Tutorial: Making your own figures - Preforming

Hi, Josh here.

Sculpting anime figures is a fun and satisfying experience for me. Many times I hear from my peers how they would like to be as "talented" as me to produce a piece or two they would like to have of a character they like which might or not have a commercial figure available for purchase.

Nevertheless, as with many things, I think talent just plays like 10% of being able to make your figures; the remaining being in the lines of 20% research, 20% interest, 20% dedication (i.e. trial and error), 20% patience and 10% money.

One of the first things I hear people want to know about is the proportions and how to get them right. I have no doubt people understand proportions better than others, and they will be able to come up with the right ones by just going with the flow from the start by getting a small section done and they grow the other ones attached to it and so.

However, I'm more of a "I have to see the whole body first" to get the feel it it is right or not. Just as with drawing, I usually build the "skeleton" of my subject by doing the basic shapes stuff I see many people might overlook because they would like to focus on one part first (like the face, or head) and then as they progress they realize the head is too large or too small compared to the rest or the body, or the hands or too big or small, or the legs are too long or short; especially if you want to make a specific character. This is why personally my very first step in drawing or sculpting would be to do what I like to call a "preform".

In the case of drawing, here is an example of a preform I made:

In this preform, I try to establish the size and proportion of the parts, the pose and some of the perspective (I am not well versed yet on more interesting perspective techniques). And from this general form I proceed to go into every time more and more detail to get to the final product.

And more and more detail is added, and in between I try to "correct" some things I notice in the way that feel the require a better touch. 

This is just an example of my personal paradigm that has given me the best results. In order to translate this into sculpting, I use the preform principal in order this predefined skeleton to have things started. 

So, to get started I first research a little about which is supposed to be the actual height of the character I want to do. This information might be very easily available or not available at all, so guessing or comparing with other similar character of known data is valid. Like drawing character's overall general proportions are determined by their "head count" or how many of their own heads more or less equals their overall height (it doesn't strictly need to be an integer number). So I usually assign my recent figures to either of three sizes at approximately 1/8th scale:

They are roughly divided in the 5-heads-tall (i.e. Schwi from No Game No Life), the 6-heads-tall (i.e. Black Heart from Neptune series) and the 7-heads-tall (i.e. Rias Gremory from High School DxD). With these sizes sketched, I proceed to "filled" them with basic shapes in the form of blocks and sticks made of air-drying paper clay:

 After this, I will have a silhouette type form that looks like it came out of a cookie-cutter.

After this, I just flesh out most of these forms to be more 3-Dimensional to the point that I have the preform in a neutral stance, but at least with the proportion of arms, legs, head, torso and hips more or less balanced. 

Then, I just cut wherever there's a joint, knees, elbows, waist, in order to re-position the figure in the pose I intend to, glue the parts or just put more paper clay to dry into a more solid union. You can cut again and re-position as much a you need until you feel satisfied.

 This is one of the reasons why I always recommend to "never use skeletons, unless you have no other choice". I have no doubt some people have already things figure out since the beginning, but I'm a more experimenting kind of guy, so I prefer to not have a skeleton getting in the way while posing.

 All this from here on is to flesh out more the figure and give it details. While doing so, you can cut here and there while the figure is still not so detail so you can break it into pieces to make easier the making of molds and painting different colors.

It is important to mention that, because all the cutting and sticking together and cutting again, this technique I'm presenting is more of a prototyping technique rather than the final product will be painted, it is more to produce the pieces, to make a mold of those pieces, cast, and then do the final figure (and have spares).

I'm always interested in discussing other technique people have. Please feel free to ask any question, to comment and I hope this has been of interest and help to you.