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2014/05/29 15:00:16
Subject: Hec - Digital Sculptor for Kingdom Death, Relic Knights, Darklands, Megaman and more. Works Depo
Hec here. I'm a digital sculptor originally from the video games industry. Back in 2009 I started doing freelance work for minis. My first project was Kingdom Death and eventually I worked for many other projects in the field. About five years later I'm still here and I'm a full time freelance sculptor. You can read a bit more about that in my blog entries here if you're curious:
Some of you might already know my work, some of it has been posted here already, but I decided I'd post it here myself now. Hope you don't mind me sharing.
You can also find me in facebook and twitter where I'll be sharing previews and sneak peeks of current and upcoming works:
Starting with K.D. in more or less chronological order, some of this made it to production, some of it hasn't yet, and a few pieces like this first one might be too old and possibly cancelled.
This one was my first piece for K.D., Laurie the Librarian. Got printed, molded, but I'm not sure if she ever went into production... not that fond of her artistically and technique-wise after years of improving and learning, but I'm still attached to the fact it was my first piece for KD and 3D printing.
This was a second piece based on Laurie, was intended for both a 54 mm scale mini and potentially for a model kit. Got put on hold, but might still happen after K.D. Monster is completed.
Lion Armors, the base bodies for these weren't done by me. The male base was done by Stefano Pina and the female base was done by Jon Troy Nickel.
I also did a lot of clean up and restoration for existing minis and some traditional minis that got digitized for re-mastering. To close off the K.D. part of this thread for now, here's the weapons and masks I sculpted for the game:
I'll be back soon with my works for Soda Pop/Ninja Division, Mierce Miniatures, and a couple other start up projects I've worked for.
Wow. Thanks for sharing. I'm a very big fan. Great to see the weapons for KD:M. I certainly dropped a ton of money there and I have no regrets. I'm planning to get the roman troops you're modeling for Mierce as well. Hope to see your stuff here often!
2014/05/29 17:20:37
Subject: Hec - Digital Sculptor for Kingdom Death, Relic Knights, Darklands, Megaman and more. Works Depo
I don't normally lurk the painting and modeling section, but I suppose now is the time! I love the Beyond the Wall model btw. One of my favorites from the KD line.
Absolutely incredible work. Like greywulf, I dropped a bunch on the KS as well, and its awesome to see what comes of it! Im a very satisfied customer already!
Cant wait to get my hands on some of your sculpts, and Im definitely looking forward to seeing more of your lovely work!
Hi again, thanks for the warm welcome. I really appreciate it.
greywulf - Thanx man. I'll be posting the Roman trops for Mierce here later on, they're quite fun to work on.
Sinful Hero - Beyond the wall was my first KD mini to go into full production and sale, I was very pleased to see it be a success. In the previous image batch you might notice the same girl while she still had her armor and weapons intact. She'll be available eventually too.
OrlandotheTechnicoloured - Adam keeps us all well posted on the goings on. I'm looking forward to my copy of the goods too.
Ramos Asura - Thanks, and I'm looking forward to posting more recent and future work soon too.
Alpharius - Thanks a lot for the welcome. This is an awesome community I've watched for some time and finally decided to join in.
Thanks to Adam and K.D. I got into contact with the great folks at Soda Pop and started making pieces for Relic Knights, came a bit late to that party, but I got to do some really fun pieces for it. The style was also fairly different from K.D. both in the faces of the characters and also on the sci-fi outfits and Mecha.
My first piece for R.K. was Cosplay Marie-Claude, based on Marie-Claude Bourbonnais who I'm still actually working with on a side project, more on that soon.
Here are the cyphers before getting posed, they were so fun to do. I do this quite often for my sculpts which allows the flexibility of taking the base models and posing them again for variant minis, it's a great benefit of digital:
Case in point, here's a variant version of Candy and Cola that used the same base model as the other Candy and Cola minis:
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/05/29 18:40:32
I find it humorous I pledged for most of the Relic Knights stuff you did as well! Very interested to hear more about that side project with Marie Claude as well.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/05/29 19:26:32
And I'm in the same boat as Sinful Hero, purchased most (if not all) of the things you've done for Kingdom Death and Relic Knights. I do have a question about Relic Knights, though; what's the goal when you model a character's face? What are you trying to achieve with it?
2014/05/29 21:43:47
Subject: Hec - Digital Sculptor for Kingdom Death, Relic Knights, Darklands, Megaman and more. Works Depo
Sinful Hero - More about the MCB soon, perhaps I'll do a post about it on my blog when it's completed.
Dentry - My goal with character's faces is the same of the goal of the whole sculpt really. I get great concept art and then I do as close of a 3d translation of it as I can. Both K.D. and Relic Knights for example have very Asian Anime/Manga art styles, but even within that very different styles to each other, Megaman has yet third type of Asian art style. In 2D I have more of my own style developed, when it comes to 3D I just try to emulate the style of the concept artist into the sculpts. I study the faces and anatomy closely and I do my best to get dynamic poses that preserve the energy of the concepts. Towards the end I do another pass on the pieces to magnify or minify things so that the piece will print and mold well enough, that part is quite tricky still and I'm still learning lots on that end. Hope that answers your question.
Rolt - The ninja girl got sort of cancelled, but she might sneak her way into the line up again in the future, you never know with ninjas.
gunslingerpro - Thanx, I'll keep posting stuff here and in my other platforms to keep people posted on the goings on.
PomWallaby - I'm in so many projects these days that it's quite likely you might end up with something of mine in your collection, and I hope you'll be happy with it.
RiTides - Here they come! first wave.
OrlandotheTechnicoloured - Hope so too. I'll see if I can nudge them to it on my end.
Pryamarch - Hopefully you'll get to, very soon.
So, here goes my first wave of works for Mierce Minis, very different in some ways to stuff I had done before, but I welcomed the challenge and had a blast with it.
I'm currently working on the Roman unit and it's going pretty well, I'll show them here eventually too.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/05/31 12:32:15
Very nice work, I have been looking at starting down the road of digital sculpting and modeling. That being said, I am a sculptor and model maker by trade, just in the traditional methods (which is swiftly becoming a relic of the past). At work we are moving to the new way and now have a 3D printer in house, however due to lack of seniority I have been passed over at work to receive training (and even restricted access to) on any of the software despite having prior experience using 3D cad software such as SolidWorks. As it appears that I am on my own and likely soon to be deemed redundant at work, do you have any suggestions for obtaining this new skill set?
You say that I am crazy. I say that you are right!
2014/05/31 15:18:25
Subject: Hec - Digital Sculptor for Kingdom Death, Relic Knights, Darklands, Megaman and more. Works Depo
Genuinely love that gorgonar Unit and I'd love to get a set to play as Seekers of Slaanesh and as an entourage to my Consort Princess Bexxis.
For the Lion and Terra!
Because nothing in the galaxy is black and white, Mankind views the Space Marines as a last resort. The last line. When all else fails. They take up the burden. The noble defenders of Mankind. The last hope.
With finecast you can bypass the washing stage and throw them straight into the bin.
Or cut out the middleman and just flush some money down the toilet.
-Chromedog
2014/06/01 22:03:54
Subject: Re:Hec - Digital Sculptor for Kingdom Death, Relic Knights, Darklands, Megaman and more. Works Depo
@commissarbob - Sorry to hear about the sidelining, but it's not that bad I think. I don't think digital will push traditional completely and I think the strong traditional sculptors will always have plenty of work. Part of the reason digital guys like me are showing up in the minis realm is due to instability in the games and visual effects industry. All these fields (VFX, Video Games, Miniatures, Collectibles... etc) are being mutated by circumstance and technology, 3D printing has brought and will keep bringing new opportunities. I think it's important in many industries and some times more so in creative fields linked to technology to be adaptable and flexible.
My main advice would be to not wait until you're given or offered training, go look for it. These days there are tons of resources online to do online training in digital art at places like (drop any of these in google for full links) gnomon school, eat 3D, zbrushworkshops, digital tutors, CG masters academy, and lots more. There are dvds, online courses, and tons of free tutorials at places like 3dtotal and even in youtube.
Aside from being a freelancer I'm a part time teacher, I teach zbrush and sculpting at an SAE institute in Vienna, and I teach basic Maya at a Technical University. I started my youtube channel as a way to offer free tutorials and glimpses into my workflows, but I've only recently started and my more in depth tutorial content is still in the works. Keep an eye on it by subscribing and share the content if you find it useful. I'm posting links to it below, hope these answers help some.
@ Shenloanne - Glad you like'm.
So from working with Soda Pop on Relic Knights came also working with Ninja Division on one piece for Robotech and a bunch of pieces for Mega Man The Board Game which is still being worked on. Below are some images from those projects starting with the Robotech stuff:
Below is the base model for Megaman, this particular piece may not be the most complex or difficult mini I made, but it was still a dream come true since it's one of my favorite IPs and it's one of the games that made me become a huge fan of Capcom. Capcom later published Street Fighter, Dark Stalkers, Resident Evil, and many other games that kept me playing and also made me interested in the Video Games industry. Their games have been a huge artistic influence and inspiration for me and while I wish they were still making Mega Man games these days I hope one day they might still revive the IP. In the mean time, I love making these minis for the board game. I ended up doing all the versions of Mega Man himself, also the minis for Doctor Light, Roll, Rush, Met Minion, and Yellow Devil, I'll post those here eventually too.
This is a time lapse of the process of posing the figure to create the final versions. These are still in approval and refinement process, but we're nearly finished with them:
Last, here's a glimpse into more of my digital art processes, these videos show how I some times go about sculpting a basic body which later gets adjusted in proportions, clothed and posed for minis.
Those snake people will make awesome sepulchral stalkers for tomb kings if the size is right. If not...guess I'm gonna have to take a closer look at mierce miniatures.
2014/06/11 08:55:19
Subject: Re:Hec - Digital Sculptor for Kingdom Death, Relic Knights, Darklands, Megaman and more. Works Depo
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