From Curt: The Snail, the Crane and the Frog (50 Points)

Hi All!

I've made the sub-light hop from Caprica to land on picturesque Arda, the planet of high fantasy. I've been looking forward to this as I've been in a sort of all-things-fantasy mood this past year, being quite taken by the game 'Moonstone', and preparing several 10mm Warhammer Fantasy forces for 'Monsters and Magic' (M2), the fantasy version of 'To the Strongest'.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I was cruising around on MyMinFactory and came across this brilliant digital sculptor who goes by the handle 'CobraMode'. His/Her designs are just incredible, having such a unique and whimsical sense about them. The overall aesthetic is sort of a mystical medieval Asia, but with the twist of having anthropomorphic creatures as the primary characters - I find this all very cool. Suitably impressed, I plumped down for several of the print files (okay, a lot of the print files). 

This little tryptic sets the scene: A Feixian sword-for-hire, travels with his loyal pack-snail (squire?). They've made it to the outskirts of the Great Mushroom Forest when they are met on the road by a Hikiga swordsman baring their way. The Crane swordsman, sensing this is no simple road warden, leaps from his faithful steed into the attack. The Fog Ogre (Fogre?) goes into defensive 'stone pose', his petal-blade poised to meet the Feixian's aggressive onslaught...

I had a lot of fun working on all of these models as they're so characterful. Being fantastical creatures, I just opened up a bunch of paint pots and sort of went wild with them.

The Pack-Snail is an absolute hoot, being festooned with all sorts of adventuring gear. 

If you look closely, in amongst all the baggage, you can see a sock drying on a line, a pot of soup being rudely jostled and a rooster(?!) precariously teetering on his nest atop it all. 

I used various blends of contrast paint for his shell (I've become a big fan of using Contrast Medium for wet blending), and, thinking of him as a helpful creature, I added a Moorish target shield to his 'hand' (propodium?) which he's offering up to his liege. 

I did up the Fexian swordsman in assorted colourful layers, something that you would perhaps see in a Chinatown festival. As his pose is quite dynamic, I had to paint him while in his individual parts and assemble later. 

He's such a delicate figure that I'm rather dubious of his survivability on the tabletop. Oh well, such is the life of a Crane swordsman.

The huge Hikiga swordsman looks like a cross between a Maori warrior and some sort of salamander. I decided to paint him largely turquoise, with trippy sigil-tattoos across his belly and circling his biceps. I gave his upper arms, skull and back a thin glaze of olive green to hint to his aquatic nature.

I had fun painting on the flower petals on his 'uge honkin blade, and giving his doo a pink-to-azure fade. Just like all the hip kids these days.

All of these figures are fairly large, coming in at around 54mm. The Snail and the Hikiga were one-piece prints, but the Feixian swordsman is in five pieces, and is quite fiddly to arrange in his leaping pose. I had to carefully drill out one of his legs to pin him to the base for stability (which I later camouflaged with a flowering shrub). 

Okay! These three characters will give me 50 points total (30 base points for the figures, plus another 20 for the Arda challenge).

Skullz running total: 0

Squirrel running total: 2

Alphabet Soup total: 'S' for Snail (4 letters down!)

Projects Touched Upon:

1. French Indochina
2. 10mm Fantasy
3. Moonstone
4. Malta
5. Italian Wars
6. Sisters of Battle
7. 28mm Napoleonics
8. Spanish Civil War
9. 28mm Modern
10. 20mm WWII
11. Retreat from Moscow
12. Dungeon Crawl

Hmm. Not sure what I'm doing next, so we'll see where the star lanes take us...

Thanks for dropping in for a peak!

- Curt