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Joe Menna Toy and Collectible Sculpts

Here is the Parademon I sculpted based on DC’s New 52 Justice Leage as drawn by Jim Lee. I digitally sculpted the model and it was printed, cast, and painted by Jason Wires. Also shown is the actual prototype from an article about Toy Fair 2012 on www.io9.com. All characters in this thread are copyrighted by their respective owners and the images of them are used by permission.

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Nice work! :+1:

AWSOME STUFF!!! one of the coolest things about a forum like this, is professionals that show the work they are doing and to actually get to ask you talented folks questions. Do you use perspective when you sculpt these things for print ?What do you recommend for a perspective setting within Zbrush so it looks like the sculpture you are sculpting when printed? Thanks in advace!!!

I can just concur, mindblowing sculpt totally a big inspiration that Professionals post there work on here and give a feedback!:+1:
Really fantastic work on the character, totally love the style and love the clean model!
It is also great to see that there is a 3D Print of it!
looking forward seeing more from you
Best regards and happy sculpting

  • Kenny:)

Joe, I was just browsing Io9 last night and the Toy Fair photo came up in the best sci fi work at the show. Great job and it’s really nice to see the renders.

I can’t think of anything that’s more fun to sculpt. Heroes are kind of fun, but armored aliens and monsters. That is where it’s at.

Brian, I set my angle of view to 15 in the Draw menu. For the truest fidelity, though you need to turn off perspective to make sure everything’s “true” dimension is accurate to your concept art if it is rendered to scale. For this I just used the comic and my art director’s overlays as a guide so I had a little more leeway to ad lib on a lot of this in tandem with his direction. As powerful as Zbrush is I recommend using a secondary application that offers parametric control of the splits and articulation . For action figures in particular, correctly observing the mechanical tolerances involved (fit, rotation clearances, etc ) is critical.

This model was done to a great degree in Zbrush but I also used a design and engineering program called FreeForm for the articulation and a lot of the mechanical cuts. Also some surface and edge clean up. I basically set everything up in ZB, using Image Plane and Dynamesh…plus a lot of curve quad fill and clipcurve. Once I have it set up I begin to bounce parts back and forth between my apps (not just Freeform but Maya and Modo, too). I used to set up the robot stuff in Maya but dynamesh allows me to literally sketch it in and then do my clean up later for a more spontaneous approach to sculpting these types of characters. For the more fully organic sculpts its pretty much all ZB with some bouncing around again for the engineering and splits.

Here’s an interview I just did with Action Figure Insider discussing my digital work and approach in general to doing toys and statues

http://www.actionfigureinsider.com/features/interview-joseph-menna/

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Submission for Heavy Metal Magazine’s Art of Agent 88 Kickstarter premium special edition.

http://www.agent88films.com/

Awesome new project by the legendary Digger T. Mesch

Not a collectible or toy but figure I’ve started enough different threads.

yeah i heard about this agent 88. a friend of mine did some artwork and a poster and even met the actress. anyways really nice head sculpt. actually looks like her. I can’t seem to get likenesses right so this is pretty damn good.

Can I just say, great stuff. You mention using a secondary application. Can I ask 2 questions.

What secondary application to you recommend?

Do you think things have got any better for doing joins etc with the advent of Dynamesh, and the new boolean tools in 4R4 P2?

I use FreeForm for my articulation. I think Dynamesh is great. You can now do pretty much everything you need to in Zbrush but I still prefer to do my engineering in FF…I can control the numbers more accurately at this point. ZB for all of my sculpting, though.

Digitally sculpted and engineered by me. Fully articulated, 13" action figure. Printed, cast, and painted by Jason Wires. Art direction by Bryon Webster. Done for DC Collectibles based on the incredible art from the best selling game. Character copyright by DC Entertainment and image used for portfolio purposes only. More renders of this and a few other pieces coming when I can get some time. Thanks for looking.

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Bad Azz! Rich texturing, no doubt an incredible amount of work for the result, congratz. -S

Thanks…I sculpted this for manufacturing so I really tried to make things pop…and the prints came out pretty much exactly like the model.
I’ll show images of the chest break out and more when I get time to make some good renders…here’s a shot of the actual toy that I found online…:

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Really cool stuff!

The sculpt and details are awesome! The toy looks great too!! great job!

Nice! Are these limited run 3D prints?.. because I can’t imagine how he could release from an injection mold.

Here is a good close up I found on the interwebs:
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It’s an actual production sample from the factory in this photo. The prints, however, came out pretty much exactly like the digital render. If you need something printed, Jason Wires is hands down the best in the business:

http://jasonwiresproductions.com/

thanks, all :slight_smile:

Grundy’s pull out chest and heart. Snap-friction fit chest action done in software.

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