A Grand Statue for a Grand Champion

Emma Lowry

This month I was tasked with creating a statue depicting Crow Magnus before, well… before things went bad for him and he was still a dashing, larger-than-life pro wrestler.

Sculpting posed statues is a ton of fun, and a unique challenge and learning experience for me. As a character artist, I usually sculpt human anatomy in a very neutral A-pose. This suits rigging and character set up well. An A-pose is pretty straight forward anatomically - muscles are at rest, and all a character’s clothing sits static and relaxed.

Because this was an environmental statue rather than a character model, I wanted to sculpt Crow Magnus doing his signature victory pose start to finish. I thought that this way, I could really pay attention to his pose and make it look realistic and appealing. Posed anatomy and clothing is certainly more of a challenge for me than a neutral A-pose. Clothing shifts, muscles flex and move, and bones in the forearms do their silly things they like to do. The human body is a big complex system of interlocking, moving pieces, and breaking that down as an artist is a fun puzzle.

After starting from a simple posed civilian and lots and lots of reference, this was the final sculpt! All that was left was to texture it like a bronze statue.

We hope you’ll love Crow Magnus and his story as much as we do!!