Do you know the feeling, when you get a new tool and from this moment, you’ve got the feeling that your skills just increased in an allmost touchable way? ^^ Well, I got this feeling one week ago after I tried out my clay shaper. My favoured hobby shop suggested it to me and I love it!
I have a “Taper” and it is soooo good to sculpt clothes and bare muscles and other stuff (but I only tried these two right now ^^). It works so nice and made also more fund than sculpt with a metal tool. Probably not everyone is so happy with this tool as I am, but I really suggest to you at least to try it, it’s not that expensive anyways…
jep it is. you really should try it. I mean, it is not an universal tool for everyting. Before I got mine, a GW sculpting tool was my only real tool (except knives and needles) and it works pretty well for allmost everything, but a clay shaper is more a tool for specific work and it makes a lot of things easier to sculpt.
I bought 2 frome Heresy Miniatures. Looks very much like those from your link - but I haven’t find ‘the key’ - how to use them. I still prefere my wooden tools over these. But I will continue trying
Well, I use them like I use my other sculptin tools, too. But I like the round shape of the clay shaper and because its made of rubber, it is smooth and elastic with makes sculpting clothes pretty easy, because you can handle it easier than “solid” tools. I can show what I did with my clay shaper after the GH ^^
They’re great for finishing the surface of a sculpt - work in the basic details with your regular tools and refine them with the clay shapers. Tools are what you make of them.
I have one of these sitting on my desk for about a year now, but I never really got round to using it. Nice to see someone here is giving it a try! :hat off
I’ve got a couple, and I use them largely for smoothing greenstuff or milliput. One suggestion I do have while using them is to use a little more of the yellow putty than usual while mixing - it makes it easier for the shaper to move through it.
Bought them from heresey aswell last autumn, a pointy one, and a flat (cup).
both of them are the smallest sizes (anything bigger than that is too big :P).
The pointy one is good for adding recesses in muscles and cloth (as mentioned above),
but also making smoth wavy objects (like magical flames :o).
The flat cup one is god for smoothing out larger flat areas, like shields helms and shoulder pads.
One good thing with them being in rubber, is that they dont stick to the greenstuff, so water is not necessary. Although, the rubber tips are somewhat static, so dust always attracts to them. :~
Before I got them I used the flat end of my GW sculpting tool to make areas smooth, and when I first used the Clay shapers It felt very weird using them because you had to push them harder, since the tip itself is soft.
Even though the clay shapers are good smoothing tools, they have their drawbacks and limits.
I still use metal tools often to smooth things, when I feel the rubber variant is insufficient.
Both metal and rubber tools has their own specialities, and I felt that I’ve broaden my way of using different techniques after starting to use clay shapers aswell.
have both types of tools on your workbench, and you can make some really cool minis! :cheers
Well, I only have the Taper-shape, but it works pretty good on muscles, so maybe on a face, too. The “Angel Chisel” looks pretty useful, too, maybe this one is even better for faces. The guy who sold them to me said, they are not good for faces at all :). But now I see it really depends on who uses them, because I would think, they are great for smoothing faces
It’s really interessting to see that different people use different stuff. I such at using Milliput and could not imagine to sculpt with a straw ^^
I’ve had a clay shaper for a while, and I also loved in when I first got it. It’s really useful for the stuff mentioned above, and I’ve been using it while trying to figure out how to sculpt faces as well.
So far though, I’m not truly happpy with any of my efforts, so I can’t give any good tips about shapers and faces.
One good thing with them being in rubber, is that they dont stick to the greenstuff, so water is not necessary.
m3lvin
I didn't know that before, but I just found out, that you are right. Clay Shapers are awesome, no going crazy when trying to sculpt rivets, yay yay yay :)
