Yes, Forgeworld’s aesthetic we know from LoA is what this project is aiming for.
And I’d argue that the design part is the bigger one compared to sculpting. Sculpting takes some time, too, but it is always as good as you have learned it at the given state, it’s a craft and not an art.
For the musculature, if you try studying what body builders and heavy athletes would realistically have, you come to the conclusion that GW is giving their orcs fantasy muscles consisting of impressive bumps and that it is rather difficult to make them less “realistic” by adding more bumps of the same style.
On the body that was copied from the above musician’s (to use this context for showing the most current changes), since it got different arm positioning for holding the two-handed war hammer (I’ll show later), I tried adjusting the back muscles accordingly.
So, a few weeks ago I got another bunch of crossbows from @Jasko (thx again!), those without having a hand modeled on the grip and supposed to be held in the left hand (for reloading or sth.) probably for the back row models.
Here are ten (I probably won’t add more) already with strings pinned:
Comes out: While in the old KS with the resin casts they are from the weapons and left hands were separate (for choosing the weapon – that’s why people had the alternative weapons left over), the modern STLs have in both positions the respective hand/arm on the weapon. Whatever left hands I got from my etsy seller, they weren’t correct for this purpose.
Fortunately, Jasko had two of the appropriate arms in the set.
Which could be multiplied with some work.
I decided to do the hands and arms separately, then first fit the hands on the crossbows, the arms on the bodies, and only then pin them together. Didn’t trust all the angles to come out just right on their own, at least after mixing in a few different (copied) arms and hands for diversity.
For the rest, I’m re-doing the hands or crossbows for the second time in some cases. I mean, sure, you can just glue them in place and make the dwarfs indecisively hold their weapons without implying any story about how they would be loading them or what they are even waiting for.
But for loading, well… I hope I found out now how they could look at least somewhat credible.
You’ll see later.