Originally Posted by
manowar
Well, that depends on if they choose to physically sculpt it. I have a few friends who are artists and now use "Z" brush, which is a 3D sculpting program. They produce a sculpture digitally and manipulate it as they wish. They can make it bigger, smaller, copy pieces, and mirror them. Then they have the part "printed" on a 3D printer, or cut out on a milling machine. I've seen them produce something in a day, and have it printed out the next day. It's an amazing process, and can yield quite amazing results.
For anything like a vehicle, its almost a must, because you can create a very complicated piece in a short amount of time, and just have the pieces printed out for a prototype. The same drawings can then be used to make the parts for the production piece. The company I work for part time makes items for SONY, manly video game props. They can take the files for weapons in a video game, email it to this company. They can then use a 3D printer and print out a physical piece and create a full size replica of the weapon used in a video game.
I'm sure for something like a figure, half the fun is sculpting it, but for anything large scale, they might sculpt it virtually and go through a few prototypes. They may even have a buck cut out, and sculpt over it to finesse it with more detail.