Rikard's Body Building: Sculpting 101

Submitted by Rikard

Welcome to Rikard's Body Building, an ongoing series of articles about how to make your own conversions using modelling putties such as Greenstuff.

Rikard is a longstanding member of the Vault, and has produced a number of amazing conversions. Check out Rikard's gallery for more great pictures.

Index of articles:

• Part 1: Have Putty
• Part 2: Layering
• Part 3: Pro Armature

Rikard's Advice

Simply follow these 3 steps to really get the most of your time and effort.

1: Patience

No-one starts off creating jaw dropping sculpts from day one it takes time and tons of patience, some things will require massive amounts of layering (weapons are a good example) as you may well have to wait for one part to dry before you move on to another, try and do the two together and it will all go pear shaped meaning that you lose even more time clearing up your mistake.

2: Practice

We've all got to learn to walk before we can run so start off small with your creations and build up from there. It was ages before I did a complete sculpt and one of the reasons why was because I got disheartened when I tried to sculpt a complete mini in one sitting from scratch (and believe me if anyone could do this they would be getting large amounts of money thrown at them from every model making company in the business. Push yourself and the ambition of your projects little by little and you will soon notice a difference.

3: Positive attitude

This ones a deep rooted element to do with the human brain, if you doubt your own abilities before you try (and trying means more than one attempt) then you will simply not put the effort in or worse subconsciously sabotage your efforts even before you begin. While knowing your limits is a good place to start, where is it written that you should not push them?