Tiny People: Restless nights...

We've all had them: nights where sleep will not come. Why is this? Stress because of upcoming exams, relationship issues, maybe it's just the sound of the neighbour introducing his new girlfriend to the ceiling in a very loud manner... Or maybe it is because you really just can't put your brushes down as you are "on a roll"!
Whatever the reason, it is much better to use this time than just hope for sleep! So amid essay writing ( because yes I have a real life outside of wee men and monsters ) I took up another little project, that then became two...

I also dug out a picture of a past little paintjob that I'm really pleased about and decided to write an article on this guy as well...

So last night was illuminated by finding this on my desk:

image taken from GW site

So what to do with these guys? I don't play Chaos, in fact I don't play at all I just love the modelling aspects of the Hobby. Well the guy that really grabbed my eye, out of the five models in this kit, was the one with the gas mask and club. He's got a slightly dynamic pose, a bit of an evil "emptiness" due to the lack of facial features, just a few extra details: basically he has fun written all over him. I therefore chose to isolate him and paint him as a single character, with his own little base and everything!

And here he is before priming!

I couldn't resist it: usually I always modify a bought miniature in some way or another ( with the recent exception of my "Shadowblade" ) because I feel that in this way I somehow make an industrially mass produced model my own unique model.

So what happened to this guy? Well the club he was originally carrying was transformed into a cartoon-style oversized meat cleaver. To do this I scraped off the little barbs that were part of the original. I then shortened the club to adapt it to the blade which I cut and sanded off from a sheet of Milliput (in this instance I used the White Superfine Milliput). Finally, using some GreenStuff I shaped the two strips creating the attachments between blade and staff/handle.

The base was built upon a small wooden round base that I made a stock of for just such miniatures: ones that don't warrant a full on custom expensive base, but that you want to endow with something better than those horrible plastic gaming bases (sorry gamers: I know that the lack of size to embellish your HQ choices is sometimes a pain to you also). Two strips cut from a plastic "I" profile gave me room to fit in pipes and serve as a level surface to glue the anti-slip flooring. I really love pipes on post-apocalyptic bases, I don't know why but I do. I then filled in around the pipes using Milliput Standard Yellow/Grey putty.

The "I" profiles and the pipes. The larger pipe is from a specifically made plastic profile, the smaller pipe is the protective cap of a paintbrush.

The Milliput fill-in.
As you can see I created some simple varying levels by simply pushing and flattening the putty using a toothpick. Later, when flocking is added this wil create a more interesting surface than flat putty.

I then glued a few small slates around the bottom of the "I" profiles with PVA glue and finally using Superglue (please be careful using this stuff!) I fixed some simple dirt dust on the various desired areas.

The slates

The dirt dust (the dark brown stuff) is clearly visible. This photo also shows the circulation level on which the cultist will finally stand.

The final circulation surface was cut out of a sheet of textured plastic, the particular texture chosen is that of an anti-slip metal floor plate. As a final touch some screwed up papers and drink tins were modelled out of lead paper. In a future article I will show you the wonders of lead paper and its' uses for your bases and conversions!

Long story short here is the state of our cultist after a sleepless night:

Still a lot of work to be done, however I intend this to be a quick project so stay tuned for the final pictures of this guy!

BUT WAIT!!!!!

What happened to the other four???

A very good question! (Multiple exclamation marks are apparentely a sure sign of insanity. What do you think??!!)

Well my folly made me turn four of the lowliest most useless pieces into a decent sized project (by my standards anyway). The various poses of these guys led me to see them rampaging through alleys ransacking a town fallen to the dark gods of Chaos.

So out comes the box of random bases to hunt down something that could be used to create a small crossroads. I'll leave you simply with some pictures of this project as I intend to write a full step-by-step on creating a small scene using this piece as the walkthrough example.