Not a lizard

One of my favorite Cryx warcasters -- perhaps my favorite after Goreshade -- is Skarre Ravenmane. In the original version of the game, she was not only a kick-ass lady, but her "Skarre bomb," as her Sacrificial Strike became known, was one of the early game's signature powerful abilities. However, there was one problem -- her model was terrible.

(Stolen from Privateer Press)

It's very awkward and 2-dimensional. Even that gorgeous paint job and picture taken from the miniature's "good side" can't hide how bad the design is. I sucked it up because Skarre was my go-to girl, but kept my eye out for a replacement miniature. I'd get my chance soon enough.

(Also stolen from Privateer Press)

A few years down the line, Privateer Press released a series of Iron Kingdom role-playing game minis. I ignored most of them, but one of the models in the set was a gun-toting, sword-wielding Satyxis. Color me sold. There were a few immediate problems: that gun and holster on her left hip would have to go -- Skarre wouldn't learn to use a gun until "Superiority"; she'd need a ritual dagger in her left hand; and I'd need warcaster armor on her back.

This is the first go. The gun was clipped off and the area sanded down. In a fit of impatience that I'm going to regret later, I didn't green stuff in the missing portions of her holster's belt, as you can see. I then clipped off a scythe head from an ancient Warhammer Fantasy skeleton arm and pinned it on a paperclip. Next, I twisted her arm out with a pair of pliers and then glued the scythe blade into her hand.

Yes, it's a large blade. It's a miniature game and it's a ritual implement, so you'll have to forgive me.

The base, as you can see, is miserable. It's going to need a major overhaul. Just what I'm going to do, though, I'm not sure yet.

This is the warcaster armor. It's an old Space Marine backpack -- possibly Chaos flavor, but don't quote me on that -- with the vents clipped off and the top trimmed back and sanded down. Green stuff replaced some of the trimmed areas. The vents are skulls from the same Warhammer Fantasy skeleton set. Some green stuff was used to cover up the paperclips.

That's the warcaster armor on the back now. I also put a few green stuff bindings on the dagger, but it's not done yet -- not by a long shot. That blade is way too long to not get some kind of ornamentation; it's also the source of Skarre's signature ability, so it needs to stick out.

I didn't get a good shot of the back. Here's more of the front.

Finally, here's the work I've done so far on the dagger. I'm forcing myself to experiment with green stuff, including different levels of cures; the bindings were sculpted from green stuff that was near the end of its workability. They're not perfect; next time I do something like that, I'm going to make sure the green stuff still has some tack.

Swamp template No. 2, part 4

Sorry for the blurry image. Here's the first layer of water, with swamp muck.


It came out a lot darker than I wanted, and it's much more opaque than I'd hoped, but it's a great effect. I still have another layer of water to put down, and the standing tree isn't done yet. I think this one will end up looking better than the first by a wide margin at this rate.


I think this proved my point! The Envirotex Lite is still wet -- it won't be set enough for me to work it for at least another day -- but it's looking amazing. There's a real sense that the water is disgusting and unpalatable; the creature looks like it's surfacing just slightly.

It's still not as clear as I'd like. In my experimental runs, the Envirotex started cloudy and cleared as it dried, but even if it doesn't clear up at all, that's OK -- this still looks wonderful. Some water effects will add ripples to the beast, and the tall tree will get some gray and then white highlights. I really need to finish some bog trogs before I go and start my next template, but that one's going to be idyllic -- pretty rocks, nice grass, perhaps some catty wampus, and clear water with fish and crawdads (again).

Swamp template No. 2, part 3

The rotting log has been finished, sanded, painted and glued into place. It's a pretty light-duty glue -- when the Envirotex dries, it'll hold the sucker in place far better.

It's just successive layers of brown, each lighter than the last. I think I ended up using two washes and five shades of brown; after it was in place, I added to light touches of green-brown to the part that will be below the water line. Later, I'll be brightening up the top half a little more, moving it toward grey, but that's not going to be until the Envirotex is in place. When that's dry (or mostly dry, depending on if I'm willing to destroy a brush), I'll be adding more green-yellow to the side of the log at the water line, and maybe even have some float on the top of the Envirotex to simulate pond scum.

I ditched the other plants I'd sculpted; I couldn't get them to work right, but my Milliput is acting weird, too. It's crumbling and falling apart; I don't know if it's old or I didn't add enough of the yellow part to the white part. (Milliput's an epoxy -- it has two substances that, when combined, become a workable putty that dries to a sandable finish. It's good for creating detail-light structures or for making cores to build up from; that's because it's easier to work and it's water soluble. However, it cracks very easily and doesn't hold fine shapes like green stuff.) In either case, the plants are next to unworkable and I'm having the damndest time getting branches on them. I'll try again with new sculpts on swamp template No. 3; this tree turned out not bad, so I feel l ought to keep trying to sculpt.

To add a little more to the final swamp, I ended up grabbing an old pewter tree I've had lying around for at least six years -- before I moved down to Orange County -- and I twisted it and bent the branches so it looks forlorn and droopy. It's going to hang over the other elements, but it's thin so it should come out looking OK.

Croak Hunter, part 2

Done with Croak Hunter No. 1. It turned out pretty decently, but it was definitely a learning piece -- the zenithal highlighting worked much better. I'm not going to go whole hog on the technique -- at least, not yet -- but I'll be folding it into my repertoire.

Most of the muddiness has been cleaned up, but it's not a very strong piece, composition-wise. Among the lessons I learned on this mini: If you're going to use a dye technique, rather than a painting technique, you must know what you're about before you put ink to pewter. I'm normally fairly freewheeling when I paint something, adding color and replacing it as it suits me; that's just not an option with this highlighting technique. Luminosity turns to muddy very, very quickly as you add layers of color -- just look at the Croak Hunter's feet and hands if you don't believe me. They used to look like his throat pouch at one time! There's also only two colors in the model (brown and black don't count); Anthony suggested putting blue in the shadows, which I should have. I should have also folded more orange into the model; the eyes and lobster-claw necklace got orange, but nothing else did. It should have been a stronger sub-theme; I may go back and add it to one of the bags at his waist and some of his turtle shells.

The shells look better in this photo than they do in real life, which is funny -- the rest of the model looks better in real life than it does in the photos. There are a handful of examples of the miscues that come with inks on this side -- at the ankles and where the bracers meet the upper arms, for example. If you mis-lay paint, it's really really devastating and a real pain in the rear to clean up. The best solution would be to keep my inks close to their base colors, but that also means buying more paints. There's nothing worse than buying 3 bucks worth of paint for a highlight on one unit. ... That's a lie, there are several million things that are worse, but it'd still break my top, dunno, 500 of crappy things I put up with sometimes.

The spear didn't go so poorly, though. It could probably use another layer of brass color (I generally use whatever gold I can get my hands on -- in this case, Reaper's "Antique Gold" -- mixed with a medium brown.)

There's a lot of "what I may go back and do" on this model, but I just couldn't look at frogs anymore. I have a feeling that the longer I look at it, the more dissatisfied I'm going to be, so off to do another pair of Bog Trogs!

Swamp template No. 2, part 2

The floating log is coming along. The other half is still bare Miliput, and this half needs more roots and more sanding, but what doesn't, yaknowhatimean?



And swamp creature is added to the template. It'll look better with some water, I promise. I hope. I think.

Not a Lizard

The great Menoth cleansing proceeds on schedule. Paladins getting a scrub? Check. Sharing a bath with Exemplars? Oh, check. Is it just me, or is it getting hot in here?

Post-bath relaxing. Paladin cape came off because I can get it on the model better this time; shoulder pad and base came off because Simple Green hates it some crappy super glue bonds.

Croak Hunter, part 1

It seems every faction in WarmaHordes gets its own solo that terrifies the living poop out of the enemy. True to form, the Blindwater Congregation gets the Croak Hunter, a nasty little guy that has stealth, poison on a ranged weapon and punishes opponents that damage him without killing him.



Sharp-eyed viewers may notice the splotchy white base on this guy. It's the same base that showed up on my initial failures on the Bog Trogs; this guy is also an attempt at zenithal highlighting. The difference is that this pass actually worked. I'm not sure why -- probably because this guy is a lighter-colored model all around. Maybe it's just because I need to bang my head against brick walls to get anything done right.

While it looks muddy here, the red-to-green fade is actually quite nice and natural looking. Some additional coats really made the red pop while still having a believable fade into the green. But here, a picture does more than my words:

Yes, there's a lot of brown in his feet still. A little bit of creative mixing will fix that problem; it stems from not having a suitable dark color there yet. I'm quite stunned at how nicely this whole thing turned out, all things considered. I am living in fear of overworking the colors; I feel like there's precious little I could do to make most of the skin look much better.

Here's the backside. The spear and rope is almost done -- quick work, too -- it just needs a highlight coat to fix up some of the muddiness, and a few coats of bronze on the pointy bits, of course. The turtle shells are a bit of a flummox -- I really don't know how to approach them. There's way too much red as it stands in the model now, so that's out, but I'm loathe to introduce another color. Speaking of -- those red bags on his left hip will be toned into dark brown. There's just way too much red on the front right now, and it's throwing off the whole composition.

Finally, there's a significant craftsmanship issue on this model -- grains of sand somehow ended up on the legs and feet. I'm going to fix it in post, so to speak -- it'll get folded into the model as a sort of general muddiness at some point, but I'm annoyed with it. I'm not sure how the grains got onto the legs to begin with, and I'm doubly unsure of how I missed them until I had a layer of green down already.