Nonheroic Dolly Face Sculpting Practice

32mm scale pewter gaming miniature "dollies" manufactured by Reaper Miniatures ([link] -- Reaper #75004), used by me as a basis for practice at sculpting faces with "brown stuff" epoxy putty, in the hopes of making a few customized minis.

I've been taking some of Reaper's "heroic" and "non-heroic" dollies, just adding faces or token details, possibly posing them or scraping them up a bit (for "battle-damage"), then painting them up to represent futuristic "androids" for a sci-fi/cyberpunk Interface Zero (Savage Worlds RPG) campaign. The original "dollies" just have a small bulb where the head should be, and a couple of blocky stumps for hands. Reposing them from the "arms held out" pose is rather tricky without severely messing with the look of the joints, but it's a whole lot easier with these guys than with the thicker "Heroic" figures (which were evidently meant to represent larger-than-life "superhero" types).

Figures on far left and far right are my attempts at sculpting with the "female" dollies. I've been able to find some onilne tutorials on sculpting male faces with very rugged, lined faces, but it's another thing entirely to try to get a nice, smooth, pretty look for a feminine face. I'm not quite there yet, by any means. (And the less said about my progress on hands, the better.) So far, my best method (which I'm still working on) seems to be to apply a dab of putty for the face, polish and smear it until I can get a shiny, smooth surface, then start with a needle tip at the outside of where I'd like an eyebrow. I then move inward, arcing up a bit, to describe the upper arc of an eyebrow, then continue downward to describe one side of the nose -- pulling along a bit of putty in the progress, which basically creates the nose. Then I repeat this on the other side, mirroring the motion, to create the other eyebrow and the other half of the nose. I then start working with that, using a couple of pin-pricks to start the mouth (and then pulling outward and either upward or downward to make the edges, whether I want the figure smiling or scowling. My intent is to mark the surface of the putty as absolutely little as possible, trying to rely mostly on pulling the general mass of the putty around to shape things, and occasionally using a rounded clay-shaping tool to imprint in to make cheeks, etc. (it's essential to keep the tools clean, however, or any bits of dried putty or other crud clinging to the tool will mar any smooth surfaces.)

As for the figures that don't turn out so well? Well, I can either peel off the putty and try again ... or I can paint up the figure as a "damaged" android. (I've used that shortcut a lot.)

For the hands? The most I can manage is a couple of crumbs to make a row of clenched fingers and a thumb, and then I try to separate them with a hobby knife blade edge and a needle, but I've got a long way to go there. I've resisted the temptation to just replace hands with guns or robo-claws or whatever from the "bitz box." It just wouldn't make sense for this particular scenario/location.

Of the two male figures in the middle, the one toward the right has a more abstract face -- basically just a vertical strip and then a cyclopean view lens. That's one part laziness, but another part that I just imagined that on this mining base, there'd be more demand for pretty female-ish androids, but less so for pretty male-ish ones -- so let's leave that face nice, utilitarian, and obviously robotic! (It'll be more fun to paint, anyway.)

The other male figure with an actual face is meant to be one of the PCs, provided I can get the mini DONE in a reasonable span of time. Wendy got a giggle out of my application of what amounts to the putty equivalent of a "fig leaf" on the nether regions, but for the final figure he'll have a complete space suit, with folds at the joints, seams, etc. I just started by mostly focusing on the face, then the hair, then that collar around his neck (where a space helmet is meant to pop on and seal). If I'm particularly ambitious, I might eventually try to make him a helmet with a clear blister-plastic visor, but only after I paint the rest of the figure (and, of course, I need to finish sculpting it first).