Being a creator taught me one particular thing among others. There are three kinds of creative ideas:

Those that come and go, leaving only memories of things that you could have done, but never will;
Those that incarnate via some creative medium and are sooner or later forgotten, because they've done with you and you're done with them;
And those that settle into your mind for months and years, driving you to accomplish more to make them live and that wouldn't leave you until you'll execute them with as much passion as you could.

Hello dear readers. My name is Nikita, I'm a part of the 'Crucible of Games' team and today I'll tell you about one of the 'third kind of ideas'. The Proserpine Shrineguard - a sci-fi sorcerous army, heavily inspired by Ancient Egypt. An army that we've spent 3 years building and that is currently vying for your support on Kickstarter.

That's how that army looks now. But it survived several redesigns and a lot of hard work, and I'd like to tell you how it had been developed, using examples of the infantry sculpts, and show the 'behind the curtains stuff' that happened in all those years:)

It's all started with a concept back in 2019. Being a passionate fan of miniature wargaming and a 3d-printing aficionado, I was started thinking about making a set of sci-fyish models that could have an 'Ancient High Egypt' vibe. Not that otherworldly-alien, like Warhammer 40k Necrons, for example, but rather something more glorious and magic-fuelled. I started with some simple modular pyramids (because back in the day, I only know how to model some easy CAD things). But soon enough I understood that the terrain would not be enough for me, and I want to make miniatures for this (at that time unnamed) faction.

So I started to learn how to sculpt:)

And that was the first result :) Well, OK, maybe not first-first, but the first that looked decent enough for me. Reinforced long coats, crested helmets with a fabric mask for the face, hard 'Egyptian' collar and an old-looking rifle with a drum magazine. Looks promising, - I thought. But the army needs more than one type of unit - and I started to make them.

The first four units of Shrineguard. A glider-riding archer with a compound bow, a close-quarters warrior with twin knopeshes, a regular trooper and a heavy guy in bulky armour with some big machinegun. In all of them (except the regular trooper) I tried to invoke a reference to some of the Egyptian sacred creatures. The 'archer' was inspired by a hawk, the swordsman by a snake and a stormtrooper - by a scarab.

I was honestly enjoying myself, especially given the fact that those were actually the first decent minis that I sculpted, so I decided to show those models to my good friend, colleague and professional 2d-artist Yaroslav. That was the moment when I learned A LOT about how the stylization and continuity of design across the model line should be executed. So, I needed to return back to the drawing board:)

The second iteration of Proserpine trooper arrived shortly. With the help of my friend, hours of talks about the design principles and a few of Yaroslavs' sketches I nailed some more or less interesting designs. With the heavy pauldrons, the silhouette became more distinct, engraved details started to alternate with flat surfaces, and the asymmetry of the coat also added bonus points to the overall look.

The next stage was to remake the swordsman model. This one was even test printed and painted. The strange 'arcs' on the shoulders had been scrapped, the pauldrons were redone as well as the body and the helmet. Now it started to resemble the snake much more.

At this moment I understood that I need some extra funds to sustain my 3d-printing/modelling hobby, and decided to start a Patreon, named Crucible of Games. Given that Shrineguard was meant to be released on Kickstarter from the beginning, I needed some new models for the Patreon, so this project went on a little hiatus… Until the moment when I understood that my modelling skills had been improved and that I need to revamp my models totally, because of their low quality from the technical point of view:)

And around the November of 2020, the new edition had been done:) Armoured coat and collar, slight asymmetry and some distinct silhouette were still there but totally reimagined. The whole sculpt was actually done from scratch, but with all the things in mind, that I learned during the previous iterations:)

Approximately at that time, we started to form a team at Patreon along with my friends and colleagues Otto and Landon, and we needed some new models to be added at the Welcome Pack in January, so I decided: why not make some Proserpine character? That's how Proserpine Disciplinary Officer became the first officially released (exclusively for Patreon) Shrineguard model:

Yup, that's a single model, but a looooot of various bits, that allows it to look quite different:) After that 2021 had become a year of Kickstarter preparation.

With the help of Otto and later Rick (who joined our team mid-year) we started to shape different parts of the forces of Proserpina - I was still responsible for the infantry, Otto made vehicles and Rick made his well-renowned vase-mode terrain (now in a Shrineguard style). However, keeping pace was a bit hard, cause we were able to work on Shrineguard only in the moments when we were free from our Patreon responsibilities. So, it took nearly a year, but we finally managed to make it:) However, before the release, we surely made some 'last fixes' to the already prepared sculpts:

And besides that, we prepared a very special free miniature to promote our faction. After all, the sorcerer is a centrepiece of any arcane faction:

This was a hard 3 years of work and it couldn't be done without the support of various people that surrounded us. Our families and friends, our mentors and patrons, they all made this happen because they believed in us. And we, in return believed in the Shrineguard:)

And a final piece of advice that I've got for any creator (especially aspiring one). Sometimes, the work on your miniature line could be hard. Most probably it would require a lot of work spent on designs that you would never open later. But, please, even in the darkest hours of doubts, remember that you need to keep the work. And there would always be people around, who would support you in your trying :)

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