The Comm Guild Maelstrom's Edge

The Karist Angel was the final sculpt which we completed from the Battle for Zycanthus set. While the core of the model was completed quite early on, one of our first sculpts in fact, the limbs and details were quite a challenge to create. Here are some early pieces of concept art for the mature angel...

We wanted the Karist centrepiece model to be visually striking and much taller than anything else in the box set, which meant we had quite a lot of limitations with regards to sprue size and cost restrictions which stopped us from doing plastic wings. Each angel has three different morphing modes of which wings is just one option, so not getting wings in to the set was not a big issue for us. Trying to come up with some limbs that did not look comical and still showed the model capable of flowing and reforming took a lot of design iterations though.

Ultimately the mature Angel ended up as a fairly static pose for such a dynamic creature, with two alternate sets of claws that had little major difference between them, but with the benefit that the model is very easy to convert. Between the shapes being the easiest thing to sculpt (sausages of putty!), and the existing model being very easy to repose, we've seen a great range of conversions, and the model being so forgiving allows all manner of experimentation. Even boiling the plastic allows it to soften and be reposed in any shape without the obvious distortion you'd see from a model with sharp edges and lines.

The sprue is a sliding core sprue which makes such a large model have practically no visible seams, despite being completely made of plastic.

The legspan of the model is huge as well, and led to the creation of our huge bases. This was possible thanks to success in our kickstarter project allowing us to fund the tooling.