Banana! Sculpting a minion

Another year another hobby challenge to craft a gift for my wife's birthday.  This year the choice was a minion from Despicable Me.  You've probably seen the Banana song doing the rounds recently...

So the question was how to make the little fella.  The sage advice my brother gave me for sculpting was to find or make something to sculpt over, so I got myself a kinder egg...

The story continues after the jump...

So after some failed experiments with plasti-card I started work using Milliput.  The process was slow as I needed to wait for each element to cure before adding more so I didn't ruin anything I had already done.  This means there's a day between each of the progress shots below!  Before I started sculpting I glued the kinder egg shut and cut off the bits of the hinge that were sticking out.

So to start with its basic dungarees shaping and a pair of legs made from some plastic-card tubing.  I'd already drilled some holes as guides for the legs and arms at this point so I knew where to avoid.

First bit of fiddly stuff - the straps over the shoulders.  Key to working with any sculpting material is using just enough water to keep it smooth and not sticking to your modelling tool but not so much you are working with runny material.

With the straps in place, I threaded a paper clip through the waiting holes (which was much harder than I initially thought) and added an arm at a time.

While the arms were drying I glued some greenstuff feet on to the waiting legs (its actually a failed bunny head from my Easter painting comp entry cut in half!) and added some Milliput to cover the tubing.  I also started using GW's liquid greenstuff at this point to fill in the gaps around the kinder shell.

I worked on the hands separately, something I could do while the rest was drying.  The banana holding hand I was pleased with but the spare one less so, Milliput isn't idea for fiddly work and I was a bit pushed for time so I bodged it a bit.

Having ruined a pen, I found a suitable sized round thing for the minion's google - its a bit narrow but the right width at least.  I convinced some plasti-card to work as the headband and added some bits of paperclip as hinges.  Lots of liquid greenstuff at this stage to fill in all the gaps.

Finally it all comes together, the hands added after a bit of drilling so they pop onto the end of the paperclip arms perfectly.

You can see here how much greenstuff was added to smooth things down.  There was a lot of careful filing too.  Finally he was ready to paint!

I used new GW paints across the board for this chap, their base colours being strong and vibrant for this project.  The little 'G' on his front pocket is freehand, as is the mouth.

So here he is holding aloft the prized banana.  I also added a base at my wife's request, black and while tiles.

 The yellow was a true pain, I really need to consider a different technique the next time it comes up!

 Yes, I did little buttons on the back even.

Cheeky side shot showing off the banana.

So there he is.  If you enjoy this blog, why not join (over on the right)?  I'm sure I can beat 9 subscribers!  I've got a competition in mind soon - you need to subscribe to win.