In May 2021, I started a personal project with two purposes— first, to show my appreciation for the new DC Comics’ character inspired by Sun Wukong. It’s not too often that toy sculpting is such a suitable medium with which to honor someone else’s work, and I was really inspired with what the creators (editor Jessica Chen! Writer Gene Luen Yang! And artist Bernard Chang!) were doing, especially at that moment in time. Second, with some test projects under my belt I wanted to see how close to a “looks like” action figure prototype I could get with the home-use resin 3D printer I had. There were several $200-300 printers on the market, but I had not really seen many action figure-related creations yet.
TO BE CLEAR: This is a fan art project! Not associated with DC Comics in any way and not for sale or commercial use in any way.
Art by Bernard Chang
As I’m essentially assuming the roles of toy designer, art director, and engineer, in addition to sculptor, the first step was to get a clear picture of what I wanted the figure to look like.
I used this collage for planning and sketching reference. I rarely think of any single illustration as perfectly canonical, to be followed to the letter*. Even in this rare case where it’s all done by the same hand, the illustrator is exaggerating and making artistic choices from panel to panel, so an amount of interpretation is always necessary when translating 2D art to sculpture. My goal in this step is to synthesize all the visual information into the most fitting toy version, in a given style, of whatever subject I’m doing. For example, here I’m figuring out how his big hair works in 3D, what materials the outfit should look like, and if the skirt should be all one piece vs four separate pieces + belt, etc.
*As an aside, for portraiture I find the same is even truer for photographs— distortion, lighting, makeup, age, or photo manipulation all can mislead in any single shot.
My rough drawings… feel free to be unimpressed
Based on those findings, I draw up out how the parts should be broken up. Since it’s just me I can use shorthand like this, but if art directing another sculptor, I’d definitely want to EITHER provide turnaround drawings, with cutaway views and measurements, or I’d give them the freedom, acknowledgment, and compensation for designing on the fly. Below are a couple examples that make great design illustrations.
From “Transformers Beast Wars: Beast Generation” (Hobby Japan)
A clear illustration of a complex design. I love three-quarter views for showing four planes of the Y-axis with only two drawings. It also allows the sculptor to interpret little details without worrying about matching them up one for one against an architectural blueprint. Note that we still have little idea what the top view (collarbone/trapezius area) looks like.
From “Turn A Gundam Art Works” (Impress Communication)
Though the above drawings were created for animation. It’s hard to describe the relief I feel as a sculptor seeing that one drawing I’ve circled in blue. Gives me everything I need to know about what the area underneath the hair looks like. But back to our Great Sage:
Sketch stage
Here is the first sketch I did with proportions I was happy with, showing parts separation. For me this stage of just pushing and pulling material is the most fun, and most closely resembles traditional clay modeling. I’ve already made a few key choices here:
-The red is treated as spandex with no wrinkles, as I felt keeping an elegant look to the physique was paramount.
-Neither the vambraces nor the greaves will be separate parts.
-The skirts I consider medium-wavy, with minimal suggestion of being pushed by the legs. Will be attached to the belt.
I next want to touch on sculpting the skirt.
Some possible skirt movement types
Early drafts
I think skirt or cape movement can be a disproportionately important. It takes no time compared to other details but goes a long way in setting the tone— stylish, calm, aggressive, etc. I ended up splitting the first and second options, to feel hopefully dignified but still active. For a formal introduction to sculpting fabric and drapery, I recommend “Modelling and Sculpting the Human Figure”, by Edouard Lanteri:
Moving onto the only part of the design where I deliberately strayed away from the source material— the metal tail slot from the back skirt. I figured if his tail is always there it wouldn’t hurt for the outfit to specifically accommodate it. I also embellished the belt design, inspired by Chinese jade carvings. You can see the under layer of the sculpt is roughly drawn, while the top layer details are clean individual pieces.
The three approaches I took with hair
When looking at the design, it seemed three different treatments to the hair would be suitable. The top is very voluminous, the sideburns are almost 2D sheets, and the back of head hair looked more like the medium-length slightly wavy hair that I’m more used to when sculpting fur.
Some views of hair progressions- top
For the back of head hair I had done a demonstration of sorts on my Instagram page after receiving a couple questions on it. The same images are shown here, but please visit the post itself (HERE) for the written descriptions (continued into comments).
Changing articulation to better fit the natural flow of fur
One change I made from sketch to final was the elbow— I originally had a protruding ball joint with the forearm fur rising upwards to cover the elbow. But seeing that it might clash with the downwards sloping fur on the upper arm, I instead made the elbow a three-part double axis hinge, allowing the middle elbow piece to continue that fur direction a little better. Of course it’s not a scientific model, and either option would probably work okay; I just preferred this a bit more.
Lastly, I wanted to mention the shoes. Bernard has said that the Monkey Prince’s shoes are inspired by the real sneakers that he designed, so I decided to combine what I saw in the comic with elements I liked from the shoe itself. Some consideration was also given to the high-tops’ height as a trade off for movement in articulation.
If you’re still here I think this post has gone on long enough! Thanks for making it to the end, and if somehow you’re not tired of me talking yet please check out for part two HERE, in which I will go over print prep, resin printing, cleanup, assembly, and painting.
