Over the last couple of live streams, I've been sculpting these Knights of the Shield models. They appear in the Descent into Avernus campaign so are on my "to sculpt" list anyway. When they appear, they're given names which sound Middle Eastern. That got me to thinking about giving them this cool Saracen vibe so there's some flavour to the range instead of everything having a kind of European aesthetic.
For the leader model, I tried a new method of sculpting chainmail that I've been working on since I sculpted the Cambion. Usually Chainmail is a procedural effect using surface noise and UVs which honestly doesnt really feel comfortable to me as its not how I typically work. The alternative is insert meshes or nano meshes, and both of those might look good for a render, but leave lots of tiny little voids under the rings which will need supporting and are potentially so thin that they just won't print at all. Instead I went back to my old technique for sculpting chainmail in greenstuff. Poke holes in a row at an angle with a large needle, tilting the needle straight at the end of the "poke". This creates a ridge on one side of the hole. Then you do the next row of holes but from the opposite angle and that creates the ridge on the other side. So once I'd got the base for the chainmail sculpted, I manually sculpted in C shapes around one half of the hole. You can see this technique for yourself on the stream here at around an hour in - TWITCH STREAM (23/11/2022)
So far I've done 2 soldiers and a Leader, but over my next few sculpting sessions (both on and off stream) I'll be adding 3 more to the group for a good sized skirmish set. I might even add one or 2 racial variants like a half ogre to give them a bit of oomph!
It's also worth noting that the styling is consistent with the Baldrius the Cambion so he is also part of the group.
If you're about for the streams be sure to jump in and say hi, and help make some of the design decisions that go into the sculpts! Viewers this week helped determine poses and some of the details for these guys as well as suggesting some other things they'd like to see added to the range. Come and join me and you can have your say too!