General Gnoll-edge

(Thanks to Mrs. 1Mac for the pun).

I finished the gnoll magic user and leader. Again, these are Arcane Legions mummies with heads and tails from World of Warcraft boardgame minis, plus a fair amount of wood glue and Milliput. The heads on the magic-user's totem are the original mummy heads. The golden blob on the spear was the bit of Milliput I used to hide the bits of pins that I couldn't quite trim off; I have no idea what it actually represents, but it seems to work!

Front...

...and back.

Seen from above, where you can get a good look at them, and vice versa!

WIP shots of the other gnolls. These are made in the same way above, except most of the bodies are Alliance elves. The big guy in the bottom corner is the original piece with a weapon swap. The bottom pic turned out a little blurry, even with some clumsy Photoshopping attempts to fix it; Sorry!

I have a WIP thread at Benno's with some more pics of these guys being painted. This is a busy season for me, but hopefully I'll have a completed gnollish band soon.

Gnoll-ification

More gnoll puns where that came from.

Let me start by suggesting how you should do 1/72 scale gnolls, since my way is basically bonkers: Just some Splintered Light 18mm Hyenamen, either in units or the boxed set. They're almost exactly 18mm tall, so you can either use them unmodified and settle for short gnolls, or try to make taller using some of the techniques EY uses to adapt 18mm figures to 1/72 scale. It's maybe a buck a figure, and it's not much of a fuss.

So here's what I'm doing:

A work in progress, obviously. I'll need to fill in the gaps and maybe add some mane with Milliput. The bodies are Alliance elves. I bought a set when it seemed Caesar Miniatures had stopped producing their set of elves, and these were the only alternatives in plastic. I got them despite their having notoriously large and spindly poses, as I thought I could use the heads for swaps with human-sized bodies for less weird-looking elves and drow. Then I thought about what to do with the bodies and realized that one classic D&D fantasy monster with tall and lanky proportions were gnolls.

The heads and tails are from gnoll figures from the World of Warcraft boardgame. I managed to get a whole bunch of them cheap, though they're now hard to find. Maybe Skaven heads would make a good substitute?

On the right is the original figure. My original plan was to take this pose and do a bunch of weapon swaps for variety, but I think they would still look to much like clones. For a magic user and champion, I used Arcane Legions mummy figures—you can see their original heads on the shaman's totem. These are also tall and spindly, and while I'll have to fill in the more skeletal bits, I like that the leaders are even more wildly skinny.

Height comparison. You can see just how much taller than Sven these guys are. I'm planning on preserving one of the original figures as a brute, maybe swapping his basic sword with something a little more fierce and crazy-looking.

I'll do another post when I'm done with all the conversion. Hopefully I'll have time to paint them in relatively short order, but we'll see.

"Real" Fire!

This big guy is a clear plastic Reaper Bones Large Fire Elemental. I haven't painted it yet; what you see is the result of "real" flickering fire action, effected by a cheap, disassembled tea light inserted into the mini. It's a cool trick, one that I've seen elsewhere many places. Frankly you could just as well skip this little tutorial and check out the much better one at Chris Palmer's excellent "All Bones About It" painting blog. One thing I tried to do was make the tealight accessible in case it ever needed replacing, so if you're interested in what I did differently, feel free to soldier on!

Here's the tea light, painstakingly torn apart with the aid of a hobby knife and razor saw. You can see where I slit down the middle of the base to begin getting inside the thing. Also shown is a regular 2" metal washer.

The guts of the device, glued to the washer. There was a lip at the bottom of the tealight that I had to slice off to make it flush with the washer. I also had to be sure that the switch at the bottom was accessible through the washer and had enough clearance to operate, and that I didn't get glue in the switch!

I built around the electronics with Milliput. At the time I had the figure glued to the base and had both in position over the electronics; this way I could sculpt around them and not get any putty in any sensitive bits. You can see that I've already primed the base in this shot.

I did a lot of cutting to make the base as short as possible while still containing all the gizmos inside. You can also sort of see where I drilled into the base of the figure so the lightbulb would go in. You can also see my new approach to attaching the figure to the base: I drilled three holes with a pin vice, inserted push pins from the bottom, and trimmed them so they were about a centimeter tall. I then drilled holes in the bottom of the figure to match.

Here you can see the bottom of the figure with the base attached. Note the three pinheads.

Here's the figure standing with the base attached, but disconnected from the full assembly.

And here it is fully assembled next to Sven the 1/72 comparison mini, who is feeling unaccountably warm all of a sudden. I did the best I could to minimize the height of the base, but it's still rather tall.

Totally worth it, though!

I still need to figure out how I want this critter painted. Chris has some excellent ideas. I'm pleased with how it's going so far though; I can take everything apart and reassemble with little effort, and it's already all glowy and cool. And glowy and cool is about everything I want out of a fire mini.

1/72 Zombies step-by-step Pt. 2: Painting

Last time, we performed some simple head swaps to create the Unpainted Undead.

Now let's get them looking a little less unpainted and a little more undead. These are some pretty basic tips here, as my painting doesn't involve much fancy technique, but everyone needs to learn the basics some time.

1.) The first step is to wash the figures with a mix of dish detergent and water, scrubbing with an old toothbrush. This cleans off the mold release agent miniature makers use, which can keep paint from sticking.

2. Next, I superglued the minis to their base, here a 3/4" fender washer. Usually the base that's molded with the figure will cover the hole in the washer, so I don't usually bother with more complicated basing. I then glued the washer to a framing nail, so the mini can easily be handled or kept in a styrofoam block when not in use.

3. I then sprayed the miniatures outside with a white plastic primer. You need a fairly warm, fairly low-humidity day to do this, or the primer won't stick or dry correctly. I make sure to rotate the figures so I cover as much as I can. I'm not totally sold on Krylon as a primer, but it provides a bright, fairly even palette that along with washing the minis will ensure the paint sticks.

4. One impulsive modification I made was to hack at the zombie bodies with a hobby knife, so they looked a little less like the healthy barbarians they originally were and more like the decomposing undead monsters they are. I painted these areas first. If I was smart, I would have also painted the teeth and eyes at the time.

5. Instead, I started painting the fleshtones, here a livid blue. It's a little bolder than what's probably realistic (for the walking dead, that is), but I like my hordes to have a distinct, consistent color scheme, and I hadn't painted a blue army yet. You can see that since the wounds are a layer beneath the zombie skin, it makes it easier to paint the skin over and around the wounds than the other way around. This is also why it would have worked better to paint the eyes and teeth first.

6. Here are the eyes and teeth painted in. I typically need at least two coats of paint to cover, so it wasn't that big a deal to repaint the flesh around the eyes and teeth once they were colored. I usually don't bother painting facial details, but the mouths on these minis are very obvious, and I thought the yellow eyes would give some zing to what would otherwise be a very unlively (heh) color scheme.

7. And here's our undead friend with all the color on him. I could have showed more steps, but I basically just blockpainted the zombie's clothes, with a little bit of drybrushing (painting raised areas with a brush with most of the paint wiped off) to bring out the details on the scabbard. Most of the paint I use is Delta Ceramcoat, a craft paint sold in stores like Hobby Lobby, along with some even cheaper brands. If I used tricks like outlining or wet-blending, I'd probably use paint specifically blended for miniature painting, but the cheaper paints are just fine for my purposes.

As far as I'm concerned, the zombies are painted, but not complete. The final steps will take the figures away from their current flat, plastic look into something with a little more definition and detail. Hopefully these will be done by the end of the week (update: zombies are complete!); otherwise they'll be delayed just a bit. Either way, I'm please with how my zombies are looking so far.

Zombies step-by-step Pt.1: Head swaps

Update: Be sure to check out Part 2 and Part 3 of this tutorial: Part 3 shows the final figures. Also, I should add that I adopted from Paul's "Head swop" guide for this technique, so thanks to him!

I'm getting ready to start my next project, so I figure I should put together a step-by-step guide for putting together and painting miniatures the Cheap Fantasy Minis way. I haven't painted any undead yet, and zombies are the obvious choice. Surprisingly there aren't many generic zombies available in 1/72 scale, but that's where this tutorial comes in. By cleverly chopping up and reassembling existing figures, you can have a miniature shambling horde in no time.

1. Necessary materials include a hobby knife, super glue, a pin vise with a very thin bit, a pushpin with a round head, a suitable miniature for the body (here, a tan Italeri barbarian), another for the head (a gray Caesar Miniatures skeleton), and a pair of needlenosed pliers with wirecutters. I've already separated the heads and bodies with the knife: When doing so, keep as much of the neck on the head as you can, and remove as much of the neck from the body as possible.

2. Take the pin vise and drill a hole in the center of where the neck was on the body figure. Obviously you don't want to drill all the way through the body, but you can go deeper than you'd think. The deeper you can go, the more secure the bond between the new head and body.

3. Position the head in the pliers as show, upside down with the neck pointing up.

4. Carefully drill all the way through the head with the pin vise. Start slow, and make sure you don't continue drilling through your workbench.

5. Add a little super glue to the hole in the body. Remove the head from the pin vise, impale the head with the pin from the top down, and push the pushpin through the top of the head in the hole you just made, as shown. Push the pin as far down as you can, hopefully just a little deeper than you drilled.

6. Once you can't push anymore, slide the head down to the neck and push it so the glue contacts both the head and body. Push and hold in place for about 30 seconds so the glue sets.

7. Use the wirecutters in the pliers to trim as much of the exposed pin as you can. A little bit will still be sticking out: Push on this proud remnant with the flat part of the pliers until the pin is completely inside the figure. You have to push pretty hard, but be careful not to damage the figure. Hold on tight near the head, and you should be fine.

8. Add a little more super glue in the hole on the top of the head. Once the super glue dries, you can apply some wood glue with a toothpick to any rough areas where the two parts of the new figure have gaps or otherwise don't quite match up.

And that's how it's done! Here's Sven confronting the Unpainted Undead, which was assembled in much the same way as described above. The light gray heads are figures from Twilight Creations' Zombies!!! game. The dark gray figures are the same Caesar Miniatures skeleton that I got the skullhead from. I may bend some of their limbs into different positions and use wood glue to make their bony limbs look a little more fleshy.

Next, prep and painting, probably in several weeks. I'll keep blogging in the meantime.

Kobolds - work in progress

I probably won't get much more painting until after Easter, but I had a little time to splash some more paint on my kobolds. These are plastic Bones miniatures from Reaper. You can get a pack of six for $3 or less in many places, which is my ideal average cost per mini. They only come with three poses, but the plastic is soft and flexible, so modding and reposing is pretty easy.

These guys aren't quite presentable and have a lot of clumsy splotches I need to paint over (the secret to a great paintjob is in the editing, I've found). Still, I thought I'd share.

These guys all had the same pose originally. Most of these mods involved bent limbs and chopped-off weapons. I also cut off and reposed a couple heads, so not every pose was so flat. Obviously the most radical mod is the sorcerer on the left. I think my attempt to dress him in Milliput arcane robes turned out okay, even if he looks a little lumpy. The totem comes from an Italeri Barbarian figure, which you may have seen before on this blog.

Again, these minis are all the same sculpt. Originally all the shields were raised like the guy on the left. I bent them and pinned them in place in a more usefully defensive pose.

I couldn't think of a way to repose the spears. Reaper claims that you don't need to prime their Bones figures, so since I didn't do any reposing, I tried painting these guys unprimed. The colors looked a little different, but I found the paint actually stuck better to these guys than their primed cousins (which makes me doubt the efficacy of my primer!).

Here's a kobold with Sven the comparison Viking and a goblin from Caesar Miniatures. Even though the Reaper figures are 28mm, they are about the same size as the 1/72 goblins. They are a little chunkier, and their weapons are bigger, but I think they'll look fine at the table.