Eldar: From the Ground Up (Custom sculpts and all)

[faolan]

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.

[faolan]

Here we have the evolution of the Guardian and Dire Avenger models - the one with the slimmer upper chest is, at least when these were done, the Guardian, the other the Dire Avenger.

[faolan]

In the future, there'll be less of the rapid-fire replies from me to myself, it's just getting the first set of pictures uploaded!

This is a much better capture of the Guardian Torso, front and back. It is, barring unforeseen problems, done, save for cutting a hole for the neck to fit into the gorget.

[Fizzybubela]

Nice!

[SotonShades]

Very interesting start. I wish you luck with these. Don't know if you know, but GW are actually looking for a new sculptor. Might be worth you having a look at their careers page.

[DrLove42]

I respect your talent, but not sure I like them.

They look a bit too "ribby" that looks more Necrontyr than Eldar. also the spirit stones are too big for my liking

[faolan]

I respect your talent, but not sure I like them.

They look a bit too "ribby" that looks more Necrontyr than Eldar. also the spirit stones are too big for my liking

Fair enough Doc. I know the aethestic won't work for everyone. Although while looking at the Warp Spiders and visualising that in a low poly format (like what you get in a game), it screamed Tomb Wraith to me, so I obviously won't be using this torso for that!

I don't plan to use it for the Striking Scorps, Banshees, Fire Dragons, Warp Spiders or the Swooping Hawks. Ideally, the SS will get scorp style plates across them, the FD's will get scales of some sort, the Hawks will get I dunno yet (maybe stylised feathers, maybe not). The base torso model may get re-used, but that's just the shape under the ribs.


Soton: I appreciate you mentioning that, however, I'm not sure I'd go that route - if GW still treats their artists as bad as they did when I worked for them in shops back in the early 2000s, I'd end up shiving someone in short order! However, if someone has an in with the PP guys or Spartan Games, I'd be all over that.

Last update for the day. I haven't been totally satisfied with the Guardian armour, the pectorals just haven't been cutting it, they looked like the padding from a padded bra. After walking away for a few hours, having supper, slaughtering some people in World of Tanks, etc, I was able to fix it.

Tentatively these are the Guardian torsos, but I may move them to Dire Avengers, and move the Dire Avenger torsos "down" to the Guardians.

Hopefully tomorrow/later today after I get up I'll pour some effort into one of the other Aspects. I've promised myself if I can get 2 Aspects done (barring the arms/weapons) I'll reward myself and work on a jetbike or weapons platform.

[faolan]

Maybe this'll be less "controversial", Eldar Banshee.

For those interested in the workflow process, I took my stock Eldar body, decreased it in size by about 1-2mm in height, and then separated the pieces back out. I pushed in the front and sides of the midriff so as to emphasis the femininity and the lithe-ness of the Banshees, and then started working on the armour bulge you see in some of the artwork (including DOW2).

Arm and leg sizes were reduced about 10% in their girth, again to emphasise the femininity of the model. Breasts were added and resized until I felt they were in the "average" range, not the GW/Fantasy miniature ginormo-boob range. Adding in the butt definition was fairly easy, I pulled the centerline on the rear up and in slightly before applying the smoothing.

I used a quite a few less "hard" lines before applying the smoothing functions, basically what they do is determine how much of the original line is there, if it's an edge if it turns into a soft, flowing "ripple" or if it maintains it's definition during the smoothing. For example, under the breasts and the chest armour, you can see how the material has a definite edge and definition to it, those were hardened areas, whereas the breasts and midriffs weren't. You can also see a great, if more subtle, demonstration along where the head will mount into, the soft gorget that rises up has a definite form all it's own, which was made by hardening the top and bottom edges of it.

Admittedly, the feet still need a few hours of work, I'll come back to them when it's time to do the helms and hands for all of the Aspects.

As you've likely noticed, the upper and lower legs are all separate, as are the feet and arms. This is so that later in ZBrush I can mount them onto a framework for posing, freeze them then, and fill in the gaps between them. This saves the age old issue that GW and others commonly have of "the armour doesn't fit in X pose, well, we'll just shorten up one leg, nobody'll notice!" In conjunction with that, I didn't do a good job of posing the parts in this picture, but the upper legs will be about 1mm further away from the torso, allowing more range of movement for posing - I'm thinking Banshees and Striking Scorpions, in particular, will require VERY dynamic posing, moreso than the normal Guardian/Dire Avengers will.

[miteyheroes]

Really interesting stuff! I'm looking forward to seeing the helmets

[heretic marine]

Nice sculpts