Calling all Arcane entomologists, Bugtormology researchers and Bugtor enthusiasts! Dr. Jayce Talis formally invites you to join the International Bugtomological Research Institute (IBRI). If YOU have a passion for the study of the big beautiful Arcane Herald lovingly known as Bugtor, please join us for BUGTOR WEEK!
i recently saw @jayvikbrainrot's insanely adorable and utterly delightful bugtor but small art and started genuinely crying.
i realized that i needed a tiny arcane herald urgently, so this month has been a crash course in crafts for me. this lil bugtor is one who i sculpted out in blender, printed in resin, and begged my lovely partner to paint before i bestowed upon him a cape made of paper so he was ready for his photoshoot! ✨
i'll drop some of the process under the readmore in case folks are interested in the glorious evolution of this buggo!
i know there are some great STLs out there for the Arcane Herald, but i decided to get scrappy with it for this project, because i'd installed blender last month to play around with sculpt mode on an orb, which had spawned this uhhhhh... viktor?
but after i saw @jayvikbrainrot's tiny bugtor this month, i cracked blender back open, found the symmetry and dyntopo options in blender, and went to town. i didn't know yet how to add another object to the sculpt (spoilers but i will be learning that embarrassingly late in the game on this project 😅), so i started with an orb and just went wild stacking shapes on it. why is it blue in some places? i do not know.
next i tried working out how to rig the sculpt i'd done. i used blender's rigify add-on, which worked pretty well! i tried putting him in a few poses before trying out my first test resin print.
soon i had my first physical buggo!!! he got to come on adventures and sleep snug as a bug in an @oidingus mug, swaddled by some bits of linen @chubsonthemoon used to pack my copy of their gorgeous bind of huzzah to the hammersmith.
but before painting time came, he got some friends....
and i was so stoked that the littlest buggo turned out self-standing, totally on accident! so it became the first one to get some paint, because i got impatient and borrowed some of my partner's painting gear to give the buggo some colors myself.
this buggo also got to try out a fabric cape, and proudly demonstrated the flaws in that plan
BUT! this little buggo also helped me work out that paper cape worked great! so he got to try out the lightbox photoshoot setup, hehe
after that we were almost done! the final boss: a second object!
i went back into blender, deleted the rig i'd made because i was actually having better luck with the pose and grab tools, and finally bugtor got his staff! and thus access to the Arcane! and thus the magic powers necessary to consume the cake at his cosmic tea party!
today my partner had some spare time, and they decided to paint him without using any metallic paints as a challenge for themselves because they are so so cool. 😍
in the meantime i made his paper cape. so now he's in his final form!
thanks so much to my partner for lending their painting skills, to all the buddies who cheered me on as i was working on this bug, and thanks so very much to @jayvikbrainrot for the art of bugtor but small which sent me careening down this road (also shout out to @deheerkonijn for the other ultra-adorable art of tiny bugtor which fanned my fire Big Style.) 🥰
