The greatest plot element in Skyrim, is the Empires forced decision to remove the Divine Talos from is pantheon of worship. Previously, he had been included in what was called The Nine Divines, with the Divines serving as gods. Talos was one of the only ones (well, officially anyways), that was a mortal man made into a god. With a war that broke out, and the treaty that followed, the Empire abolished his worship, and his idols. Found through out the game however, are Amulets of the Divines, even those of  Talos.

This piece is based directly from the game. Establishing it’s scale was a little hard though, as the games ‘human’ models are slightly idealized, but I was able to establish a general size for the piece.

I again chose to use Castilene for this one, and it was put on a simple cross shaped wire armature. In hindsight, I probably should have made the armature attach to a baseboard, as in the process of sculpting, I would have to hold it in my hand, and my own body heat would slowly soften the wax (as it is intended to do), and could occasionally diminish any previously sculpted details. Despite that, I was able to get the sculpt to a point where I felt it was close to the game model, and moved on to molding. I used the over so sophisticated method of blocking out the mold walls with Lego blocks, and poured a simple two part mold.

Here in the photos of the first casting, you can see that I had decided to add some pour spouts off of the tips of the ax and leading into a pouring channel off of the crossbeam. Doing this allowed that any trapped air would not get held up in important places, and resin could easily reach all the areas of the mold without too much trouble.

Below is a photo to show the scale, as just showing my hand doesn’t exactly help!

Some of my other work is available at my Etsy shop!

Using a test cast of the initial sculpture, I built up the design around it. The other dilemma was the tentacles. Suction cups, or no suction cups? After a few tests with them, and with them in only specific places, I decided on without.

The next step is molding, and then casting!

And here are the results!

Three copies are available at my Etsy Store!

http://www.etsy.com/people/allanh143

It has since been molded in silicone and did a few tests pulls, I’m very pleased with the result.

I plan on doing a few experiments with mixing in some nickle powder I purchased a few months ago, to get a few cold cast metal pulls as well.

I have also started my next piece for TEV: Skyrim, the Amulet of Zenithar. It’s a fairly simple design, but I rather like it. Here is a shot at the beginning of the process. Like the Sigil, I used styrene sheets cut and glued together to get the desired thickness, and the outlines shown were eventually cut out with a simple lino-printing cutter.

These are available at my Etsy store!

Enjoy!

One of the most common images in the game, with the involvement of dragons, is the symbol of the Divine God, Akatosh, which also doubles as the symbol of the Empire. The games main screen also shows this image:

My first step was figuring out a size I wanted to work with. After scaling the above image, and doing some quick sketches and measurements, I settled on 2.75″ for each side of the diamond shape. I then cut out a rough rectangle in thick white styrene board (I don’t remember the thickness, as the sheet was bought months ago), then penciled down the layout after figuring out the angles of each side. After that, I did some experimentation on the thickness of a boarder, as I wanted this to look like an amulet, or some form of badge of office or worship. I then cut those sides out in styrene, then super glued them to the diamond.

I sealed up the gaps from the borders and the base using epoxy filler, and then sanded them smooth. I started drawing down the image of Akatosh on the inside, which took alot more time than I thought, as well as some experimentation. I had originally decided to make the same version seen in the loading screens, but wanted to work on a version without the damage, and may make an alternate one with the dents, chips and scratches later on.

I used a sculpting wax called Castilene (available here), which can be very tough working with at first. It requires heat to be pliable, depending on it s firmness. Soft can be heated with heat from your hands, and medium and hard need heat from either lamps, heat guns, or like myself, a small crock pot. It can be heated into a liquid state, and then poured.

For this, I used a medium strength Castilene, and found it to be perfect for this piece. I would heat it up, work with it for abit, and allow it to cool to get harder edges. You can even freeze it to allow for carving in details, and even sanding.

Overall, the sculpting only took a few days, but there was alot of up’s and downs in having to correct some alterations, and working on finer details. I was incredibly pleased with the end result, and the choice of materials for this project. I’ve made a simple block mold of this in silicone, and will be making some test pulls later in the week.

Enjoy, and happy hunting in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim! Watch out for Dragons!

These are available at my Etsy store!

Lately I have been playing around a few ideas for pieces with mythological figures, one of them being Medusa.

I made a quick maquette  of what I have envision for one piece, though it’s missing a few things. She’ll be help up by a  hand, as well as having her hallmark snakes.

I sculpted the original with Sculpey, and worked tirelessly trying to get the likeness just right, as well as adding in as many subtle details as I could. Then I made a simple two-part block mold, made a few casts, and did some paint test. The best out of all of them is what you see here.

I thought the sculpt came out well, but due to it having been done during the summer, I had left out in the open one hot weekend, and it dried up and fell apart.

Thankfully, I took quite a few photos before that dreaded weekend, and here they are!

I hope to venture into doing more hero cowls and masks like Batman or Wolverine, and many others.

Here are a few more shots of pieces shown in an earlier post.