From Sketch to Sculpt: Hobgoblin Thoughts

Hello dear Adventurers, Collectors, and Merchants!

I hope you're all enjoying the Malakim!
😊 A few days ago, I was sitting in a restaurant, waiting for my food, and, as usual, I started sketching on the paper placemat. I always do this when I'm waiting. There's something so satisfying about using a ballpoint pen on thick rough paper, it’s the best.

Most of my monthly sets are born like this: me trying to capture the images in my head before they disappear. It’s mostly just lines, curves, and an attempt to capture the attitude of the creature.
This morning I was watching a stain in the dark gym floor, and I saw an Orr'ug with hun barbarian thin mustaches and a fur hat, this happens a lot, haha.

The first thing I sketched this time at the restaurant was an elongated silhouette: a short torso, long limbs, pointy ears, and a sharp nose. Basically, a very long goblin! I love drawing goblins, and the long-legged one was really fun to sketch. In my universe, these are Hobgoblins—thinner and taller gobbos—and I absolutely adore them.

I haven’t worked on Hobgoblins in years, and after the massive effort of last month’s armored and feathered Malakim, I wanted to let myself flow freely with drawing and sculpting. And honestly, I LOVE making goblin faces—it was exactly what I needed to recharge!

The Faldorn forest tribes have been calling for more variety, so I decided to expand the theme by adding these Hobgoblins. Plus, they’ll be fully compatible with the giant spiders mounts from the small Faldorn Goblins (goblin in the picture below, to the left, for size comparison) and the owlbear-like Nightmaulers of the Greatgoblins!

After finishing the sketch, I rushed home because I couldn’t wait to start sculpting. A few strokes, and the face was already there, almost exactly as I’d drawn it. It took a few days to make the full body, but I was thrilled with how the first one turned out.

The challenge with falling in love with a sketch is that you have to respect it. I couldn’t miss the attitude and proportions of the character I’d drawn, even though the sketch was a messy 2D doodle with no sense of 3D structure. I spent four hours just fighting to get the legs right, but eventually, I nailed it.
Afterall the sketch display the hobhoblin from a higher camera, I couldn't recreate exactly the same angles from a front view.

From there, extracting the pieces to prepare a symmetrical version wasn’t too hard: from this stage, I could roughly output a modular figure of the same unit each day. Here, in fact, you can see the Hobgoblin B (the second modular), as I exported it and Dave, our amazing painter, brought him to life!
I like to have yellow/green goblin, and brown/red Hobgoblin. It really works so well!

Thanks, Dave!

I love these creatures. The last time I worked on Hobgoblins, I made boar mounts for them—called Razorbeasts. Looking back, they feel very cartoonish and goofy compared to today’s standards. Many years ago, when I first sculpted them, 3D printers weren’t as advanced, and I didn’t yet have a clear sense of what would translate well after printing, curing, and painting.

Now, with years of experience under my belt, I’m confident I can create much better-looking boar creatures from scratch. When I think of boars, several inspirations come to mind: the wild boars from Princess Mononoke, Ganon in his various incarnation from The Legend of Zelda, and a few other subtle images from here and there, even Pumba (even if he is a warthog).

My style is the product of my passion, expecially as kid, for japanese games and few anime (anyone loves Lodoss War?), combined with my love for the fantasy world, expecially the Lord of the Rings books and the serie of The Elder Scrolls. After many years I started to appreciate the style that naturally was born and how it evolved through thousands of hours of drawing and sculpting.

I also want to play these Hobgoblins in GUILDS, our dynamic card-and-miniatures skirmish game! And to do that, I need boars that live up to our new standards. So, I dedicated a full day—9 hours—to finding the best lines and proportions for this Warhog, and another day of war just for the armor. Honestly, I’m really happy with how it turned out!

I really like the result, and I hope you’re as excited as I am for this release. I needed to relax and sculpt something I truly wanted to make, without overthinking the last few months or the plan ahead.
Sometimes, as artists, we need that to recharge—especially when we don’t take breaks. 😊

See you on our socials!
A big hug,
Andrea