Sculpting Aliens From The Book I'm Writing (PART 1)

Today I decided to do a bit of sculpting and this abomination below is the "finished" piece. I decided to put inverted commas around the word finished because there's no doubt that I'll end up going back to it to add a few bits and pieces here and there.

I decided to take pictures as I went, to document the process of making it.

Getting Started
Going into this one today I had no idea what I was going to make, but I did have an idea to create something from the stories I'm writing. The novel is a sci-fi one, set in a world that I've been building for a while.

In my mind, I have a ton of different aliens created, but no references to look at them.

I have histories written, and worlds imagined, but I've wanted to draw them so I can really get an idea of what they look like. Since I'm not a good artist, the best way of getting ideas out, for me, is through sculpting.

I'm not that good of a sculptor either, but I am better at it than I am at drawing. Nevertheless, if anyone with more experience than me reads through this and sees anything I've missed or has any advice that may help me, let me know.

Here's what I use, these tools are pretty cool, and they were pretty cheap, I picked them up on Amazon for around a tenner.

Here's the clay I use. It's called Super Sculpey and also pretty cheap, I think this was around fifteen or twenty euros. I find it easy to use as it is pretty malleable once heated, but when it goes cold it gets really firm, so I find it easy to add details to the piece without it being ruined.

I start off by rolling some tinfoil into a ball, which is some advice I got from my uncle when I first got into making these kinds of models. Before, I would just use a ball of clay, which would always lose its shape the more I worked on it.

With the tinfoil, I'm able to save clay too.

The first thing I do is cover the tinfoil in layers of clay. I go one piece at a time until it's completely covered, it's easier doing it piece by piece as I'm able to join it altogether easier.

With the ball completely covered it looks like this, there is no real shape, but one side did seem more face-like so I chose that to work on.

With the face identified, then it's time to work on some of the structure of the piece. I usually start with a jawline.

When I first started out modeling I would look at the ball of clay while feeling my own face. The muscles, cartilage, and skeletal structure that makes it up... I probably looked a bit mad, haha opening and closing my mouth feeling for the moving parts.

With the strips in place, it's time to start blending.

By this stage, it's taken shape, a basic shape. But, it's enough to get the mind working.

I decided that I wanted to jawline to be a bit more pronounced so decided to layer it up.

That's the second most important thing I learned from sculpting - it's all about the layers.

I decided to carve some lines to get a rough idea of where everything was going to go. I.E, nose, eyes, ears, mouth.

Okay, I didn't document between these pictures and the last, because I got into the zone once I worked out the mouth and nose.

For the mouth, I had this idea. I thought it would be cool if this creature only moved its top lip, kind of the opposite of a human in a way. The lower jaw would be immovable, while the top one is on an arch. Then I kind of had this idea that the top lip could be like a beak or bill.

As for the nose, I thought I wanted something a bit bulbous, kind of like a blobfish.

By this stage, I wanted to put the eyes in place, so I rolled out two balls roughly the same size and put them in place.

I started thinking by now that it looked kind of like a frog, which gave me an idea.

I decided I would try something different for the eyes, to change it up a bit.

I've never done eyes like this before, but it's an alien, so why not?

This picture looks like it's looking at a strip of clay.

When doing eyelids I roll and flatten a strip to layer over the eyeballs, it's better than trying to carve them out of the balls themselves.

Killlll meeee

lol, sometimes I feel sorry for these things I make, especially before they're finished.

One eye down, one to go.

I put one strip over the top, blended that in, and then put the other one underneath.

I decided to make a small bust for this one.

I wrapped some wire around, cut to size, and got some more tinfoil ready for it.

There we go, he almost has a home.

I do want to get into making full-body sculptors, but for the sake of today's one, I decided to just go with a bust.

Same as before, I just layered some clay over the tinfoil to build it up gradually.

With that done, I decided to put some detailing on the jacket.

Creases are easy to give some texture to the piece. Just roll out and place some strips down and blend them in.

There we go, he is just about finished. I did have a few ideas to add to the piece but decided to give it a break for now.

Conclusion
I'm happy with how it turned out. I actually haven't described something like this in the books, but definitely think there would be a place for it in there.

If anyone thinks of a name for this race throw them out.

One thing I would change doing it again is - I'd put some wiring into the eyes before attaching them, also, I would maybe detail them before attaching them to the face.

All in all, it looks pretty interesting and I'm delighted with how it turned out. This is the first sculptor I've done in a while, so during this, I was almost relearning a few things.

I think sculpting creatures from the book is much better than drawing them, I like being able to have a fully 3D version of them, and while making this I had an idea for a new story to write.