Hi, my name is Russ and as the lead sculptor here at Steamforged Games. It fell to me to handle the exciting task of designing two pieces to coincide with Critical Role’s first official booth presence at Gen Con. After lots of fun conversations with everyone at SFG and Critical Role, we decided that a collectible bust of Yasha and an alternative version of Vax, with his awesome wings, were two great choices for the fans.

As both pieces were a little unusual compared to a typical mini design, we thought it would fun to share with you an insight into the process of putting them together!

Let’s begin with Yasha. Whist she isn’t the first collector bust we have designed, she is the first one where we knew that we wanted a true collector display item. Previously, when Steamforged has designed busts, they are for hobbyist and competition painters and come in lots of unassembled, unfinished pieces requiring a lot of effort (and glue!) to assemble at home. We knew that we wanted to offer the Critters something beautiful in a box that they could immediately display and enjoy.

This meant that we had to design a piece that could be manufactured in a single unit and realized with a fine, polished finish. Our first thoughts therefore were to plan the posing and composition to support this single piece constraint.

I began with Yasha’s 28mm scale miniature as a reference point. The beauty of digital sculpting is that scale is something that can be easily adjusted, so it was straightforward process to scale her up and use it as a foundation to build all new parts for.