Today I thought I’d take you through our process of creating a miniature, using Scaverous to illustrate some of the steps. Let’s be honest: good models start with good concepting, and that takes a whole other process all its own. Once the concept is in place, though, my team can figure out the rest.

The first step is finding a sculptor. For Scaverous, we needed someone able to handle something complex—this was one demanding project. Once the sculptor is on board and familiar with the concept, he begins making the intermediate parts. These are pieces of the miniature that are symmetrical or used multiple times, like sections of the legs, arms, and armor plates. Half of the Scaverous mini was sculpted in little parts. The legs and arms alone had seven parts total. The skulls within the chest cage were also separate parts (of course, these are just the sculpted parts we use to make the casting, not the parts for the final model). After the intermediate parts are sculpted we make castings of them to ensure the multiples match each other perfectly. This stage can be difficult due to the isolated parts being hard to judge for size and fit.

Once the sculptor has all the intermediate parts, he will build the model from them and sculpt all the remaining areas. There is a lot of back-and-forth getting the pose right and making sure the parts fit correctly. Are the knees bent enough? Are the mid-section arm parts too long? Sometimes we need to modify the parts here and there. For instance, on Scaverous we needed to add a rotation cuff at the wrists in order to get the scythe into the position we wanted. This stage is the hardest of them all and can be stressful for everyone. Perseverance takes control, and we work it out until we have a fantastic miniature we are all proud of.

After the sculpt is done and all the parts are assembled, we work out any posing and positioning kinks. We then finalize the model by making any needed modifications for casting.

Really, time and skill is the magic. The sculptor spends countless hours working on creating and shaping the miniature, with the rest of us jumping in to direct and support its development.