimes idiotically clunky workflow. Still, nothing does organics like it, and the ability to simply stamp in detail using images can be amazing, so it's definitely got it's place in my box of horrors.
What you'll see here is the progress of the job, sometimes the very early stages of the figure sculpting, sometimes jumping in intermediately. Eventually you'll see the finished 3d products, and then you'll later see the actual miniatures once they're prototyped out. Hell, you may even get to see some paint on them!
I won't lie, I hope to gain something here too - sometimes my ideas run low, so perhaps you'll even help me make a better Eldar (especially the horrible Warp Spiders). Maybe even EldarGal will weigh in!
Next post will include some pictures as I've already started the project.
These days, I'm a 3d artist. While I've been dabbling for several years - I started out making 3d Battlemechs (badly at first!) and have since moved up and on - I didn't start doing commissions until about 18 months ago, and dove into 3d printing about the same time. It's been one helluva learning curve, I can tell you - models that work for games and CGI, even if they are high poly, are completely unsuited to 3d prototyping, and I had to learn everything all over.
These days I do a lot of commissions both for commercial and non-commercial clients; in fact, nearly all my time these days is taken up with doing some pretty massive projects for Colonel Gravis and his Curious Constructs shop, and a few repeat customers who have me do private (non-commercial) scale custom jobs. Sometimes, however, I manage to say "no" to everyone, and work on my own projects, although I still haven't had any time to actually paint a miniature in a while.
This project is about Eldar, as the title may have suggested. I was going to start another Human faction army (to go with the Space Wolves, Dark Angels, Blood Angels, IG, Chaos Marines, and Traitor Guard I've already got around) with some of my ill-gotten gains from commissions, namely, some Adeptus Custodes. However, the chap I was going to buy then from was a bit dodgy on the shipping, so a mate of mine warned me off.
He then planted the bug in my ear saying "you've got enough humans and stuff, you really should do some Xenos". Orks are off-limits, as Mrs Faolan might get a bit tetchy if I moved in on her turf (or would that be fungus field?), 'Crons look like g'damned XBoxes on legs, and I really couldn't be bothered with Fish heads. Eldar have always intrigued me, but to be blunt, I hate most of the models - they're entirely too, well, sissified, gaytastic, and the sex-toy helms just don't do it for me. Dark Eldar aren't bad, but I've been around long enough to remember the old DE figures, and I still, despite the new ones, cannot get "leather bondage elves" visual out of my mind whenever DE come up.
So what to do? Well, the aforemention friend then says "why don't you sculpt your own, have them prototyped out, and then they can suck less?" Tom, you beast, you're bloody brilliant.
So the parameters are now established: to build an Eldar army that doesn't look like sissies and that don't pander to the GW stereotype: while they should be somewhat lithe, they should not look like emaciated twigs, they should be closer to male ballet dancers or gymnasts - graceful and yet have some sort of a build. And they need to, at least somewhat, look intimidating.
Only one problem, of course - prior to now ALL of my work has been on very obviously non-organic stuff - vehicles, weapons, that kind of thing. Eldar, on the other hand, tend to flow a lot more. Well, I'll never learn unless I actually try it, right?
Now, to the tools. I use 3 programs mainly - Wings 3d, a nice, free program that does well for some things, but is admittedly underpowered and doesn't do nifty little things like Pro Boolean operations. Also in there is 3ds Max, which is a very powerful tool, but sometimes things just take too long to do it in there, especially since I'm not using the animation and movie making, which seems to be a massive part of it, still, it's amazing for cutting and coring things out in a hurry. Finally, I've also got ZBrush installed, which is a great program even with it's counter-intuitive interface and sometimes idiotically clunky workflow. Still, nothing does organics like it, and the ability to simply stamp in detail using images can be amazing, so it's definitely got it's place in my box of horrors.
What you'll see here is the progress of the job, sometimes the very early stages of the figure sculpting, sometimes jumping in intermediately. Eventually you'll see the finished 3d products, and then you'll later see the actual miniatures once they're prototyped out. Hell, you may even get to see some paint on them!
I won't lie, I hope to gain something here too - sometimes my ideas run low, so perhaps you'll even help me make a better Eldar (especially the horrible Warp Spiders). Maybe even EldarGal will weigh in!
Next post will include some pictures as I've already started the project.