SALUTE 51 MODEL
Squiddos! Pirate Ladies!” Those were my exclamations when I first saw the Salute 51 logo. Two of my favourite things combined, two of the symbols for Bad Squiddo Games combined – brilliant!
Then, when the Warlords contacted us about producing the figure I was absolutely gobsmacked, though several conversations later I had decided it was real and not some sort of elaborate scam. 2024 was going to be the Year of the Squiddo, baby!
I knew immediately that this was a job for one of our regular sculptors – Alan Marsh. He’s worked with us since very early on and is responsible for a large portion of the Bad Squiddo Games catalogue. We’ve worked together often enough now that I can visualise frighteningly accurately how his sculpts will look.
Whilst figuring out the pose, Alan admitted to cobbling together an unusual outfit featuring his Aussie hat, a Japanese Bo and a water pistol. To get the body movement just right, he practised whipping out the pistol to aim at a nearby spider. I was assured that the spider was unharmed and the gun was not loaded. This alone is proof of the monk-like self-discipline required to be a sculptor, I think you’ll agree.
As bizarre as the scene would have been, this is an excellent way for a sculptor to get a feel for the anatomy and avoid stances that just wouldn’t work with a human body. Impromptu props don’t need to be exact, but they can help get the body in the right place, and shockingly Alan doesn’t have a pirate outfit to hand. (this isn’t sarcasm, I am shooketh, who DOESN’T have a pirate outfit to hand?)
While many companies have gone down the digital sculpting route, we stay largely in the realm of traditional sculpting. It fascinates me that even as we trace back to the start of humanity, we’ve made little figures of ourselves.
Sculpting and casting physically feels like a strong, direct link to our past, especially as the techniques have changed so minimally over all this time. In an age of everything being in the cloud, it is cathartically grounding to continue these traditions.
We had never produced miniatures on this scale of production before, though our casters at CMA CSL do so regularly, so we were in good hands. Manufacturing this many at once (or cloning, as I like to say) brought fresh