Thank you. I'm very happy to read it. Keep your eyes on this space, so to speak, maybe some day the figures would be available commercially.

In the meantime here is the illustration, still in progress:

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The setting is the near future - alien anthromorphs are raiding the planet earth, hitting targets of their own cryptic choosing. Their motives are unknown and their methods chill the blood. The world is all but imploding on itself by the pressure of inter group nationalistic conflict and the ever growing fun-house-mirror abominations of corporate greed made flesh. The stage is set- the Pre-Apocalypse. Some men of power, behind the curtains, have yet found faith inside of themselves and reached out to each other. Tentatively forming a black, inter national, para military organisation they have named E.T.C. Their motto is "Gladius Mundi"- sword of the world. Now the race is on. Will the invaders from space succeed in their alien plans, an untold fate of horror for the planet? Can the E.T.C. fight them back and foil their efforts?

I've elaborated on my plan on my blog; the idea is to make some interesting progress on several fronts. The first one you see above the text here. More fluff to ignite the imagination. An important aspect of making a game, or game pieces, is to give the player a foothold or a beach head from which to launch his fantastic journey. I'm pleased with the result, it took quite a while. I think I'll do more later as I progress. Some in a lesser scope, like individual concept art and the such.

I'll start first with props and accessories, I'd like to improve my efforts in machined items. The first bit is going to be an MTAR 21. My initial plan is to scale some measurement data and then, using a wire as both an armature and the barrel itself, sculpt "all around" in a layered fashion. We'll have to see how it goes.

The points I'd like to hit on as I go:

-More "fluff".
-"Mechanical" pieces.
-customization ability.
-interesting poses.

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Started out on the MTAR-21 otherwise known as the X-95. This is going to be the 5.56 version without the hand guard and no frills- only the red dot sight. I began by massing reference material and then scaling the known measurements to 1:64. As it turns out, the scaled down version seems very small and frail. The actual rifle being 580mm long translates to 9mm in scale. It's a good explanation why usually we see exaggerated weapons and gear. Yet, I decided to carry on and try to be true to scale as much as I can.

I transferred the proportions using the old grid system:
This drawing is 1:6.4

This is 1:64. The lines were made with an 0.3mm mechanical pencil.


I used this template to compare my progress with.

I had a 9mm piece of wire and not much of an idea on how to work. I thought, since this is highly technical, to work in structured layers.
I decided to try and build as far as I can in one go so you can see the stump for the hand hold and the body is almost fully formed. The main problem, though, with working only against the wire is the shapes come out lumpy and the details don't hold well. Upon looking at the final result in macro photography I became somewhat despondent that it doesn't look good. However, thinking about it as a basic shape to start from it's actually very good for me. It's just not going to be as fast going. I intend to sand the sides down quite a bit and then work from there.





Edit: style

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Here is the second layer on the x-95. Still to add are the magazine and the sight as well as some odds and ends.





It's not as lumpy as before but still, I'd like to get crisper details. Maybe I should try again with all brown stuff. Though, I've seen examples with green stuff that looked as hard an edge as any so maybe chalk it up to inexperience.

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Here is the next bit, still some things to do. There was a whole fiasco with the magazine. I inserted a thin copper wire to serve as an armature and had only noticed that it poked through the side when I mixed some green stuff to add the charging handle and casing deflector. In the end I'm going to have to cover the whole thing up with a layer of flat surface and detail so it's not too bad. There are a few other touch ups necessary like flattening the bottom of the stock.

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Almost done with X95.V.01. Added first layer to the experimental X95.V.02 and began the base mass for X95.V.03
V.02 and V.03 are going to be exclusively brown stuff.

V.01




V.02


V.03

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Couldn't fix V.02 in place for working on it after removing from paper. Scrapped.
V.03 split down the middle after sanding and the magazine and grip broke off. Brown stuff is brittle. Scrapped.

V.04 makes his debut appearance:

On the left is V.03's corpse.


The main body has a wire through it and thinner copper wires for the magazine and grip. It's composed of green stuff. The plan is to have the flat surfaces and angular details in brown stuff and all the round stuff in green.

Might take a while so I started on some figures:



The skulls will serve me as a structure for making the heads.

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V.04 in progress.







A solid start. I'm sure I can much improve with more experience but one must be patient in that regard.

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Dude...AWESOME stuff!!

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I could agree with you...but then we'd BOTH be wrong.

No...but my wife thinks it may be cheaper for me to buy a COMPANY.

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I could agree with you...but then we'd BOTH be wrong.

Thank you, sir.

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carved V.04 up a bit. Added the grip, hand guard, charging handle, forward iron sights and two small bits at the back with green stuff. I also added a kind of under structure for the red dot sight. Now that I finished this part I realized the one side looks wonky because the forward part of the top cover is not aligned with the rest of it. I'll remove and resculpt it which should improve the appearance. Next phase I'll do some general repair work and add the magazine skin and red dot sight.






Also made another skull and improved the proportions two of the older skulls. This new one is going to need a forehead transplant. It didn't come out as well as I planned because I worked on it in the same sitting as the x-95 V.04 and it was second priority. I've made 4 more base armatures which I'll try to make nicer skulls on.

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Here's V.04. Not finished yet:





And a face, made on one of the skulls:







And a more detailed skull. Larger than the interior skulls by 5-3mm,

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Started V.05
This is 3 layers in. The wires were especially fiddly this time. It's not even the base layer. I'm going to sand this down, cut it into shape and make a super flat base layer with superfine milliput.





Made some concept sketches. I really want/need to do more of these. I've got the new sketchbook funk where I'm panicking that I forgot how to draw.





Posed the dude who got ears and some hair.





Made another skull.

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Gave our man a helmet. It's a sort of skateboard/vert helmet that I think spec ops people like and enjoy. It'll come together more when I add the straps, I hope. I'll polish the helmet a bit later, also.










Milliput is kind of cool but I suck with it so I'm sticking to brown stuff. Scraped off the milliput and added BS. I intend to heavily sand the result and go from there.

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