Dragonbornses

I had a spate of Dragonborn characters rolled up for my D&D 5e campaign and as I had no miniatures to suit, I converted some.

The first was fairly straight forward conversion from a GW plastic lizardman. He's a Blue Dragonborn Ranger who chose to wear leather armour so I've painted him up with leather armour bits and added a bow, and a greenstuff bedroll and small sack on his hip using greenstuff putty. It wasn't until later that I wondered to myself, if Dragonborn were cold blooded, would they need to keep warm at night?

The other was a Green Dragonborn Warlock. I converted this from the mage knights figure below. I think it came up okay. I tried to paint the Juju stick in his left hand and the belt buckle with a dark ruby effect but it didn't really work. Oh well, I'll keep trying...

Dragonbornses

I had a spate of Dragonborn characters rolled up for my D&D 5e campaign and as I had no miniatures to suit, I converted some.

The first was fairly straight forward conversion from a GW plastic lizardman. He's a Blue Dragonborn Ranger who chose to wear leather armour so I've painted him up with leather armour bits and added a bow, and a greenstuff bedroll and small sack on his hip using greenstuff putty. It wasn't until later that I wondered to myself, if Dragonborn were cold blooded, would they need to keep warm at night?

The other was a Green Dragonborn Warlock. I converted this from the mage knights figure below. I think it came up okay. I tried to paint the Juju stick in his left hand and the belt buckle with a dark ruby effect but it didn't really work. Oh well, I'll keep trying...

Forgotten Heroes - Final

So its time I submit the finished product. I'm in two minds about photographing my miniatures. On the one hand I keep thinking that I need a proper light box thingy that people use to make their photographs look professional. On the other hand though, I have to remember that my paint jobs don't really warrant the expense. I've ended up using my smart phone and struggling with a couple of lamps, one of which causes the phone camera to strobe if not in the right place.

In any case here's the finished product.

Thanks again to Forgotten Heroes and particularly Roger Webb for inviting me to participate. I've certainly enjoyed the process and have tried to step up to the challenge. I'm pretty happy with him overall and I'm sure he'll find a place in any pulp games I play. 

BTW I did find some examples of gangsters with leg cuffs from the 1930s, but maybe not so pronounced as this guy :-)

Forgotten Heroes update

So Roger accepted my late entry to the forgotten heroes challenge so its full steam ahead for the final week. The other entrants seem to have picked up the pace and some have multiple entries.
I've finished the figure itself so it up to throwing some paint around. I've been doing some more browsing to check out the colour schemes and this is when I find that a figure does exist for Sandman in the heroclix range.

I' reckon though that my figure still meets the criteria as I am using a different model that I've based mine on and my inspiration is drawn from a different comic era.I was chatting with Craig and he tells me the figure I'm going for was from a 90s revival rather than the original 30s/40s version.

Definitely aiming for the black and tan version now. I've added a whiff of sleeping gas to his modifed weapon, some straps to his gasmask and cuffs to his trousers. I'm not sure about the cuffs though. I see them on some illustrations but not others - and I still haven't seen any cuffs on actual gangster photos on the very limited research I've done. I'll see how it looks with a bit of paint on...

Forgotten Heroes

There was talk of making some unique miniatures for super hero/villain types over at ForgottenHeroesSite and I had a mind to join in but as usual life's been getting in the way.

I was talking with my wife a week ago and she encouraged me to do something anyway and she suggested I do the Sandman. I immediately started thinking of Neil Gaiman's version, from the graphic novels I read many years ago, and started looking for existing miniatures. I couldn't find any in my collection that I could easily convert in a short time.

Then I remembered that Craig, a friend of mine from long ago, mentioned that Sandman was quite an old DC hero that went back to 1939. In fact it was he who let me read his Neil Gaiman graphic novels and showed me an old DC comic that featured the original character. I went looking for images and saw two main versions, a guy in a green suit and purple cloak and another in just a tan suit and overcoat, both also sporting a fedora, gasmask and special sleep gas emitting gun.

I went looking for a figure to match and found Mark Copplestone's Gangsters in a FLGS, in particular, Sam Spade. He's not quite what I'm after in that his overcoat is slightly different to those in the comics but I think he'll be good enough for me with a few changes.

I've started converting this miniature and I've changed the right arm to that of a Reaper bones cowboy figure that I've sacrificed for his revolver-wielding hand. I'm now throwing a bit of greenstuff around to blend in the arm, modify the weapon and add a gasmask to the face. I think I'll go for the tan-suited gent as I'm not so good at making cloaks yet ;-).

Now I just have to convince Roger to accept my late entry...

Pretty little ghouls

I've had a few older style GW ghouls for  many years but never enough for a complete unit. More recently I received some GW plastic ghouls, you know, the hunched over ones that look nothing like the old metal ones. It took me a while, but I worked out how to make the new plastic ones look more like the old ones with a bit of putty and glue.

I wanted them upright like the old style ones which caused a bit of a problem. The new plastic ones look more like beetles to me, all hunched over, so I straightened them up by adding some guts with greenstuff and shaping and refitting the arms into the sockets. The heads still sat too low on the necks so I cut away the neck bit and made new necks with putty. I had to do a fair bit of puttying to make them look reasonable as you can see above.

This is the back rank. I posed the arms so that they were mostly by their sides or flung back in ghoulish fasion to stay out of the way of the front rank. I cut a few of the extra bones off them that they wore a trophies peircing their skin as this nonsense did not appear on the older style ghouls. Even so there's alomst a whole skeleton on the back of one new ghoul figure which I couldn't really remove without compromising the figure.

This is the front rank with their arms reaching forward. I forgot how I got the purplish colour on the skin so I had to experiment with a very watered mix of red and dark blue to make a maroon colour. These guys gave me a bit of trouble as every time I went to carve a bit of putty off or clean a flash line, the body would come away from the putty belly or the legs would snap off the putty belly. I ended put waiting for the putty to dry, then pulling the legs away from the putty and gluing it with superglue, then waiting for that to dry, then pulling the body away from the putty and regluing that. I had to follow the same process for the arms and the head as they all had putty bits between them and the body.

This is a rank of the older figures . It seems I also put a little bit of brown wash into the eye sockets at the same time that I washed the bones, to give them that sunken look.

Here's all the figures together as a unit. I think I did fairly well to get them to blend together. The colour scheme  does most of the work I guess.

Last of all I have this little fella which has been knocking around my collection for many years. I suspect he might have come out of a collection of GW Talisman miniatures I bought once. He's a little different again so I've stuck him at the back :-)

Example Hobbit from wargames factory miniature

This is just a quick note to show that you can make hobbits from old Wargames Factory Saxon, Viking and Norman miniatures.

Front

 Back

I took a sheet of saxon bits. I took the leg bit and cut out the legs between the tunic and the shoes. I then glued the shoes directly onto the base of the tunic and assembled the rest of the figure as normal.I added a bow and quiver to his back and then I used a bit of green stuff to add a bedroll and strap, a small paunch on his belly, some hair on his shoes to make bare feet and a leg of cured ham on his belt. I also cut down his sword to look more appropriate for a hobbit.

I reckon it will paint up okay and cheaper than a purpose bought miniature :-)

Goblin Army Additions

I've been very slowly building up an Orc and Goblin army for Warhammer. Every time I get some miniatures painted however, a new rule set and army list comes out to ruin my progress. AoS of course completely ruined things so I'm now aiming at a Kings of War army instead. I hope to play 2nd Ed this Monday if all goes well.

In any case I made these Squig hoppers. I had received a couple of stock standard GW figures as 'extra' bits in an ebay purchase but these were not really enough to make up a unit. I decided that I could make my own from plastic night goblins out of one of the warhammer boxes plus some green stuff. Here they are unpainted.

Here they are painted and based

I remember fondly the native American inspired goblins of 4th ed and always wanted to get some of them made up. Time of course ruined these plans with them being completely dropped and then partially brought back, only to disappear in the void of AoS. I've since ignored this and went ahead and created two heroes on gigantic spiders. The first one is a GW metal goblin with a plastic orcy sword swapped in and a bunch of feathers stuck to his helmet. The feathers were off some GW plastic Empire handgunners who didn't need them anymore. I painted the sword yellow as an attempt to look like a 'magic flame sword' to give him some heroic flavour, something goblins desperately need ;-)

This next one is I think some kind of goblin miniature, I can't remember from where, painted up to look like  a goblin shaman on a gigantic spider. You might be able to see the spider's victim wrapped up in spider silk on the base underneath him. I think the victim was green stuff wrapped with everyday cotton thread and a skull stuck on top for a head.





The two spiders were like the one pictured below. I tried to bend the legs into interesting shapes but they snapped so I had to pin and glue them back in place. I don't think you can see too well but the front legs are raised in a menacing way. They are based on 40x40mm bases.

Hobbit Conversions, screamers and an old pine box

I've been sick with a cold this week so this update is a bit late in coming. I still have a blocked ear for some reason :-)

As a job lot of miniatures I received from eBay a while back, I found 6 hobbit miniatures included as an extra prize.

They all looked like the guy above but different colours. I think they'd be from the board game 'The Hobbit: defeat of Smaug'. I thought I'd use them for roleplay games but the same static pose was a bit boring. So I converted them to these...

Using bits from my bits box and some putty, I now have a wizard, soldier, swordsman, slinger, spearman and an archer.

I also had a shrieker figure from *many* years ago that I had never painted. I decided that it would be fairly easy to make up a few more of my own with green stuff, so here they are.

I'm sure the keen eyed can spot the original.



Lastly, I knocked up a pine box coffin for dungeon detail.

 

I made this from paddlepop sticks and glue.

Tree monsters

Here's some tree monsters I created about a year and a half ago from wire, green stuff and leftover bits from the GW dryads box.

They were supposed to be treekin for Warhammer but then, you know, that *thing* happened to the Warhammer world and stuffed up my plans for building a wood elf army. I'm sure they'll still pop up in a roleplay game or Kings of War battle somewhere. 

Faces added with greenstuff. Ironically the hands I added were mostly made from dryad faces. 

Paintwork done including owl, little imp and skull with leaves.

I made a total of six of these beasts and based them on 40mm bases.

Eldritch blob, giant leeches and larvae

More Monsters

Eldritch Blob

This is some molten lead that I absent-mindedly splashed on my workbench one day. I thought I'd paint it up as some sort of Lovecraftian nether-world thingy.

Giant Leeches

"Millions of leeches, leeches for me" sitting round a fire pit. They are made from wire and green stuff, including the bricks on the base. The fire is made from bits of stick and kitty litter. The leeches are about 25mm tall.

Larvae

Don't know if you can see it but these are the tortured souls of naughty people doomed to crawl around as larvae in the very pits of Hell itself. The bases were an attempt at lava. So, larvae on lava. The heads are GW zombies but the bodies are putty and wire.

Some Monsters I made...

Some monsters I made

Cacodaemon

Supposed to be the Cacodaemon from the old PC game DOOM. Made from scratch and stands roughly 35mm high. I used a largish wooden bead on a brass rod that I covered with greenstuff. I added more brass rod for the horns which were bent to shape and then had green stuff added. I added 0.6mm wires for the underbelly bits.

Eye of the Beholder

 

This one I made from scratch from a wooden bead, brass wire and greenstuff putty. Roughly 40mm high.

Otyugh

An Otyugh! Or is it a neo-otyugh? I could never tell. Scratch built from a wooden bead, brass wire and greenstuff. Stands about 30mm tall. The base is covered in kitty litter.