Inside The Process - Rat's thoughts

Good morning!

Today I like to talk little bit about the character designing. These are the observations that I have made during The Operation Punk Moth. Some of these thoughts have been crystalized in conversations with Kari over phone, but today I only talk about my Design philosophy and techniques.

While Kari always creates amazing artwork for his characters, and approaches his goal with very artistic painterly way (which i admire very much), my approach has always been more design orientated. I like to use more rougher style. Not trying to make eye candy but visual notes.

I am a designer with my heart and soul and with this =][= project I have tried different ways to design my characters. Let me explain:

Nicodemvs was a study to do things more GW style - I chose John Blanche's painting and designed my character based on that painting.  Fun to do, and because of the John's amazing artwork you can't simply go wrong.

Then came Borvs, who was more "hands on" style -  I wanted to carry on quickly with the project so no sketches just sculpting out of head. Im not completely happy with the result, although I did many breakthroughs with my sculpting techniques here. This way of designing things just wasn't my thing;)

With the Project Punk Moth the the character design has been somewhat problematic with both of us... We both create loads of ideas and concepts for new characters all the time, but witch characters to choose then? The warbands are quite small in the =][= game and we would like to create nice dynamics around the characters. So it is "Kill Yer Darlings" all the time. Many cool and wild concepts have been buried in the search for perfect balance and the RIGHT look.

When I started to design my third character for the warband, I imagined many crazy ideas for the character. Once again I phoned to Kari to explain my new plans (I phone Kari quite regullary;)
sometimes explaining your ideas to someone helps to clarify them. Sometimes Kari has something to ad there, sometimes he just advices to carry on. Somewhere between these phone calls and sketching an idea about Siamese Twins appeared.

This time I wanted to use Sketching in the designing process so I created number of sketches studying the pose and the details. After trying out different methods with the earlier characters I noticed, that sketching really is the best way for me to design my stuff. When I draw, I don't try to get the final look, I just try draw cool sketch. The final look of the miniature is created in the sculpting process - just like Jes Goodwin once said Miniature Is The King!

What Im trying to (clumsily) explain here is that feel free to try out different methods to create your miniatures or conversions. Don't restrict your self to just to kit bashing. Try out something that you have never tried before. This way you may even surprise yourself with the result ;)

Here they are.  Conjoined twins that both seek the enemies of the humanity to destroy them with very varying techniques! The III member will be the loose cannon of this warband. The twins are constantly battling for the full control of the body to execute their plans. The other twin is strong guy who wants to crush his enemies in fierce melee, while the other twin is weaker and seeks to snipe the enemy with a sniper rifle. So the theme will be inner battle.

Im quite sure that they have some connection to Mars and to the Adeptus Mechanicus. Maybe some secret experiment of some sort, only the Machine God knows I guess.