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King of the hillgiant! An instagram competition from october 2023 to make a hill giant. By hillgiant[link to insta], a collaboration of white tiger tablecraft[link to his insta] and big boy gametime[link to his insta] for their game cauldron. But to really explain the concept for this sculpt we need to move back to my first post on instagram.
The Simpso-Sheild slam! A competition in September 2023 by In Rust We Trust [insta], Big Boy Gametime [insta], and the titular SimpsoMiniatures [insta]. The challenge was to sculpt a face on a shield, so I figured why not sculpt as many faces as I can. Though that would look quite chaotic, I should merge these faces into one face.
So with that shield sculpted, I came up with a befitting hillgiant to wield it. Inspired by the hecatoncheires of Greek myth, creatures of a hundred heads and a hundred hands or so, though with the same concept of a face within a face. This concept is loosely related to the artist Giuseppe Achrimboldo who painted piles of vegetables which look like faces from a distance.
I started to sculpt my hillgiant in super sculpey. An oven bake clay and the same medium I used for the shield. Then once baked I refined details with green stuff, a two part epoxy putty.
I then made a mold of the body, arms, and shield in silicone. The mold was a mess because I put the arms too close to each other and I mixed some old silicone chunks to bulk out the mold that were actually a different type of silicone. So the whole mold was falling apart as I was using it. I only got one usable cast of the arms and the left hand didn’t cast correctly so I had to use a loose cast of a hand I happened to have. Then cast a few copies in resin. The casts turned out pretty rough but with a ton of sculpting later it looked alright. I had not done much casting at this point so I didn’t know how terrible it would be to cast this many little details without any equipment. Lots of little air bubbles all over the little noses and teeth. It was a real pain in the ass but I learned a lot about molding and casting with this project.
I'm quite proud of the final result, I think that I could do much better sculpting now but the concept is cool and I was even a finalist in the competition.