First sculpt attempt: Razorwing flock

Ok, so this is going to be a very slow burner. Hopefully a project I can pick up and put down, but if I share it on here it might give me the incentive to keep going with it.

I am not really convinced by the standard razorwing flocks, and the price of them was the final straw that tipped me off considering buying them. Unfortunately for me I really like the rules, so having looked around for other possibilities, and not really feeling inspired by the available options, I've decided I'm going to have a go myself.

This (and a few other similar pics) are what I'm using to start from.. I'll be exaggerating the wings slightly, and going for more of a jump and glide anatomy than a full flying creature.



The aim is 3 to a base, below is a pic or two of the first stages of the sculpt.





If there is anyone out there with any experience who fancies dropping me some hints that'd be great.
I've read/watched a few tutorials, and played about with putty before, but this is pushing the limits of my knowledge.

Hope this is of interest to someone!

Great idea, I will be watching this closely. Good on you for trying it.

It's really quite small, my abilities were tested when I sculpted an entire mycetic spore pod, which was huge and way less detailed, so I am probably not the best to help

Cheers!
Yea, the scale is really going to play havoc with me when I come to do the feathered bits. Think I'll work on a few skeleton poses first and hope I get my eye in that way...

I find the guy too big, rather than going bigger, I'd go smaller with the flocks. Good luck with the sculpting, can't give you any advice rather than, I hope you're using the right tools. Toothpick thin modelling knife are the minimum.

it takes practise mainly to sculpt.

My worry, if they were smaller, would be that they'd end up looking distinctly unscary. Besides that though I don't think my technique is good enough yet to tackle detail on anything smaller..
As for tools, so far I've used a couple of silicone clay shapers, a few needle awls and an assortment of scalpel blades. Anything else I need I can probably scrounge or make..

Hopefully doing four bases worth of these will be the practice I need to advance.

As a further note on the design, I've been thinking about mouth parts;
The fluff for razorwings says that they strip the flesh and eat the bone. I'm trying to decide what ossivorous mouth parts might look like. I was tempted to do something sort of like a split lower jaw with a beaky feel on top, the idea being that they use the lower twin mandibles to grind the bone against the harder bone/beak on top in order to swallow it.. but maybe that would be better upside down. (This was one of my biggest problems with the birdy gw razorwings; how is that beak supposed to eat bone?)

Thank you for the comments so far. I'm off camping for the bank holiday weekend, but will try and drop an update by mid next week. Have some alternate poses in mind...

My advice if you're working in a soft after cured modeling clay (like green stuff), rough detail the thing before curing, and do this a little larger then final envisioned product. Post cure when the object is harder using an exact knife/razor blades trim down and add finer detail with subtractive sculpting.

They would have very big powerful beaks with strong jaws. Think a birdy hyena.

(Im trying to think if there is a RL bird that eats bone...)

Nice work, Olleta! I like this idea!

Quote :

(Im trying to think if there is a RL bird that eats bone...)

The Bearded Vulture consumes bone marrow by cracking open the bones of its prey, but I don't know of a bird that consumes the actual bones.

Tengu wrote:

(Im trying to think if there is a RL bird that eats bone...)

Owls do, although they don't really digest them.

That's what I was thinking, they don't eat bones, (though they may swallow small ones) but they do crack them open to eat the marrow.

(the best part of the animal IMHO)

A bird for every niche, eh?

And its got a pretty colour scheme