Eldar Warp Spider sculpt

[solecize]

During my down time waiting for green stuff to cure on an Eldar Knight project I started sculpting an Eldar Warp Spider .

This is the first humanoid sized mini I have sculpted. I always loved the drawings and paintings of the Warp Spiders but I don't think current minis reflect their dynamics properly. Don't get me wrong- I love the metal minis and these models are about as far as you can take a one piece metal mini with typical mold making technology. Also the current metal figures actually have some design problems that bother me:

1. Warp spiders could not turn their head due to collision between their backpack and the little mouth parts on their helmet
2. Some of the backpacks are off kilter or skewed, possibly because of the way the mold pulls. I have tried to fix those issues
3. The models have tons of hoses everywhere which remind me of older Eldar sculpts but kind of don't fit the new sleeker models, and since the spiders are a newer aspect I thought I would make them cleaner and more dynamic as they have been refining their armor and weapons in recent years
4. I want the spiders to look more "Spidery" which you can't tell in the picture, but once all the extras have been added I hope it will have a nice effect.

Below is a picture of the progress so far. The head and body are original- the legs are Dire Avenger plastic which I'm planning to replace with original sculpting as well. The final model should be about 8 pieces allowing me to pose the spider in lots of cool positions- head looking up or to either side- alternate arms for holding their gun in different poses etc. I'll also make some other alts for an Exarch and possibly a Phoenix Lord.

[archimbald]

real good man, what sculpting stuff you use????

[solecize]

real good man, what sculpting stuff you use????

Thanks- I use super sculpy firm to do bulk work and green stuff for small details. Sculpy is great but even the firm sculpy is not really table-ready, but I almost always make molds of my sculpts, so i won't actually field this original- just a copy.

I also use yellow stuff (plasti-tack) to test the fit of the pieces.

[Lord Inquisitor]

You'da fooled me if it was painted up and finished.

[Slann]

looking great , I love how it is turning out .

[tylermenz]

I can't see the pics, can some1 post a link to it, I don't think the picture is loading...

[MunDMC]

Wow... wow. Any chance on a tutorial on how you cast these bad boys?

[kurushii]

Awesome!
And yes, a tutorial would be very nice...

[solecize]

I think I can put a tutorial together. I've been thinking about putting a modeling/painting vidcast together. This would be a good start.

[Scherdy]

Likewise no pics for me which is a huge bummer. Tried in IE and firefox hoping that solved something but apparently not. Would love to see the work you're doing as I love warpspiders but am not a huge fan of the old models that are available....


and now a few hours later, in the same browser I see the pictures. All is right again!!