The Headless Hunter

While waiting for futher details on Kairye Seeker to set (more pics when that's all done) I started yet another project...

First a history lesson.

Games Workshop at one point released a 54mm scale game called Inquisitor. It never caught on half as much as it deserved, all because of that in spite of an excellent concept most gamers just weren't fond of the scale. The game's RPG-esque rules gave a great deal of freedom as to characters and concepts, but the line of models was only about a dozen to begin with, making it a fairly daunting prospect to represent characters other than the sample characters in the game. One such sample character was Brother-Captain Artemis of the Deathwatch. For a guy named after a Greek godess, he was fairly kick-ass. In fact, space marines were outlawed in most gaming circles as far as Inquisitor was concerned. Being a power armour nerd and into gaming even back then, I obviously got the model as soon as I could. In my defence, I was grooming it to represent my psychic Inquisitor instead, but my gaming group dropped Inquisitor and I left the model half finished.

Until now, that is. I found him again a while back and thought about bringing it back as a mascot for my current smaller-scale-but-similarily-armoured war games army (space marines, naturally).

My premise: I want to make a regular trooper/veteran and not a captain. I'm also missing some parts, most notably his original sword (chopped it of to create a halberd originally) and his head (!). This provides me with ample opportunity to sculpt a larger scale face and a combat blade (basically, a cross between a machete and Crocodile Dundee's "that's no' a 'noif, this is a 'noif". The details on his armour are also filed off, so I have to sculpt new chest plate adornments and such. Of course the whole miniature will be repainted in the black and silver of the Deathwatch once it's all done.

On the left is a pic of what parts I found laying around (including the addition of a plastic shield-shaped ornament snatched from a GW sprue that makes a nice, ornate 'belt buckle') and below you can see the armature for the blade. I will attach this to the arm for sculpting and add pics once that's done.

Space Marine Librarian conversion

Some slightly grainy pics of a space marine librarian (a psyker from GW's game Warhammer 40,000, popularly referred to as 40k) that I sculpted details on this past weekend.

Mostly for 40k players: I used parts from several GW kits (including the Space Wolf Pack, Dark Angels Ravenwing, Command Squad and Tactical Squad kits). The conversion is really simple to do and I finished the posing and making the armature for the 'skull fireball' probably in less than half an hour, and I am slow. Some of the parts were old leftovers from other projects, hence the coats of paint present on notably the backpack and the spell casting hand. The staff started life as a plastic toothpick. These are by the way great for any kind of weapon shafts and staffs and I always keep a bunch laying around so I'm not shafted when in need (yes, that was a bad pun - so drown me!).

On the sculpting side the most challenging part was making the robes look like actual cloth and flow like caught in a draft. I imagine him standing in a creepy breeze while performing his sorcery.

The arcane spiral pattern on his staff also was no picnic to get looking smooth while still keeping some definition. I ended up going for the feeling of carved wood (most GW librarian models have arcane patterns sculpted onto their armaments rather than carved into them, but I like how the effect turned out). I'm curious as to how it will end up when properly painted...

More pics when I've had time to paint it...

Kairye Seeker

To start off this minature sculpting blog (to anyone who's actually reading: Hello...!) I'm uploading a picture of a current work in progress (also my first miniature sculpted completely from scratch).

The scale is about equivalent to 25mm wargames (e.g. GW games etc) and the material is Kneadite/Green stuff over a garden wire armature. The character depicted is an old fantasy RPG character portrayed by my friend Erika Hoffman (prolific artist and designer who's eventually going to make a living in a the creative world were most of us will always be but enthusiastic dilettantes *hats off*) after an illustration done by her. This sculpt is a project I've been at on and off for a long time, what with university life and so on taking its toll.

More pics when I've sculpted proper details on her.