Witcher 3 Chort "Taxidermy" Sculpt Work in Progress

Ikkalebob · Jan 3, 2016

Hi,
I am currently making roughly 1:1.5 scale head of a Chort from the game The Witcher 3. The base is layered polystyrene which was cut out based on the in-game model which I extracted and sliced up in Blender, then covered with aluminium foil and papier mâché. I plan to sculpt the very fine details in air-drying clay.

The horns are made of expanding foam which was a nightmare to squirt on to the wire base, but very easy to slice through. The eyes in the pictures are just place-holders and the final ones will be cast and painted domes with smaller domes cast over them in clear resin. The pictures make it look quite small, but in fact the horns are about 140cm/55in end to end

My main dilemma at this stage is how to strengthen the horns because when I come to sculpt the fine details and texture over the top of the foam, I suspect that the clay will break off if the base isn't made much stiffer - I thought perhaps I would put fibreglass over the foam. I would like to cast it but I could never afford that much silicone.

Thanks for reading, check back for updates!

ultraman · Jan 4, 2016

looking good!

did you put a wire support on the inside of the horns?!??!

i think fiber glassing would work or brushing on a plastic resin like smooth cast 300.

LostSoul · Jan 5, 2016

I love the horns so far. This may be a terrible Idea but there is a product called Fiber Fix. Its essentially a tape with water activated resin already on it, just dip it in water, wrap the horns and let it harden without all the mess trying to fiberglass them or brushing on resin.

ultraman · Jan 6, 2016

wow that is an interesting idea...i'd like to see how something like that turned out!
sounds like it could be used in other applications as well. thanks for posting!

LostSoul said:
I love the horns so far. This may be a terrible Idea but there is a product called Fiber Fix. Its essentially a tape with water activated resin already on it, just dip it in water, wrap the horns and let it harden without all the mess trying to fiberglass them or brushing on resin.

Ikkalebob · Jan 6, 2016

ultraman said:
looking good!
did you put a wire support on the inside of the horns?!??!
i think fiber glassing would work or brushing on a plastic resin like smooth cast 300.

Cheers! I did make it with a wire support but in hindsight I should have twisted a few together or something.

LostSoul said:
I love the horns so far. This may be a terrible Idea but there is a product called Fiber Fix. Its essentially a tape with water activated resin already on it, just dip it in water, wrap the horns and let it harden without all the mess trying to fiberglass them or brushing on resin.

I like the idea, I'll probably buy some to test it out but I think I'll stick with fibreglass for now just because I have plenty already and I have some experience with it, thanks for the idea though.

Had a bit of a disaster with the papier mâché, part of the lower jaw broke away but its probably for the best because I thought I'd built it up too much anyway. I've gotten the horns much closer to how I'd like them by trimming away bits and reattaching some foam off-cuttings (I don't like waste!). The horns are a lot stiffer now I've adjusted them but I'll still be giving them a good layer of coarse fibreglass. Casted the bases for the eyes and started painting them, still need to do the details, goat's eyes seem to have quite a subtle iris pattern so its been difficult to get them how I'd like them, I think I will cut a channel for the pupil so it looks more realistic when I cast the dome over them. Also I'm not sure if the blood vessels will be visible at all, but they are made of red cotton string. I test fitted the eyes and feel like they're not quite right in the picture below.

Ikkalebob · Jan 22, 2016

Started sculpting, and did the nose first because I figured that if it went wrong it would be easy to pull off and re-do.

I can't sculpt everything at once because of the scale so I'm doing any prominent features first so I have a reference for the wrinkles of the flesh in between. This included the ears, mouth and the eyes once I have them cast - our boiler has packed in in the dead of winter so the 24-hour cure time is more like 72 hours unfortunately.

After the nose I sculpted the entire mouth up to the lips. I'm not totally happy with the skin texture but there will be an opportunity for me to go back and rework them. The teeth were made from a mix of equal parts super sculpey, fimo translucent and fimo vanilla, it's extremely strong. I polished the teeth on a bench grinder (with polishing mop of course) rather than glaze them, and I'm happy with the result. I actually let go of one of the most fragile teeth and the mop hurled it into the concrete floor, it bounced and hit the ceiling but was still unscathed - I'm very surprised at the strength because I've always thought of polymer clay as quite brittle.

I plan to do the horns last since they obstruct a lot of the head, so the next step is to sculpt the eyes.

The Schlitzie · Jan 22, 2016

Man, that's gonna look good!

Ikkalebob · Mar 27, 2016

Finished sculpting other than a few details I need to fix.
Overall I'm quite happy with the way it's gone, it looks better than I expected yet not quite as good as I had hoped it might. I'm an inexperienced sculptor so I realise at this point I could be forever going back and reworking certain parts since I've learned so much with a project this large. There are definitely areas where the textures aren't as convincing as I'd have liked but the DAS really shows up the detail in an odd way especially when its partially dry like in the pictures, so when it's been fully painted it should look much more realistic. I also have a lot more experience painting than I do sculpting so hopefully I'll do a good job!

Again, the pictures make it look tiny, but when you see it in real life it seems to take up the entire room.

ultraman · Mar 27, 2016

i was wondering if this was still going!

it's coming out very nice.

are your eyes already glued in?!!?? i wonder what it would look like if you turned the pupils to be vertical instead of horizontal..it would give it a creepy goat like feel.
or you could toy around with it and do the two on the out side one way and the one in the middle the other.

Ikkalebob · Mar 28, 2016

Cheers, yeah the eyes are stuck now but it would have been interesting to see how they'd look with the standard vertical slit. I do like the way they are on the original design though, I think its quite unique.

Ikkalebob · Apr 10, 2016

Largely finished now, few adjustments like I think the teeth need a bit better weathering and mohair beard.

The photo uploader is giving me grief tonight so I'll try to upload some more photos when I can, in any case I'm really happy with how the paintjob turned out, took me a long time to get the flesh tones to a colour I was happy with and I think its worked out well.

ultraman · Apr 10, 2016

awesome! :devil

Ikkalebob · Apr 11, 2016

More pictures as promised:

The Schlitzie · Apr 11, 2016

Man, that's an amazing paint job! That looks pretty incredible.

Witcher 3 Chort "Taxidermy" Sculpt Work in Progress

Ikkalebob

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ultraman

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LostSoul

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Ikkalebob

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Ikkalebob

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The Schlitzie

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Ikkalebob

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