Wendigo (slight conversion)

One of the things that can be odd about all miniature gamers (obviously myself included) is sometimes you get a miniature and there's nothing wrong with it but the way it looks just doesn't work for you.  Case in point the Wendigo for Malifaux.

When I originally purchased the Rasputina crew box my intention had been to paint the 4 ice creatures for my D&D game and to give Rasputina herself to Zoe to paint later.  Because I had no plans for the Wendigo I never even looked at it.  Now that I am planning on fielding Rasputina in Malifaux I decided I did want to paint her totem to go with her, one minor problem; as it comes in the box the Wendigo is ridiculous looking to me.

As you can see there's nothing actually wrong with the miniature.  It looks cool, it's well sculpted and it's a quantum leap forward from the original metal model.  But for me personally I've never liked miniatures where the basing or decorative elements completely overshadow the miniature itself.  In this case the fact that the cowboy that the Wendigo is devouring takes up more space than the Wendigo itself just didn't work for me.

The big challenge is that one of the Wendigo's feet and one of it's hands are molded onto/into the cowboy and weren't at all salvageable.  For the foot I did a somewhat passable putty job and then really just choose to go heavy on basing materials around it to hide the imperfections.  For the hand I snipped a hand off an old Heroclix model that was the right size and pinned it on.

The conversion is passable but one of the things I unfortunately didn't notice until I started painting it is the 'proper' Wendigo hand has three fingers and a thumb, my converted hand has four fingers and a thumb.  I don't think it's noticeable on the tabletop but I wish I had realized it earlier I could have done some more work on the hand.

At any rate, that's my Rasputina stuff done!

-Jay