Mike’s work

Hi all.
I’m new to the 3D sculpting, have not done it before Nomad Sculpt.
The purpose of this hobby for me is to create characters from my favorite games, print them and paint.

This is my latest project - Thrall from Warcraft 3

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My first work ever, Elf Ranger from Warcraft 2

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Scorpion from MK

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Zagreus from Hades

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Batman from (sort of) Arkham series

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Barbarian from Diablo 2

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These are all awesome, but you are not absolutely new. What’s your background?

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Thank you sir!

I am indeed new to this.
1,5 years ago I decided that I want to have a collection of figures from all the games I love.
Quick research showed that most of the characters I need are not even sold anywhere, and those that were available online were different in size.

So I thought “ok, I’ll create them on my own somehow”. My first attempt was in clay. I watched tons on of videos on YouTube just trying to copy what guys like Dr. Garuda do. But after spending like 2-3 months of trying different clays and tools, I just wasn’t satisfied with the quality I get.

I have figured out the 3D printers these days are now fairly affordable with the pretty decent printing quality. So I thought that instead of learning how to sculpt with hands, I can learn how to sculpt with a tablet and a pen. Quickly I realized that Blender or ZBrush would be yet another reason for me to be anchored in front of my PC and I did not like this fact.

So I found Nomad Sculpt, bought a simple pen from AliExpress for my dummy iPad 2018 and watched all the videos on YouTube related to Nomad Sculpt.
After that I just started creating the Elf. I had no idea what I am doing, neither there was a good reference for a minor character from a 30 years old game. I think it took me like 3 months to create something I was sort of satisfied with.

Gosh, it was only the beginning as I needed to learn how to 3D print. And gosh, printing is a joke comparing to Painting figures.
But step after I step I am trying to move on and make at list some little progress.

I also upgraded my setup to iPad Pro M1 and Apple Pencil, because the old tablet could not handle anything above 10M polys per scene.

Here are the orc and the elf side by side:

The elf was my first attempt of doing all these things, so the print is terrible, the model is terrible, painting is super terrible. It is something like 25 centimeters tall.
While Thrall (35 centimeters in the highest point) seems to be fine with me, so hopefully I am progressing somehow :slight_smile:

Sorry for this longread!

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Great story! I wish you good luck, patience, and perseverance. :slight_smile:

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Thank you for this interesting story.
I do not see anything terrible.
Just a natural talent doing things others won’t be able to their entire life.

You didn’t use any base meshes?
You did everything from scratch?
But you have a creative job?
Or at least you are drawing for a long time?

Sorry, but I saw a lot during the decades, but your progress seems to be exceptional, if you never did anything creative before. Even if you are drawing for quite a while it is still very impressive.
I watched several artists grow, wether it was on zbrushcentral or on other platforms. I saw professional figurine painters, sculptors doing things in clay etc etc.
There is always space to improve, but you are starting quite some years ahead of others.
Just my subjective impression from what I see here.
I guess it’s time to concept your own characters, isn’t it?
:vulcan_salute:

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If its the truth and for real…THIS IS INSANE!

Please tell us more about Thrall from Warcraft 3…how did you do it!?

Can’t believe you did this in Nomad…crazy!

Hi Knacki,

Thank you so much for your kind words!

I have created everything from scratch intentionally, because I wanted to have these figures to be created completely by me, from the first 3D sphere till the last coat of paint and varnish. Self challenge, I guess.
I only allow myself to reuse some elements from My previous sculpts.

Though I do tons of googling for good references when possible.

I work in IT, not a lot creativity in this context :slight_smile:

Unfortunately, I can barely draw. Not a complete zero, but close to that. One day I hope I will learn it, but not any time soon…

In terms of creating my own characters, I probably won’t. Not only because I’m not creative enough, but mostly because I have such a huge backlog of video games I want to create characters from and I am so slow at doing it, that my roadmap is already for years ahead :grin:

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Hey ToBe!

Yeah, all in Nomad Sculpt. This tool still drives me crazy, i would never believe iPad can have anything THAT awesome.

Though sometimes when I watch videos of people creating characters with hard surfaces (like armor) in ZBrush or Blender, I feel super jealous as I want all this poly/vertex/edge editing, but it is what it is. They sit in front of their PCs and I lie on sofa and sculpt in Nomad while watching series or YouTube :grinning:

In terms of Thrall sculpting. The biggest challenge was that I had to split it into two separate files and sculpt Orc and Warg independently, occasionally importing on to another to fit them together. Combined they were above 30M polys :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Gosh, I really messed up splitting them in smaller pieces for printing, so sanding and gluing it together took me good three weeks. I was about to crash it into pieces at some point. Now I will CAREFULLY plan how splitting and keying should work for a print

Looking forward to see what’s coming up from you next.
:star_struck:

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This is epic, from zero to this, congrats.
Show us more characters please and share tips please :slight_smile:

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Amazing works man! Still find it amazing that you made such a complicated model on Nomad. Do you have any pics upclose of the prints? What printer are you using?

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Hello there!
I’m using Anycubic Photon SE, eventually I would want to buy a bigger Anycubic with a higher resolution.

Here is the barbarian, painted with Vallejo paints, mostly with airbrush. I made it in December and hopefully have learned a thing or two about painting since then.

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You said, you started sculpting with traditional clay back then?

That’s what i did too :slight_smile: but from time to time i still do it.

You got some pictures from early works?

Blade Dancer from Lineage 2

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Great work!

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