Once you have gotten familiar with the general procedure of making a miniature and you have made several six inch ones it is time for you to bring the scale down and make some three inch miniatures. This is 1/24th scale. It takes a six foot humanoid and translates it to three inches. We can't use any old clay for this. Now we have to use something that will give us a reasonable amount of detail and I use Super Sculpey firm for this. It holds detail well and is easy to work with.

Super Sculpey FIRM Gray- One PoundThis is an excellent product that you can use to make terrific miniatures. It is easy to work with and holds its shape well. This isn't the final product I use in my tutorial. It is a great product to practice with and still get great detail.

Here is the miniature we make in this tutorial. It is a barbarian with a very big two-handed sword. You can see by the picture that we are able to get a lot more detail out of this super sculpey. And this picture is not of the completed mini. There is still more work and more detail to be done to it. But this picture gives you an idea of what you can do.

This is part 5 of the tutorial. In this part we decrease in size to a three inch miniature and we use super sculpey as our clay. We get a lot more detail now and we learn some important aspects of sculpting miniatures.

How to Do it

Cut yourself off some small pieces of super sculpey (or the clay you are using) and knead it very thoroughly so it is soft and workable.

Now build up the general shape of the miniature by applying a liberal amount of clay. Just get a general sense of the shape and musculature of the mini. This step is important because you want to improve your ability to visualize. When you start out in a general shape like this you will be able to keep working it down to more and more detail.

Remember the rule of eight. A body is about eight heads in height.

Now we get into some real work here! Use your tools to start to actually sculpt away at the figure. You can slice with an X acto knife , push, form, mold, scrape and add more clay as needed. The important thing is that you refer to your drawing and keep working the clay so it gets more and more detailed and more and more life like. If you need some tools, dental picks work great. I have a selection of sculpting tools in my miniature sculpting tools and supplies store (all amazon.com)

Generally, the best thing for you to do at this point is to sculpt the figure nude. And when you have all the musculature done you can go ahead and add clothes and jewelry etc. It is method of layering and it is what you will do with the smallest of miniatures.

This part of the tutorial is broken up into two videos. The first video shows you how to make the armature and how to apply the clay in bulk form. The second video shows you how to do all the detail work.

Continue with tutorial in part 6 where we Make a 3 inch miniature Viking Warrior

How to create realistic miniature chainmail armor

Here is a quick and easy way to make great looking chainmail. I make it for a knight's suit of armor. Comes out great: Make miniature chainmail