Sculpting help - which putties do you use?

[Munindk]

I'm trying to sculpt a few thing for my Star Wars project, but being a novice at sculpting I thought I'd ask the hive brain a few questions.

So far I've worked with green stuff for gap filling, fixing a miscast foot and airbubbles.
I've picked up some brown stuff because I've read that it cures harder than green stuff, so its supposed to be good for sharp edges.

I'm currently using milliput for sculpting an Eopie (a humpless camellike creature that farts a lot) and I find its a lot easier to work with than green stuff.

Which putties do you use?
What do you use them for?

[CookAndrewB]

I'm not an expert sculptor, but I sculpt figures for my own gaming and amusement. Here are my thoughts:

Green stuff is, in my opinion, the easiest to work with overall. I primarily use this for sculpting objects on bases, adding items to figures like bags, hoods, and clothing, and I do most of my initial figure build up with green stuff. Is it as hard as brown stuff? No, but it cures hard enough with a little flex after it cures. I'd think that you would never have to worry about something snapping off if you dropped a figure made of green stuff.

Brown stuff isn't bad, but after using both I ultimately gave up on brown stuff. That is mostly because I felt I could see my work better in green stuff. The details popped out better for me.

Apoxie sculpt. This is, by far, my favorite. It cures rock hard (I would worry about shattering if dropping larger objects), it is much cheaper than green/brown stuff, and I can buy it in sufficient quantities to allow for doing things like push mold cars. It also sands well. In its workable state it behaves more like clay, which is also nice for doing detail work. It has a longer workable time than green stuff, which is also nice if I want to mix one batch and then work on several things over the course of 1-2 hours. It will start to get tougher as time goes on, but I've found it workable almost out to three hours.

Pro Create. I bought a bit on a whim, and it has been ok. I'd say it cures up faster than anything else I have worked with, so I could feasibly do 2-3 additions in an afternoon with adequate curing of base layers while working on top. What I don't like about it is that it is also the least likely to adhere to base layers.

Green/brown stuff have a tackiness to them that I like. Apoxie is even stickier at first, but then loses that quality as it cures.

I'm sure others will have a more educated review for you, but I would say that it might be worth trying out Apoxie Sculpt. It hardly matters what a pro can do with a product if you (and/or I) can't get the same result. In the end it has been useful, to me, to just try a whole bunch of products and figure out what works best for me.

[Cubs]

I only use putty for repairs and small conversions involving minimal sculpting. I've only ever used Greenstuff and Milliput, but nowadays I tend to use a 50/50 mix of the two, which seems to combine the best of both materials.

[zemjw]

I tend to work with greenstuff, although I have used procreate and others in the past. Most of my work is conversions, some of which I've been posting here recently - link

@CookAndrewB - interesting comments on Apoxie sculpt. I'm working on a vehicle conversion just now that will need some gap filling and I was trying to decide what to use. I'll add that to the list of things to check.

If you're sculpting full figures it may be worth looking at some of the polymer putties you need to bake to harden, eg fimo and beesputty - https://beesputty.com/

For sculpting videos, check out Tom Mason on YouTube. He has loads of stuff up there, although he seems to have stopped posting new content.

[Mammoth miniatures]

I find a 50/50 greenstuff milliput mix is very nice to work with - it has the stickiness of milliput and the flexibility of greenstuff .

Personally i now sculpt in a 50/50 fimo super sculpey mix as it gives me all the working time i want, and both materials cancel out the shortcomings of the other.