So yes, the eagle eyed among you will see it's been quite some time since my last blog update.
There are quite a number of reasons for this hiatus, not the least was to have a bit of a break from sculpting for a while - and this is the reason you haven't seen any new releases for a while.
Last year was not quite what I was hoping for in terms of continuous growth for Wereweevil Miniatures if I'm being honest. After a record year prior, I was thinking I was on a roll and unfortunately, I like many in the miniatures industry in the same period, experienced a feast to famine situation. This took the wind out of my sails motivation-wise and I (briefly) questioned the ongoing future of my enterprise.
So I took a break for 6 months and worked on my own personal miniature collection, painting up a new army as well as a bunch of other minis I'd wanted to paint for ages, but hadn't had time due to sculpting instead. It turned out to be just the thing I needed!
My US friend and collaborator Mark Maxey had been egging me on to sculpt one figure in particular that I'd done a concept drawing several years ago, but had only started half heartedly and which had sat in my top drawer ever since. He was keen to see me finish it so he could paint one up and enter it into one of the mega gaming conventions held in Chicago this year.
That was all the inspiration I needed to finally get the sculpting tools and green stuff out and get back on it!
Now one thing that most non-sculptors don't know is that when using green stuff or Procreate epoxy putty to sculpt with, you can only do small amounts at a time until the putty cures and hardens, before you can do a little bit more, otherwise you run the risk of smushing up some perfectly sculpted part of the model with a stray finger placement or tool placement on the incited model.
This means sculpting is generally done in many, many stages over several weeks a little bit at a time. Given this, it's not practical to just work on one model at a time. You need to have a number of figures on the go all at once, so you can cycle through them doing a little bit on each before moving in the the next bit, so that by the time the putty has cured, you're back onto the original figure to repeat the sculpting cycle.
As such, I currently have no leads than 18 new models in varying stages of completion on my sculpting desk!
Suffice to say, most (with some notable exceptions) are not only green skinned due to the putty type, but also also the race of the models in question :) yes - I'm talking about Orcs.
2 to 3 years ago, my range swelled in ranks of SWARF's (Space dWARF's = SWARF's for those wondering...) and while I intend on doing plenty more SWARF's in the future, my attention is almost exclusively now on the green skinned Orcs instead.
So a few of these are almost finished and ready to mould up and cast and I'm looking forward to adding these to the existing range of Green Eggnobz, Green Eggbots and Green Dreggnaught.
But there's still the figure for Mark I mentioned earlier...
I'm pleased to say, it's shaping up (in my humble opinion) as one of my best sculpts yet! I feel that my time away over the last 6 months has really refocused and re-energised me and allowed me to look at my sculpting with fresh eyes, which means wanting to make each model the best it can be. I hope you guys can all see this in the new sculpts as they are released.
Anyway, here's a teaser of this model in question. There's still quite a bit of work to go, believe it or not, but it should give you a pretty good idea on what the final model may look like.
Hope you like it and I'll be letting everyone know when it is officially released in a few weeks time.
Happy painting!
Marcus
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