Sculpting log (dolly)

[Duke Donald]

The aspect of he hobby I enjoy most is sculpting. I have several ongoing projects but progress on any of them is ridiculously slow at best. Thus, I felt it may be best to have a thread where I show what I'm sculpting.

I also realised that starting every single mini from scratch is inefficient. Thus,  I decided to produce some dollies and cast them to improve productivity. Here's the first one.

[rumacara]

Looking very good.
Are you thinking on selling some dollies?
I might be interested.

[Captain Blood]

Moi aussi.

[Duke Donald]

Are you thinking on selling some dollies?

and

Moi aussi.

I didn't think about it to be honest. I was planning to cast them in resin for my own use, which is slow and fairly hit and miss. The material also isn't to everyone's taste (the resin I'm using is a bit like the Reaper bones stuff). Though, if there was a demand and it would make some of you happy, I wouldn't mind producing a series and get them cast professionally, as long as I can break even.

I wouldn't mind casting 5-10 male bodies in different poses as well as a few female dollies. However, before I'm getting carried away, I would need to make sure to know what you are after exactly. I assume most prefer metal over resin, but let me know if I'm wrong. Now the tricky bit: size! So, what exact size (to the eye) would you be interested in?

[Daeothar]

Metal dollies, with the material soft enough to be bent into the desired pose, sculpted anatomically correct (but just gloss over the naughty bits) and of the right height (that being 28 to 30 mm base to eye), both male and female, would be something I would certainly buy!

And I'm sure there would be many others interested as well...

[rumacara]

As Daeothar says and both male, female and childrens size also.
You could check how much would the cost be and see how many people would be interested and how many casts would be needed.

[Eric the Shed]

surprised this does not exist already

[Daeothar]

I have some dollies made by Ebob, but they're not even close to being a fully fleshed out human. Basically they're white metal stick figures; easily posable, but you need to sculpt every part yourself, including hands, feet and head/face, which is what would draw most people to the dollies Duke Donald proposes to make.

Call it the laziness or the being acutely aware of his/her (lack of?) sculpting skills of a prospective buyer, but the fact such dollies would be able to be painted up as someone in a bathing suit right off the bat would be a huge selling point I reckon!

[Captain Blood]

Yes, I have a couple of the ebob dollies. Don't really like them.

So if you go ahead and produce some, Duke, I might well be interested, as I've long wanted to try my hand at sculpting full figures - but can't be bothered fannying around twisting bits of wire into armatures... 

[FramFramson]

IMHO, no one has made really GOOD dollies (and few people have good quality heads either - a lot of the head packs which exist today now look very dated and old and in many cases quite crude). I think a multipart dolly set is a big opportunity.

[dijit]

One of things I find most frustrating with sculpting is hands, I'd love to be able to buy ready made hands.

[Duke Donald]

Thanks for the feedback. I'll have a go at a series of dollies. I'm planning to sculpt five males, five females and two children. The males will be 30mm to the eye and the females a bit shorter. The poses will be variable but fairly relaxed. I'm still unsure whether to have the arms and heads cast separately; feedback on this point most welcome.

I didn't have much time to sculpt as of recently but have started working on the first dolly (below). He's 30mm to the eye and the head is not fixed to the body. So far I've just created the armature and sculpted a head and the general shape of the muscles of the upper body.