I'm going to be playing a one-off in a small group (originally 2 players, now 3). My friend Grant chose to play a fighter-type (my previous post's Dragonborn Paladin) so I figured I should play some sort of arcane spell-caster. Given that it's a small group I didn't want to play a stereotypical physically frail wizard so I went with a Warlock and and threw back to Fighting Fantasy using Balthus Dire as my inspiration. Using that as a starting point I needed to hit a few key points on my miniature and my character:
1. Physically powerful and imposing
2. Lightly armoured (but not unarmoured)
3. Heavily armed
Most 'martial' wizard figures are armed with fancy swords but I wanted more brutal simple weapons in line with the actual rules for D&D.
So, I decided to do a conversion and go way outside my skill-set by attempting to sculpt a major part of the figure. It turned out okay but I definitely learnt something for next time.
I started with a Khorne warrior from Games Workshop's easy to build line, left the head off and took the bottom spike off the axe.
After that I rolled out layers of green stuff over the torso leaving the arms exposed.
Once the green stuff was on I rolled it smooth using a round toothpick (soaked in water to keep the putty from sticking). I left it to harden for about half an hour and then used a cut-off plastic tube as a stamp to add studs to what will be a leather breastplate.
I tidied the edges of the armour up a bit with a hobby knife, added a head from the old Chaos Marauders plastics, and added some shoulder pads to hide some of my rougher work.
It turned out acceptably but was very difficult to work the putty over the existing musculature of the chaos warrior and that resulted in the whole thing being slightly more bulky than I planned.
If I had the whole thing to do over again I would have cut the figure at the waist and then removed the arms. At that point I would have built an armature out of wire to connect the head and arms to the legs and puttied over the armature rather than the existing torso.
Live an learn I suppose.
Hopefully I'll get a chance to paint him in the next day or two and then we'll see how it all came together.
-Jay
I like how the conversion turned out, but it is pretty thick in the middle for "lightly armored". aside from sculpting a new torso, you could also roll the putty thin before you apply it. Sometimes that works better, although given the huge chest of the chaos figures, I think you are are always going to end up looking pretty thick.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the feedback. I agree 100%.
DeleteI did thin the putty a bit but once I started rolling it I had problems in the waist area due to the positioning of the arms and the stuff sticking out of and up from the waist.
Looking back the other option (beyond the armature idea) might have been to use a multi-part Marauder model and putty the breastplate over the torso prior to assembly.
I learned a few things that worked and a few things that didn't. :)
There might be a Warlock version 2 at some point in the next couple of weeks.
ReplyDelete