You guys know Baba Yaga? She is the top sorceress of the Slav world. She is often depicted as an old lady walking in a mortar with a broom to wipe out her traces. She lives in a house with chicken legs.

When i was a kid my Godfather came one day home with a set of books, old Russian legends illustrated by Ivan Bilibin, with tons of Baba Yaga in it. But something always striked me about her, she is not that bad, and could be actually quite a fair old lady. Looking at Wikipedia, I also saw she could take the appearance of a young lady.

And then 70 years ago, Barbarossa, the German invading the land, what could she do, too much dead men for her to eat.

So here is Baba Yaga, my own version, she stands by a pool (and no she won't be eating anybody)

Here is the head. Handsome I said. And alive too

Yo Nicolas,

Whow...trilling atmosfeer here...old legends with dead man eating woman...

...and a "live" subject!

Count me in...dead or alive.

Greetz Nico

I think Nico said it very well- this is a very engaging story and a perfect head-sculpt. Can't wait to see what you get up to with this one!

Hey Nicolas, this will be another of those I must keep an eye on. Your skill is fantastic and the subjects that end up on your dio-story are allways interesting. I bought the wife a book on fairy tails and some of the pictures with the stories would make for good vignetts. Awsome looking head sculpt.

Pretty good head, you are making progress! :-)

Claude

(Quite late in answering and posting)
Thank you Nico, the dead will come soon, but they shouldn't be more visible than the living

Thanks Karl, there should be indeed a few surprises if I complete the diorama the way i want

You are pretty right about fairy tales books being a good source of inspiration. the *settings* of the images are usually tops. Thanks for the compliments for the head Bob.

Did you see that Claude? all the work begins to pay at last

Let's start the butcher job. Some brass wires first covered with some Duro/Magic Sculp so that the subsequent layer will grip on something.

Then let's tie this together with a little lump of MS. Walk baby walk..

Then let's sculpt some legs on the top of this. I shouldn't forget about the feet and hands -btw, the one pictured on this pic proved to be way too big. I had to complete the small attempt with 3 fingers more to the centre of the round pot.

Awesome thread. I will be watching this masterclass closely.
J

thanks Jerry

let's resume the sculpting - the dress is a simple thing, just one thing Duro sheet wrapped around the body.

This will be tied by a few buttons but nothing else really. The hard thing to do is -indeed- the wrapping which must be done on the whole body globally athe same time. I added a few "ripples" afterwards and corrected the odd ones.

The wrappings as done with Duro are often fantastic because the material hangs neatly over the features.

Come here little duckie..
let's add the hands and feet, fix the head, as some hair.. obviously a few trouble there with the top of the head.

Hi, Nicolas,

This is a striking story for me too.
I know that you have always made me surprising by your works.
This time, I expect you do that again. I look forward to seeing your nice work asap.

Cheers,
Seung-il

Looking good Nicolas, I think you have got the shape of the dress perfectly.

Thank you Seung-il -I definitely hope you will be surprised

Thanks as usual Karl

So well, that dress and the almost completed picture - it all sort of looks like it ends well isn't it?

She has a high forehead, but i really like her like that, she is the way I wanted her to be.



But well. No it isn't ready yet. I recently discovered that one of the main reasons I was such an appaling figure painter was because I was only painting my own production, which is usually thrown together in the last 5 mn which implies unproper for painting figures.

Why then?

Last October I had the chance to meet one great British modeller at SMC in Eindhoven. He was making a demo on Alclads. Some 2 hours later I was visiting the sellers stand while he was helping around and saw him rub something. That was the bit of plane he was making the demo of.
I asked him for how many time he was rubbing the thing and he told that he had been doing that ever since the end of the first part of the demo, "because" he said, "if you want to get a proper Alclad finish you've got to rub over and over the black gloss base until it totally shines, look at the difference!".

So that's it, that rather active man was rubbing the bloody thing for more than one hour because he wanted the thing to be perfect.

Now I can't model like that, but truth is.. well, here I am, just putting Mr Surfacer over Mr Surfacer coat on the dress and rubbing it with Tamiya 1500 grade sandpaper until -well, Baba Yaga shines..

[see on the below picture, there is obviously one problem with the wrist, mr Surfacer and "elbow oil" is going to solve that]

And now for something completely different

I need a small bridge for Baba to stand on. So here I am sculpting some light wood (not balsa, something in my box I couldn't identify)

The "feet" of the bridge are in fact made of an old brush

I had a very good reference picture on some old bridge done for fishermen, showing some very ragged planks and even a badly cut trunk being used. That bridge is the carbon copy of that one.


of course, most of the bridge's feet will be deep in the water

beautiful sculpting Nicolas, simply beautiful.

magic sculp is a wonderful medium to work with but it is not an easy texture to achieve high results with but you have mastered it very well.

look forward to seeing the next updates until its completion. cheers, bd.

Well,that brings me menories of my own occasional scratch-build figure (full or partial), It simply is never up to "normal" standards as for the finishing of the surface.
I never can get the smooth putty surface i wish for. Myself i suspect the not so clean work space and as you say, time dedicated to get it right the first place.


Didn't you do that during army time to get your shoes shiny?

So i am awaiting the end on this one, i fear this will not end well :-)

Very nice sculpting, Nicolas. Original theme, and pose too.

The only problem I see is the size of hands and feet. I know if you want to remark the feminity of the figure then it is good to slightly reduce the average masculine proportions; but "Babe" Yaga has gone too far, imho.

If I had the guts to sculpt my own figures, then I´d try to model feet and hands as long as those of a male figure (I mean in proportion, having in mind the different tallness); BUT more stylized. Simply by making the palms (of both feet and hands) narrower. And maybe it is a sexual aberration of mine, but I think it would be also quite convenient to make wrists and ankles thinner than in a male figure.

hey Bruce nice to see you and thanks. I manage some okay result since I mix MS and Duro, it sticks better and you can actually get a better finish IMHO.

Yep Claude, I also have the problem of the clean surface table. Now I try to sculpt indoors which reduces the dust and all stuff in the shed. Really, layers and layers of Mr Surfacer and "huile de coude" are really necessary to those kind of things. yes it really needs some time to do this kind of stuff, but I am ready to take it now.
Well, doing my military service, I got dumped with the guys that could barely read or identify their own hands, therefore they simply didn't notice that my shoes didn't look that good having other matters in their hands

I think you are right on all points David -and thanks for this greatly constructive comments - The trouble I had was that if you look at the top of the thread, I first did some much bigger hands but those were definitely too big and then I probably reduced those too much. But really it's not that much a problem the way I see it as in the end she mostly look like a small girl, her stature is more reduced than the ones of the guys I am currently sculpting. However there is something I feel you just have right: the ANKLES are too thick! definitely.. and perhaps the wrists too, but there is some wire going through it so I will have to be careful and probably thin it a bit as well using a Dremel.. Well thanks much you left me to think


Well Here are a bunch of heads, all sculpted at the same time. No ears they don't need those. Some eyelids are actually missing on those In progress shots.

They don't need to be as nice as Baba's -yet I happen to be pretty happy about the one the more to the left.

The one which is the more to the right is actually a first version of baba's head herself

So here is the first of the soldiers as done, quite ghostly position. No legs he doesn't need those. I ddin't fixed the helmet. the buttons are made of Magic Sculp and the hands are from Dragon.


Now there is a commonplace in modelling build logs that I can truly not understand. It's the "Well, I built that (engine..) and took great care in that, but now everything will be closed and nobody will be able to see the work".

Heck if nobody can see the work, then your work doesn't exists, as simple as that.

Here is the back of the guy, nobody will ever see it

:)

more German soldiers.
Shame on me I bought that thing..
15 years i didn't buy some dragon things and I was FAR from impressed, even that Gen2 stuff looks weak. Oh well, I wasn't about to sculpt those pockets, badges and stuff anyway


the first soldier, well, there aren't much modifications: new "legs", the head i sculpted I fixed.. Well, usually people here sculpt *the body* and give the head to Hornet. I don't think this way: what has the most personnality? the head or the body of a person? The *features*, the *personnality* of the figs I include in my dioramas must be 100% mine. So I leave the generic stuff to Dragon, the hands to Hornet, but the heads are *me*


The other one is more interesting. I put him is great coat as floating around him, that's 100% Duro. it's quite good to do those drapes even if they end up being a bit thick.
It's time I go back again to visit those figs forums to learn one trick or three more.

Well, I like the position of that guy..

Still watching :-)
I admit that i am also in the not "me" head category. Never took the time to learn head sculpting correctly.
Not a fan of Hornet. I prefer the more "mature" looking Warrior heads.

Claude

Hi Nicolas,

what a very interesting work and story, i never thought that Baba Yaga could be young !
That will be a great dio.

Will see forward
nico

Great sculpting work on those figures Nicolas!

I admire your skill and courage in sculpting your own heads. I can't wait to see where this is taking us.
J

I remember reading about Baba Yaga in Highlights magazine,or Jack and Jill, a long, long time ago. I was always intrigued by the house with chicken legs. Looks like a great project. Keep us posted!

Well Claude, the problem is not with Hornet if you follow me, it is more with most diorama makers using exactly the same heads, and especially not being able to fix them properly on bodies -I can't count the amount of times I have been seeing a "neck problem" on dioramas : body->circular pole ->head. Amazing really.
A lot of Hornet heads also have the same way of smiling etc..
I never tried the Warriors ones. Well as you well know, it's always a question of choice of what to learn first in our free time

Salut Nico -I could swear i read one time about Babe Yaga that she could also take the shape of a young lady. Can you imagine a very powerful sorceress NOT being able to take the shape she wants? But i am quite happy about her face because she's got a sort of Adams family style.

thanks Karl as usual

Thanks too Jerry, this will lead us UNDERWATER, and very soon it will be the time for a bit of engineering

Thank you Steven -about the chicken legs house, I think i saw on wikipedia that this was actually a sort of fashion for houses in Russia, the "legs" being in fact wood logs



Well I still took one week worth of evenings (in a lazy fashion still) to paint those German soldiers.

Acrylics, then oils then acrylics, they don't need to be perfect really. Those are dead which explains the eyes and very white complexion. You may also notice that I have been doing some highlights with very vivid green hues on the top of the bodies, that's because that's that will be the most noticeable by the end of the diorama.

And for those who wonder, Yes I have seen Dead Snow, and No this diorama is definitely not influenced by Dead Snow. It's a very funny movie but I prefer my deads being less cliché.
ah well this one has got his highlights on the front body contrary to the others

This is where the fun part starts, driving blind and engineering.

Do you see this picture? here I show the bits of the bridge as they will be seen from under the water -the place where those will be cut will be the water level.

Next I have been building a plastic box that I have been "gluing" on a small glass sheet. then with modeling paste for kids I place the soldiers and the bottom of the bridge. face down. i also have been cutting the tips of their hands for further use

So if you flip the diorama on the other side, that's what you see: