Sculpting The Flood (Halo) - Part 1
One of my all time favourite enemies in any game series, has to be The Flood from the Halo series.
I can still remember the first time encountering them in the first game, many many years ago when I was a kid.
That mission, and their reveal was so cool. A swamp area, misty and dark, little blips on the map appearing occasionally, only to descend back into the fog. Ominous music playing, finding nobody, no Humans, no Covenant; nothing.
As you pass through the halls you can see the mangled corpses of Elites and Grunts, blood everywhere and you finally come across a fear stricken marine who is bladdering about something, and then he turns hostile and starts firing upon you. Then, you find some footage from the bodies of a few other marines, and discover what took place. Very memorable, and one of the greatest reveals given to these twisted abominations.
Here's a reference picture of the particular flood form I was sculpting.
I've never sculpted something from a reference before, so it should be some fun, and also it'll showcase how terrible, or not, I am at sculpting.
When making your own stuff, it's kind of easier to right off mistakes as a creative choice. I can't do that here though.
Okay, so first things first, I made an armature.
It's not fancy or anything, it's just the thickest wiring I have, wrapped around to make the skeleton, essentially.
I didn't photograph it, but I used tape to hold it in place, before putting some tinfoil on to bulk it out.
With it together, I got to work covering the piece in clay.
I also tried posing it into a similar position to the reference picture.
While I'm going by that particular reference, I'm not going to make it exactly the same, so have some wiggle room.
I made the hand of this guy, which is going to be protruding beneath the mass of flesh.
Here's the back of the hand.
I placed some wiring in there too, to kind of hold it in place, but I find the thin wire hard to cover, as the clay is so fine that it kind of sticks to my fingers.
A bit of bake and bond helped a lot in this process.
With the hand finished, I was able to work on the flesh whip/ claws.
Here it is from a slightly different angle.
Now, the thing with this model as well is, it's a lot smaller than what I usually make. Typically, I go for 6" models, where as this one is standing at around 2 - 3 inches.
I decided to make a gun for him to hold, but it looked a bit weird.
Maybe it's the flesh tone clay, but it kind of looked off.
The sizing was a bit off too. The gun, and his hand are far too big compared to him, and I didn't like it.
I decided, instead of a pistol, I would go for the SMG, which is a fairly common weapon in-game, and it was introduced in Halo 2.
Since then it has been in most of the games, but I think the best one is from Halo ODST.
I've played and completed every Halo game ever made, and in fact, I've completed the campaigns countless times, solo, and co-op.
Well, here's the SMG.
I done a fair bit of trimming, to keep it small. I can make the hand fit this thing, which will help keep the perspectives right.
The hand jutting out from the other arm is kind of large, but maybe that's okay considering that side of the body has heavy mutations.
Making something mechanical with straight angles, out of clay, can be pretty tough, but overall, I'm happy so far with how this turned out.
I've left it there, but will be back in a few days with the next part of this model. It'll be fun to paint it up, and I'm fairly happy with where it's at currently.