carontearts

A Step-by-Step Adventure: Creating a Sculpted Bust for Darkgem

Added 2025-02-02 17:01:16 +0000 UTC

Hey there! Here’s a little adventure, a step by step of the sculpted bust I did for Darkgem as a Christmas present. I’ve bought a 3D printer recently and that’s thanks to your support, I’ve been wanting to do something like this for a while, make you see the fruits of your support, because it is really this important and it does make me be able to keep doing what I do and even in better conditions than before.

The sculpting process, printing and detailing was done in two weeks. I had to get it done before mid December!

STAGE ONE: SCULPTING

I began with the body of Blau I did before but introducing tweaks and different proportions to match Icarus’ body. My goal was to get the face of Icarus right, since, sculpting makes your brain work differently, it’s no longer two dimensions. 3D seems to take a lot of sculpting, stop and go. You have to constantly check proportions and the look of shapes from different angles.

The same way it happens in art, it’s a process that goes from less detail to more, shapes first, then details. In this stage I worked on the details that make Icarus to be Icarus. The sona is very well designed, so even if there are many and different elements, all of them together make him to stand out. I really liked working on the metal shapes on his back, it really adds to him.

Then, even if it isn’t needed for printing, I decided to paint the model, which actually helped me to double check if proportions and shapes were right, and luckily for me, everything seemed correct!

STAGE TWO: GETTING IT READY FOR PRINTING

Frankly it was my second sculpt done and the first to print in this size, so I felt super anxious but brave enough to push forward.

One thing I was really concerned was the amount of polygons and the quality of the mesh, since I know little about optimising models like this, I thought it was gonna be a problem but luckily Cura did a great job chewing all that data.

The thing about 3D printing is that you get so many parameters to control, printing speed, layer height, type of support, type of filament, etc. And being new to this world, it was overwhelming. I had some help but ultimately, it was a trial and error to find the right settings.

STAGE THREE: PRINTING & CLEANING

It took a couple of attempts to get the model to work, I had two failures after 2 - 3 hours of printing and the deadline to get it fully printed was coming closer and closer. When a print takes 15 hours to make you haven’t much room for mistakes, it has to work.

In the third attempt the dragon was successfully printed, and I was actually impressed. I’m used to draw big boys but to see and feel one in your hands, even if this one is a bit less than 15 cm tall? It’s amazing! It has a lot of value as an artist to see those volumes IRL.

To print figures like this, you need to add supports and they sometimes get a bit hard to remove but despite my limited knowledge I think I did a good job! Finally, I got to polish the model with a carving tool I bought, I had to test different RPMs and stuff to get it done. It’s a bit too technical but I managed <3

STAGE FOUR: GIVE THE BOI

Just in time before my trip, I put the printed bust on my luggage and prayed for it to arrive intact, which it did! I couldn’t wait until Christmas so I pulled it out of my luggage and gave it to Darkgem, I was very very happy to see this all coming to an end and to see the look of him when he was holding the meaty boi in his hands.