Im probably not gonna make a bluesky or anything.
Most likely Ill stay on instagram or become an esoteric mini maker that can only be contacted through his blog around 20 years down the road when someone wants a single out of production mini and I wont respond to that email for at least 2 months.
I sort of want to talk about what has recently inspired me and what Im doing. I feel like instagram or any image sharing website (Or twitter-esque sites) dont lend themselves to the long form POWER that is The Amateur Blog. So with that being said, Ive just recently slowly drifted away from sculpting goblins, although I will knock out some sculpts I havent finished Im gonna take a break from that. Goblins are GREAT but sometimes we need some change, some breathing room. I need something different.
Ive wanted to sculpt some humands for a while so Ive sculpted a couple of chaos marauder type guys to flex this "Human Design" muscle, theyre still fairly orcish and expressive. Lots of focus on the face. Protruding brows, cheek bones, and large mouths. Something I cant really escape with my work on all fronts. Be it paper clay sculptures, greenstuff sculptures, or drawing things by hand. I suppose this is my style. Large and cartoony.
It doesnt exactly fit in when I compare it to "Oldhammer" or "Middlehammer" stuff. Theres some more fine or detailed sculpting in those models thats often overlooked I think. Between the goof theres a lot of subtle textures that I cant seem to capture. So I find comfort in the large in your face cartoonish nature of expressive faces, giant weapons, and not so realistic ratios of limbs, mid sections, etc etc. I think the biggest driving force of this for me is ever since I was a child I was a huge GWAR fan. The music is pretty good (New gwar booooo) but what really drew me in later in life was the special effects and costume work. Early on it was real chunky and cartoonish, and to a certain degree it still is! A lot of it is a bit more refined since the band has been around the block a couple of times and theyve had time to make more complex design choices and whatnot.
GWAR circa 1986 lots of repurposed football gear,
what looks like paper mache and other cheap materials to make a deranged space barbarian
Scumdogs of the Universe era GWAR around the early 90s. A bit more proffessional looking, foam rubber props, masks, and costumes.
I feel like a lot of this really shaped my taste in aesthetics and design choices when it comes to sculpting. I seem to default to chunkier excessive details. Luckily this seems to translate fairly well to miniatures especially of the type I sculpt. Orcs, goblins, chaos worshippers, thugs, ogres, trolls, all seem to benefit from this. It seems like the finer details I try to chase when sculpting dont matter compared to the bigger in your face pauldrons, spikes, giant fuck off weapons. At least it seems like people dont really care about it. I havent heard any complaints at least.
Apart from this Ive recently taken a try at game design and worldbuilding. Ive been working on an orcoid rank and flank game called "GOREMAGOG" as well as a skirmish offshoot focusing on bile magic titled "BILEBOG" You can see my naming conventions probably share a clunky cartoonish crudeness with everything else I make.
Goremagog cover art comissioned
from @Albucarcass on instagram, worth a follow if you like this. His work is astounding.
The experience of working on Goremagog has been very fun. Its been quite an experienc thats for sure. After inititally feverishly writing it and attempting to play it Ive realized that its completely broken and nothing works. Currently still working on fixing this but initially, that realization that all I had worked on didnt work sort of sucked. However with rushing it I wouldnt have been able to gain any flavor or flair that would have made this game "mine". Over days of writing and editing I slowly became more comfortable with it but since then I havent touched it and started a new game. Ill return to it and hopefully finish it when I find more inspiration, more drive. Theres no use working on it when I dont want to, it doesnt make sense to do that. I want this to be fun.
With this boredom came the creation of "Bilebog" which again, feverish writing and then a broken game. However I got to playtest it last saturday with a friend. I honestly enjoyed this more than writing the game itself. Being able to have a friend work through this proccess with you makes it much easier. An obvious realization for sure but not everything is so blatant upon first trying.
But besides writing the games Ive neglected world building. You can get a sense with item names, spell descriptions, but apart from that there is ZERO substance. Is it necessary? Plenty of games dont have much world building and they seem to be doing fine. I would like to but I suppose well see how it turns out. I can write rules, items, weapons, magic, unit types, but as soon as I sit down to write what the world consists of, its history, I draw a blank. Annoying, for sure, but sooner or later my brain will crap something out. Ill probably look to gwar for an answer or some other grody media.
If you got this far, thanks for reading my ramblings.
Where do you tend to find inspiration? What do you look for?
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