{"id":1090,"date":"2026-06-29T09:19:31","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T08:19:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/?p=1090"},"modified":"2026-06-29T09:19:44","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T08:19:44","slug":"my-sculpting-puppet-of-the-coral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/2026\/06\/29\/my-sculpting-puppet-of-the-coral\/","title":{"rendered":"My Sculpting – Puppet of the Coral"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This is what is called a ‘homage’ sculpt as It’s an original sculpt based on something I don’t own\/have the rights to use. But how ‘on model’ it is and if anyone would even WANT to buy something like this is up in the air… but due to it’s nature it is techinally in the realms of C&D here (Oh, I’ve had one before for Fan art some time back which they felt it was too close so a lawyer sent me a C&D but oh well)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a number of years ago, a company I quite liked, but kinda started to get abit.. iffy (not bad just.. sigh.. problematic) called ‘Frictional Games’ released there first technically solo series video game. What I mean by that is before hand, they release Penumbra, which had 3 games in the series (though you can kinda not bother with the last… I can see what they were trying for but they kinda just removed any game element from it), then they followed it up with the Amnesia Series (First one was good, second was a mini game that works best with the one mod, third (which was the second full game) was only partly them and pretty good, the fourth was okay but had some issues and I felt they had kinda finished what they can do with the theme as they weren’t really adding much to it… then they made another one I haven’t bothered with yet). Anyway, this other game which so far was the only one in the series was named ‘Soma’. Like the other games they made, it’s a first person horror game which heavily uses the fact that as the player, you don’t know your way around or what’s what (in Amnesia, your main character would get… Amnesia for some reason, and thus you had to discover things in the same way the player would be playing the game). Until the others which were kinda more fantasy\/historical, this one was sci-fi, set in mostly in the far future and featured alot of what the other games did, small inclosed areas, dark shapes, unkillable enemies (the first Penumbra had a problem with that fact which they did admit, was a learning tool for them), alot of hiding just to survive (Resident Evil games were fun and all, but alot of the horror isn’t there when you can just say ‘oh, monster. Bang Bang’. Most Friction games have a very SMALL amount of monsters, but you can’t take them out. You basically just need to hide and sneak around them), alot of background story etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, the game has it’s problems.. like some major story issues where it tries to give you choices which ‘matter’ to the narrative so you have to make ethical choices, even if there is no real ‘right’ answer, but they really fall flat with these as it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference either way. The game hardly reacts to the choices you make (apart from basically one brief cutscene which has 2 different dialogue sets, but both end the same anyway) and some of the harder questions it tries to bring up, it decides to just ignore and forget about… It’s kinda like the project was too big for them and had to be scaled down alot (which… might be true with all the major changes and rough stuff removed at some points). They did team up with a company to do some live-action\/CGI prequel story which isn’t too bad, but has a few mistakes and doesn’t quite deliver (the last couple of episodes kinda REALLY cheap out and just throw away alot of good they started with but.. it’s still not bad and some nice work went into it).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway.. Spoiler time. In this future, in an underwater base which is pretty much believed to have the only humans left alive, the computer system has been trying it’s best to protect the lives of the humans there. Problem is, it has a computer sense of what is ‘Human’. So if someone died, it would just use machine parts to try to reanimate the corpse.. to various degrees. One way it does this is with ‘structure Gel’, a liquid used as a kinda miracle product. It’s organic based, and you can kinda safely drink it, but it’s not recommend, it’s conductive, it can be used to fuse machine parts together or with organic parts, it can be coded to have different functions. Much like HAL 9000, the computer also notices when in order to protect Human Life as a whole, it has to ‘deal’ with some humans (In HAL’s case, it was told to carry out the mission no matter what, and NOT to let the crew (atleast the currently active crew) know what was the real mission until they got to their destination. But he went into a conflict as the humans were a risk to the mission and it would be better if he carried it out without them, even if he was designed to protect the human life onboard. This conflict caused him to partly go mad.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, part of this method, the computer (the WAU) started to mutate lifeforms like fish, and even other humans, in order to keep them alive. It also learnt how to copy their brains to machines. But w are looking at the more organic side. One problem with the mutations, was the humans kinda went a bit mad… or were just reanimated corpses lashing out with basic motor functions. And this brings us to the Proxy.<\/p>\n\n\n

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There are technically only 4 known ‘Proxies’ in the game. They have kinda been killed and brought back to life. to quote the fan wiki:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Proxies are employees who have become mutated by structure gel. This mutation results in their upper bodies being bloated, with varicose veins standing out; this bloating has encased the creature’s arms, possibly trapping them. Their bodies are also covered in pustules and tubing.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

yeah, not the best written but it’ll do. Well.. one reason for the bloating is cause this is set underwater in a underwater station. some of the ‘pustules’ are a coral like growth. In earlier builds of the game, this ‘Mind Coral’ was shown as a parasitic thing which took over not only the bodies but the minds of people. Part of this is still in the game, and you get stuck it some of it and have a dream for a bit, and you come across alot of people stuck in the coral, having dreams while it gives them some form of ‘living’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well.. I thought it was good sculpting practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Annoyly, I didn’t take a picture before I made the mold, so there is a tiny bit of silicon in a deep recess and there looks like a bit of green stuff that REALLY didn’t mix, but that isn’t quite as blue as the photo makes it look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

yeah, some bits of yellow show I could have, yet again, mixed a bit better (when I get some new stuff, I’ll try to keep the strips apart to stop that centre mixing issue which appears to cause this). It’s a bit hard to make out some detail (and a small vein which should have been on a foot has come off, but I’ll probably glue that back on. I think it did stay on enough to mold).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn’t go 100% for the original design, even if I could. For example, it should have one arm over it’s chest and the other arm angled down to the groin. I have it so both arms are crossing the body. Size wise, the top of the bloated hump is 35mm, so it’s a pretty well sized 28mm figure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being that this is just green stuff, it can be hard to make out some of the details which kinda blend together, but I have tried for some ‘pipe’ like details (which are meant to be machine tubes which have been fused, but I didn’t quite get the detailing right, but that works better as they now come off like intestines or such like. working around an Armature, I got a basic body shape which I was pretty happy with. I made sure that under this, it is pretty damn human. Like the design for the Proxy, the feet has decay into some kinda stumps, bits of the body have bloated (apply lumps of green stuff, then smooth them out) bits of the coral and pustules were then added and detailed a bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, of course, I made a mold and cast it up in metal. The first cast I screwed up badly… I forgot to chalk the mold.. ugh.. I thought this one kinda got way with it cause alot of the model is pretty close together so no many small channels or anything, but nope.. too much detail was lost, so I had to recast it.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Not the best of photos again (partly cause I don’t have the space to set up even my small light box, and even then, I’m not fantastic at it. I painted it to be a bit more organic as I would use this one more for Fantasy stuff then Sci-fi. For some reason, the right eye didn’t cast right at all.. it should be a hole but instead it’s kinda fused over. The mold appears to have the detail right so I’m guessing either it got a bit flattened or damaged, or, I found the bit of the model which came off (the small vein) was still in the mold but had moved.. so it’s possible it had worked its way up to the fact, and that’s what caused it. Oh well, it’ll do. It’s not perfect or anything but kinda looks better than the photos show ^_^;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a quite paint job and I’ll probably try to cast up and paint one more ‘on model’ to fit with the sci-fi theming at a later date. I’m still not 100% happy with the face, even with that miscast bit in mind. It should have no eyes but just holes where the eyes have either rotted away or gone for some other reason, with only bits of the eye lids remaining while the bloated face is locked in a screaming pose.. I think that kinda came off but I had to burst out laughing at one point when sculpting it cause I was working on the checks and had kinda misshaped the mouth so he looked like the comedy ‘Happy laughing mask’. Which I just found soo comical. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So… if you can’t guess, this guy is gonna be classed as a Shellycoat in my Merfolk warband. It’s a bloated coral covered corpse which has been reanimated after looking like some gruesome sacrificial ritual. perfect!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is what is called a ‘homage’ sculpt as It’s an original sculpt based on something I don’t own\/have the rights to use. But how ‘on model’ it is and if anyone would even...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[200,202,79],"class_list":["post-1090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-forces","tag-sculpting","tag-shivershield","tag-the-woods"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1090"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1096,"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions\/1096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}