Strangers With Hobbies

June 28, 2008

A Beginner’s Intro To Maquette Sculptures Construction

Filed under: sculpture — Tags: 3D, animation, art, characters, maquette, models, painting, photoshop, plastic, sculpture — Zeon @ 8:14 pm

The goal of maquette construction is to duplicate design drawings, in this case character designs in a 3 dimensional form, for a variety of uses. They can be helpful in creating and casting your own model kits, maintaining design integrity on projects involving characters or design elements drawn by multiple artists. Alternatively, they can be constructed and displayed as a work of art -one of your drawings having come to life as a 3D scale model.

Maquette construction is typically relegated to the animation industry, but model builders and sculptors can also appreciate how cool it is to construct a 3D sculpture from a drawing. The more intricate the drawing, the more impressive the maquette. Character design elements typically employed in the animation industry -simplicity of design and smooth, clean lines- don’t always translate into a cool sculpture.

For those of us sculpting and constructing for our own pleasure, rather than for a living, I suggest you “go for the gold” in terms of design complexity and flashiness. When elements presented seem impossible, there is nothing more satisfying than figuring out how to make it possible in your sculpture. In doing so, you will learn ways to construct and sculpt even more difficult and grandiose maquette sculptures. From background buildings and effects to characters in action poses to scenes involving multiple characters, maquette sculpting involves letting your imagination come to life. And it all begins with a strong drawing.

To start out, you will want to find a picture featuring, hopefully, at least the front and back of the design/character/scene. If there is only a front shot, I suggest finding another drawing -unless you are experienced enough to model on the fly (without drawings), or sketch out the other side, which requires keeping the drawing to the same scale as the original.

I suggest that you try to keep your first sculptures to the size of a sheet of printer paper (8.5×11 inches), so that you can use computer programs such as Photoshop or MS Paint to scale the drawing up or down as needed. This also helps in the initial stages of skeleton construction, and gives you a good reference to consult if you want to add accessories or other elements to the sculpted scene.

Using Photoshop to size the drawings/images is made much easier by working from a standard size, and you can also use the program to resize various drawings to preserve scale integrity. This way, you can sketch the various sides of the sculpture in any size and print them out on the same scale. This process of printing to scale will tighten up your sculptures quite a bit, and will give you a solid foundation to work from.

Another good thing to do when starting out is to think of the design/drawing in terms of its basic shapes, and where weight will lie in the construction. Very top heavy designs aren’t going to work unless the weight is made up of multiple, thinner shapes rather than large, bulky shapes, because the weight of the sculpting material will cause the sculpture to droop. If this weight imbalance is a must, either in terms of design concept or the sheer density of the sculpture, then splints/rods will have to be installed in order to prop up various segments and support the overall inte

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