It feels like I’ve been wanting to do this for AGES and the day is finally here—it’s time to put up all my work-in-progress photos of my Soldier:76 Overwatch statue! All through the time I was working on Soldier, but especially over the final year, I kept a good series of photos as I went along. I did this originally to share with my friends and Discord community to keep myself motivated, but as a result it’s given me an excellent archive of how the project developed over the months. I hope you’ll enjoy the photos!
When I started this project I was coming off of a decade-long period of burnout. But I loved Overwatch, and the minute I saw this statue I thought, “But he would look so much better painted!” This gigantic project seemed just the ticket to get my inspiration back. I didn’t think too much about how long it was going to take. I had a vision in my head of how I wanted it to look, and I just went for it.
Feeling my way back into painting seriously (instead of doing quick work for gaming pieces) and having set no deadline for myself meant Very Slow Progress. Still, by the spring of 2017 I had gotten the face mostly mapped out. You can see I’m creating scratches and battle-damage on the metal areas, and using Secret Weapon weathering powders to do the smoke/scorch marks on skin and hair.
You can also see the start of the texture work on the neck, which was shortly to become my (and Soldier’s) absolute doom. I adapted it from an in-game texture on a different model, because I wanted something kind of nano-tech. A pattern that was probably simple to render on the computer proved very counter-intuitive to freehand. I hit a block and didn’t pick the model back up for six months.
In fall of 2017 I was hitting a low point in my life and looking for support from friends and community. I joined my first-ever Discord server (run by pro player and OWL desk analyst Reinforce) to talk with other Overwatch fans since I didn’t really have any friends in real life who were as into it as I was.
I shared that I was working on Soldier, and the community was super-enthusiastic and supportive! It really motivated me to pick up Soldier and start to make progress again, because then I could post up photos and show them what I’d done that week.
I can’t say enough about how having a great community or group of friends to share your work with can really help you get things done. Even if it’s just one person who’s interested in seeing your work who becomes your accountability buddy, it can help you stay focused and excited about the project—especially when it’s something big, or something that you haven’t done before and aren’t sure about.
Here you can see that I’ve painted over what I’d previously done on the neck and started again. Sometimes, if you’re really unhappy with part of the model, painting over and starting fresh is just the way to deal with it, even with the lost work.
With acrylics you have a lot of freedom on this, as it’s simple to paint over what you’ve done, and even on small models you can do several layers without losing detail if you’re thinning your paint slightly (always recommended with hobby acrylics).
You can also see that I’ve started playing with leather texture on the collar of the jacket. I hadn’t settled on how I wanted to do it yet, though, so I put that aside and only came back to the jacket at the very end.
Before I went on to the shading and highlighting, I really wanted to beat that neck texture and get past the block I’d been stuck on for so long. I put my head down and just forced myself to work through it, and it became one of my favorite details on the entire model. Though not canon, leaving the neck just dark rubber or featureless armored-suit just seemed boring. I’m happy that I went this path instead, even with all the pain it caused me along the way!
Stay tuned for the next section, where I work on boots, legs, and gun!