In Rust We Trust: Simpso Shield Slam

I sculpted a shield!

In Rust We Trust is a wonderful Discord community that celebrates the “28” style of the miniature hobby, including kitbashing, sculpting and playing narrative style games. Excitingly, the discord group recently passed the 600 member mark, suggesting how a niche aspect of the miniature hobby is growing in popularity! To celebrate this, they are holding a contest encouraging people to experiment with sculpting using modeling putty. Specifically they teamed up with Tanner Simpson (@simpsominiatures) to create a contest to sculpt a face on a shield and send pictures to ‘inrustcommunity@gmail.com’ by September 30th 2023. Shields with faces on them are a classic element of GW designs in the 90s, championed by John Blanche himself. In the spirit of 90s design, I wanted to create a shield that paid homage to one of my favorite GW artists of that era, Wayne England. His style is iconic, with its grimacing skulls and warped faces, with taut skin, bulging veins, and singed hair.

Some initial sketches I created for a shield, emulating Wayne England’s style.

The shield was primarily created with Tamiya Quick Type Epoxy putty.

Rather than sculpting on top of a GW shield, I decided to sculpt the entire piece from scratch, allowing it to be smaller than most shields they currently make.

Using plastic card and modeling putty, I added metal banding around the shield, adding small rivets along it.

I hope to create a one-piece mold to cast resin copies of this shield in the near future!

A Mordheim Ogre facing off against Mad Meg with a grimacing shield!

- Adam Wier