Twenty one pieces. Nine out of a universe that started as a musical project, eleven characters I grew up drawing, and one that belongs to nothing but me.
ScrollSculpting was actually one of my first art forms.
I grew up with very crafty parents, so there was always Sculpey, clay, doll-making supplies and some strange material lying around that I could turn into something. As a kid I made dinosaurs, gargoyles and whatever else was occupying my brain at the time. I eventually got into working with actual clay and firing pieces, but as I got older, sculpting gradually took a back seat to design, illustration, music and everything else.
Discovering digital sculpting, particularly Nomad, unexpectedly brought all of that back.
Suddenly I had this flood of old ideas. Characters I’d drawn years ago, things I’d attempted to sculpt as a kid, objects that had only ever existed in my head — I could actually build them now. And unlike a drawing, once a sculpture exists in 3D, it keeps giving you new possibilities. I can move around it, change the lighting, photograph it from any angle, animate it, put it into another environment or print it and hold the actual thing in my hands.
3D printing pushed that feeling even further. There was something a little revolutionary about taking a shape that began as essentially digital clay and turning it into a physical object. Once I realized I could do that, the floodgates opened: figurines, props, costumes, jewelry, chain mail, characters, environments — whatever I could figure out how to make.
Increasingly, 3D has become part of how I approach creative problems in general. It’s even started finding its way into client projects that began as much more traditional branding work. A logo turns into a mascot, the mascot turns into a character, the character starts suggesting a world around it. Showing people what I’ve been making on my own has increasingly become a way of letting other people in on the fun.
There’s something incredibly satisfying about taking something that only existed in your imagination and turning it into matter.
Three groups. Every piece turns.
A lot of my sculpting has become intertwined with Baron Minker, a musical project that gradually turned into something much larger.
As I was writing the music, I started associating the sounds with characters, places and fragments of a story. One character suggested another. A vehicle needed somewhere to go. An object needed a history. Eventually all of those disconnected ideas began developing their own internal logic, and the Minker-Verse started writing itself.
At its center is a world where imagination literally becomes matter.
Thoughts don’t remain thoughts there. Without some way of controlling your mind, thinking about something can cause it to physically manifest around you. Imagine ladders and suddenly ladders begin appearing across the landscape. React to that with fear and you’ve already started imagining the next thing.
That makes imagination both the greatest creative force in this universe and one of its greatest dangers.
A lot of the story has gradually become about that tension: imagination versus restraint, creation versus control, and what happens when people seek ownership over something they don’t fully understand.
I didn’t necessarily realize when I started building all of this how much those ideas reflected my own relationship with creativity. Apparently I was sneaking some autobiography in there without noticing.
The helmet ended up mattering to me almost as much as the character wearing it.
He looks like something that has been standing there a lot longer than you have.
A scientist sent in by our own government, with no real idea what he is walking into.
This series started as a personal challenge: sculpt characters I’d loved since childhood, work relatively quickly, and do as much as possible essentially “freehand” in 3D.
Beast was the first experiment. Once I finished him and realized how much fun I’d had, the obvious solution was to keep going.
The series became partly an exercise in nostalgia and partly a crash course in everything from posing and anatomy to materials, lighting, effects and character design. The goal wasn’t to redesign these characters beyond recognition. Quite the opposite.
I wanted to figure out what I’d always loved about them and capture that.
Scale, detail, and paying tribute to Jack Kirby.
Attempt number two. The first one was built out of a cereal box.
Magneto barely needs to move. Everything around him does.
Pinoke is different from everything else on this page. He belongs to no universe and no series, and he is the only piece here that became an object you can pick up.
1 piece · 8 turnsDigital clay, and then actual matter.
Everything here is sculpted digitally, most of it in Nomad. The thing that keeps pulling me back is that once a piece exists in 3D it stops being one image: I can move around it, change the lighting, shoot it from any angle, animate it, drop it into another environment, or print it and pick the thing up. The clips on every page are that last part made visible, each piece turning all the way around, which is also how I decide whether it is finished.
Characters, objects, props, or a shape that only exists in your head so far.