From the Mind of a Master: Reposing Arms
Today we have a special guest article from master sculptor and painter, Obadiah (Nehemiah on ITS), where he walks us through the process of reposing a models arm.
With the release of the Japanese Secessionist Army I knew I would want to run more than one Ninja from time to time, but as there would not be a new ninja sculpt for some time I decided to convert up another Red Veil Ninja to use when I am not running the KHD profile.
When I looked at the sculpt I thought it would be easiest to bend the right arm and swap the tactical bow for a katana, creating the overall look that she is jumping down while brandishing her weapon. I know there are at least a few new JSA players, and while this is not a major conversion, I thought it could be helpful to go over how I repositioned the arm as it has to do with using the original model’s sculpted anatomy as a guide to make the repositioning as tight as possible and avoid having to use a lot of green stuff to fill gaps. Going beyond the Red Veil Ninja, I thought this could prove useful for anyone who thought about changing the position of the arm of one of their minis.
The first step I took was to trim away the bow. I was not planning to use it for another model, so I just took some clippers to it and cleaned up the rest with a hobby knife.
The next thing I did was drill out the hand as I would be using a piece of brass rod as the foundation of the sword. I also did this before I began cutting into the arm because did not want the arm to twist in some unforeseen way or snap the weakened join.
What I love about the Red Veil Ninja are its cyber muscles which make the anatomy of the forearm clearly visible. This allowed me to use the Brachioradialis, and the Flexor Carpi, (at least those are the muscles I think they are), as guides to cut out a wedge shape between them.
Having managed to avoid cutting myself in the last step, I cut into the bottom of the Bicep muscles to create a space for the forearm to tuck into when the elbow is bent. In this and the previous step, I had to estimate how much space I would need, and figured it would be better to cut a bit more rather than cut too little and have to bend the arm multiple times test fitting which would risk weakening the elbow to the point of snapping.
After bending the arm I inserted a bit of brass rod into the hand and used it to twist the wrist slightly so she would not be stabbing herself in the face with her katana.
I think it is worth noting the final result has some minor issues, such as the Bicep is not flexed in the way in should be, and because of the twist in the wrist there is a slight curve in the muscles of the arm which do not look altogether natural. However, on the overall mini they are not really noticeable.
