(gk stands for goalkeeper now)
The 2026 World Cup wrapped up its last Seattle-based game a few days ago, and in the wake of all the hype I’ve decided to kick off a sculpt related to soccer! Here’s what I’ve done so far:
Not much, but it’s a start! Just imagine that the marble is a soccer ball. I’m intending to turn this lumpy thing into Haru Yuuki from The Idolm@ster (even if it doesn’t look ANYTHING like her yet), who is a soccer nut and would absolutely have loved to go to the World Cup. My goal is to get her in a pose that looks like a freeze-frame of a dramatic kick, a sculpt that feels like it’s full of potential energy and could jump back into action next time you blink. That’s the idea, at least… While I definitely have a vision in mind for the final product, I keep second-guessing myself over every little detail and constantly question whether the sculpt will ever really match said vision. We’ll see if my abilities are up to the task. Probably not! But I’ve been tweaking and re-tweaking the pose and I’m pretty happy with where it’s at so far.
Let’s take a brief look at the skeleton of this sculpt. Once again, I’ve changed up my armature design. I’ll settle on something eventually! This one is based on a wire armature that I’ve used previously, but in order add more sturdiness and rigidity, I’ve used epoxy putty to build some extra structure into the chest and pelvis. I left the midsection clear so that I’d still be able to bend it and adjust the pose. I’m happy with the results! It definitely makes the sculpt feel a lot more solid than previous projects.
I still haven’t quite settled on a method of mounting the armature to a base. The one I built for Yume-chan is good and sturdy, but it does have its drawbacks. While working on her, there were many times I found myself wishing I could rotate and reposition the sculpt more easily. You can see in the photo above that one of the legs is attached to a wood base. Well, “attached” is a bit of a strong word; the wire is really just pressed into a hole, with a very light and very temporary drop of glue to keep it there. I wanted to be able to take the sculpt off the base and work with it in my hands easily. This setup, unsurprisingly, resulted in very poor stability and needed a little bit of extra support. Below you can see me using a helping hands (that I use once in a while for soldering) to do just that:
This is far from a perfect solution, but it does give me the flexibility to reposition the sculpt and detach it if I want to do a bit of in-hand work. I’m going to keep experimenting with armature mounts, but hey, this works!
I’m planning to do the final sculpt (which is still a long ways off) using a new medium: wax! I’ve done all my previous sculpting in clay, which works great for the vast majority of the build but has been causing me some frustration when it comes to the fine details like hands, feet, and facial features. At that scale, it’s very easy to ruin hours of work with just the slightest accidental touch. Wax is much harder than clay, and should be able to hold a much finer level of detail much more durably.
To this end, I got myself a block of Azbro Wax. This is a sculpting wax based on the formulation that Hasbro uses (or used? Do they still sculpt with wax or is everything digital now?) to sculpt their figures and toys. I can make a rough sculpt of the figure in clay, create a mold out of it, cast wax into the mold, and then refine and finalize the sculpt using those cast pieces. As a bonus, the intermediate mold will give me a “checkpoint” to return to if I totally screw up one of the wax pieces. Just re-cast it and try again!
I don’t intend to finish the entire sculpt in wax, just the fine features like hands, hair, and faces. This is a strategy recommended in the book “Pop Sculpture,” which remains one of my most-used references for garage kit making and which I would highly recommend to anyone interested in sculpting their own. Anyways, I can’t wait to try it and see what I can achieve!
Bonus pic time! I actually went to the World Cup Round of 16 game with USA vs. Belgium (with tickets bought near face value, thank goodness! The aftermarket prices were insane) and I had a great time, even if the home team got utterly destroyed. The energy was electric! I tried to imagine Haru running around, playing soccer with everyone on the field. I think she’d have a hard time keeping up with any of the players, but I imagine she’d at least put her heart into the fight! Ahh, I would have loved it if Japan had played here…
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