Digital Sculpting a Sluggy-gon

Warhammer's Epic scale miniatures are always a huge source of inspiration for me. You can tell the designers were freed from the limits of (relative) size, at least in terms of concepts. I'm sure they had been gazing at concept art like below longingly, excited to be able to play them on the table. Interestingly, both the Hive War (The Epic Tyranid rulebook) and the 2nd Edition Tyranid Codex came out in 1995, so I guess they didn't have to wait long.

Anyway, I was browsing random stuff on pinterest, and spotted a picture of the Epic Trygon. I'm familiar the creature, a deskmate of mine from a previous job had one. But this one was an entirely different shape, a much heavier, sluglike creature. It immediately reminded of a dozen different critters from various video games and media from my childhood, and I've always thought the current Trygon was too spindly. I feel that way about a lot of the current big 'Nids, really. I get why; it's a less-popular faction to play (than the blueberries, anyway) and constructing large hollow structures takes more sprues and plastic, and is difficult to pose. It just costs less to design and manafacture skinny 'lil guys. 

But I don't have that limitation! Or at least, since I'm only making one, and not with profit in mind, I can get away with more. As is tradition, I collected a ton of concept art and reference. In the process, I discovered that there was actually an Armorcast prototype in the works! I wanted it to influence my final sculpt, but also I wanted to do my own thing too - I'm not setting out to replicate that model perfectly. I even also found that someone else had sculpted a more faithful version already! Grabbed that pic and put in the concepts folder.

Once I got all my concepts in order, I started sculpting! I wanted to keep the sluggy rolls on the bottom, and I felt inspired by other sculpt to add a beaky mouth. It felt right, and I didn't have any good references for the face. In fact, the whole creature reminded me somewhat of the Graboids from the Tremors movies, and that felt pretty cool.

So, after a couple hours and a shitload of polygons, I ended up with this! I had intended to (once fully sculpted) use rigging to try and pose it a little more dynamically, but honestly, the "blank ahead" pose feels more retro, so I think I'll leave it as is.

But, unlike my previous sculpts-and-prints, this one is a fair bit larger. I tried to remesh the model and cut it up for easier printing, but after several hours wrangling it (with most programs crashing when opening the file... thanks) I gave up and decided to simply print it in place, massive model and all.

Also now it spins!

Also, if anyone is interested, I was able to track down and find the other sculpt! Feel free to check it out, and thanks so much for reading! Check back in a bit to see how the print turned out, and to see it painted up!

- Miss Captain Bear