Sculpting Miniatures Part 5: We go to a 3 inch mini

Once you have gotten familiar with the general procedure of making a miniature and you have made several six inch ones it is time for you to bring the scale down and make some three inch miniatures. This is 1/24th scale. It takes a six foot humanoid and translates it to three inches. We can't use any old clay for this. Now we have to use something that will give us a reasonable amount of detail and I use Super Sculpey firm for this. It holds detail well and is easy to work with.

Super Sculpey FIRM Gray- One Pound This is an excellent product that you can use to make terrific miniatures. It is easy to work with and holds its shape well. This isn't the final product I use in my tutorial. It is a great product to practice with and still get great detail.

Here is the miniature we make in this tutorial. It is a barbarian with a very big two-handed sword. You can see by the picture that we are able to get a lot more detail out of this super sculpey. And this picture is not of the completed mini. There is still more work and more detail to be done to it. But this picture gives you an idea of what you can do.

This is part 5 of the tutorial. In this part we decrease in size to a three inch miniature and we use super sculpey as our clay. We get a lot more detail now and we learn some important aspects of sculpting miniatures.

How to Do it

Cut yourself off some small pieces of super sculpey (or the clay you are using) and knead it very thoroughly so it is soft and workable.

Now build up the general shape of the miniature by applying a liberal amount of clay. Just get a general sense of the shape and musculature of the mini. This step is important because you want to improve your ability to visualize. When you start out in a general shape like this you will be able to keep working it down to more and more detail.

Remember the rule of eight. A body is about eight heads in height.

Now we get into some real work here! Use your tools to start to actually sculpt away at the figure. You can slice with an X acto knife , push, form, mold, scrape and add more clay as needed. The important thing is that you refer to your drawing and keep working the clay so it gets more and more detailed and more and more life like. If you need some tools, dental picks work great. I have a selection of sculpting tools in my miniature sculpting tools and supplies store (all amazon.com)

Generally, the best thing for you to do at this point is to sculpt the figure nude. And when you have all the musculature done you can go ahead and add clothes and jewelry etc. It is method of layering and it is what you will do with the smallest of miniatures.

This part of the tutorial is broken up into two videos. The first video shows you how to make the armature and how to apply the clay in bulk form. The second video shows you how to do all the detail work.

Continue with tutorial in part 6 where we Make a 3 inch miniature Viking Warrior

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Table of Contents for this tutorial

1. Miniature Home
2. Miniature Painting intro & overview
3. Painting Miniatures Tutorial start
4. The Paints
5. Preparing the Miniature for painting
6. Priming the Miniature
7. What to paint first
8. More Painting and the details
9. Close-up of the completed Warhorse
10. Adding texture to the base for realism
11. Tips and hints for painting miniatures
12. Diorama and Miniature supply Store
13. New Painting Miniature Tutorial: A Spartan Warrior
14. VIDEO TUTORIAL: How to paint miniatures
15. Miniature Paints and kits at Amazon
16. Ral Partha Miniatures
17. Links and info about manufacturers of miniatures
18. Understanding Miniature Scale
19. How to Make Foam Terrain for wargaming or dioramas

Sculpting Fantasy Miniatures

NEW: How to sculpt fantasy miniatures

1. Part 1 - intro
2. Part 2 - Drawings
3. Part 3 - Making Wire Armatures
4. Part 4 - Your first miniature 6"
5. Part 5 - Make a 3" miniature
6. Part 6 - the musculature of the 3" miniature Viking Warrior
7. Part 7 - Our first Armor - we sculpt the viking helmet
8. Part 8 - Sculpting leather and chainmail
9. Part 9: Adding Belt, bracers and boots
10. Part 10:Painting the miniature
11. Part 11: 25mm Female Warrior
12. Part 12 : The basic shape of the mini
13. Part 13: Completing the body
14. Part 14: Adding the swords and doing detail
15. Part 15: Painting and finishing the miniature
16. Sculpting Fantasy Miniatures Video Tutorials
17. Sculpting miniatures store- all the supplies you need.
18. Sculpting tips

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