Chapter 6 - GORGONS AND VAMPIRES: Medusa and Branduff

In this chapter we kill two birds with one stone; we show how to make two different characters using the same beginning. The Gorgon, the mythical female monster who had snakes for a hair, turns out to have a lot in common with the Vampire Branduff.

Chapter 5 - MERMAIDS: Jambalini

In this chapter we show how to make half-fish, half - hold your breath - female character. A.k.a. Siren, Sea Maid etc. The reason why you had to hold your breath is that if you are already familiar with the type of character that Boris and I typically make, you will have probably noticed already that we tend to make clumsy trolls and goblins rather than delicate and effeminate forest and sea beings. And so we do not make female characters very often.

We show how to make the upper body of a girl and the tails of a fish, in such a way that the tail and fin look like the dress and feet of the character. In the variations we take this concept one step further and make a mermaid with a more sophisticated dress. We really wanted to make a Merman too, bit skipped that part for some reason. You can make your own mer-dudes by using the torso portion of the Centaur (half-man, half horse creature) lesson, in one of the following chapters and the fish part from the mermaid character. You can make all kinds of mer-things for that matter. I personally wanted to make a Mer-Miaou character at some point, but you've gotta draw a line somewhere eventually... Don't let me stop you though.

Another thing you can do, and I think I have seen a drawing like that somewhere, is to make a sort of inverted mermaid - the head of a fish, with the sulk and the bulging eyes, and the legs of a human. A visual pun of sorts. Applied to the centaur project, and I will sure mention it again when i get to it, this line of thought gives a human body and the head of a horse - which, if you think about it is one step away from making a Minotaur - the famous mythical monster in the Labyrinth, with the human body and the bull's head. To make a bull's head make the ears, lips and nostrils of the horse's head (that you will learn how to make in the Unicorn project).

Chapter 3 - HALFLINGS: Mr. Gladden

In this chapter we show how to make a hobbit character, although we never use the word "hobbit" itself in the book, because it was the name of a race of creatures in the Lord of the Rings invented by Tolkien, so we didn't want to infringe copyright. We used "halfling" in the end, instead of hobbit, because our legal department is too busy just now. :) Anyway, hobbit or not, it was made to look like one, as you will recognize.

Again we build on the previous projects - a slighly more sophisticated face (and I don't mean that in the sense of "refined"), standing on two legs (two armature bits) etc. Based on the same design any human character can be built, if you vary the proportions a little.

Chapter 2 -PIXIES: Brice the Pixie

In the second chapter of the book we show how to make a pixie. This project is tailored to beginners as well, and is intended to upgrade a notch the skills practices with the gnome. We show one way of making a slightly more sophisticated face and introduce the basic building block of wire armature to make some upstanding creatures. If you are into mythical creatures, you have probably seen over a dozen different images of what artist thought pixies should look like. That's just the thing - it has been so long since anybody last saw one that few people remember what they look like exactly. The general consensus seems to be that they are blue in color, so based on that we show how to make a pixie looking the way we think ought to look. We called it Brice.

Project 1 - GNOMES: Rollieball Dropletson

Starting today we will do an extensive sneak-peek/ preview of all the project characters in our latest book Sculpting Mythical Creatures out of Polymer Clay. We start small, by showing how to make a gnome character – Rollieball Dropletson. Boris designed this character as an introductory project that requires very little prior skill or experience with clay, and next to no tools. You really need to know only two things – how to roll a ball, and how to make a rain-drop shape (also derivative of the simple ball). The idea is to make it comfortable for beginners to practise how to combine simple shapes to produce complex-looking results. At the end of the project we show several variation ideas and tips on how to make different gnome characters by varying facial hair.