Tag: mini

77106: Boerogg Blackrime, Frost Giant

I got a hill giant, frost giant, and fire giant a while ago as a way to sort of memorialize the D&D campaign I ran in which the players went through the Slavers series and Against the Giants series.  The three “Giants” modules pit the players against hill giants, frost giants, and fire giants, so…

I worked on this guy off and on for darn near a year I think. I got side-tracked by playing World of Warcraft. Also, the paint I was using for his skin was the Reaper Pale Flesh triad that had the clotted highlight color, which I posted  about a few months ago. All the nooks and crannies in this guy were tiresome, too. There might be such thing as too much detail…at least for lazy me.

Most people these days make frost giants’ skin blue; a visual cue that the guy is cold-related.  I don’t really like that.  In my mind, giants are really just extra large people who live in certain habitats.  So this guy is up in some muddy tundra somewhere, getting angry.

I agonized over the colors, of course.  A continual problem I have is in getting realistic colors that aren’t drab.  This guy is pretty drab.  The mini painters I admire most are able to paint with bright eye-popping colors while still getting the overall tone come across as muddy and drab.

Anyway, this guy has a sword made of bone strapped to a huge hunk of slate.  He wears polar bear fur that’s been dragged in the mud a bit.  I’m happy with the way he turned out. He’s obviously a collector of trophies, and he’s got quit a few strapped to his arms, chest, waist, and hands.

02909: Nienna, Elf Ranger

This mini is another from Reaper. I like this sculpt very much, as it involves a pose that integrates the terrain so nicely.

I went monochromatic with various desaturated greens. At one point I had bright green on the sash, and it really jarred against the rest of the paint scheme. I’m learning that some flaw in my painting or color mixing technique makes all my colors desaturate when I shade and highlight them.  On this mini it was on purpose, but even on my other minis, I cannot often avoid it.

The sword blade is actually TMM (true metal metallic),  but I’ve mixed the silver with blue and shaded it with brown/black glaze, so it doesn’t show like typical TMM. The rest of the metals are Bronze + brown wash + bronze + gold + silver. Body armor has an added layer of purple wash to help bring out more detail.

Orcs by Tre Manor

These are Reaper minis sculpted by Tre Manor.  One orc is never enough.  Four orcs is never enough.  But I’ll never have the patience to paint 20 or 30, so this will be all I paint for the foreseeable future.  I like Tre Manor’s stuff a lot.  He has his own mini company now, Red Box Games, and all the stuff there is really nice.

77056: Orc Sniper, 77059: Orc Berserker, 77051: Orc Stalker, 77045: Orc Hunter

77043: Eye Beast

This is Reaper’s version of the D&D Beholder.  The Beholder is an iconic Dungeons and Dragons monster.  The name is even kept as IP by Wizards of the Coast, which is why Reaper has to call this model “Eye Beast” instead of Beholder.

The original base is kind of   crummy, so I cut it off and sculpted one with Green Stuff, complete with some green slime dripping down the walls.  It’s intended to look like he’s hovering in a tunnel deep in the Underdark somewhere.  I modeled the color scheme on Eric Louchard’s Nautiloid Chrysalid from AnitMatter Games.

77325: Bone Devil

The characters in our AD&D campaign had to fight lots of these guys.  They were quite a challenge.  The ability of devils to summon more devils makes things difficult.  Their magical at-will abilities to cause fear, fly, and create illusions, along with their strength-sapping attacks and poisoned tail spike give the characters fits.

I gave this Reaper mini a base of skulls, and then added a bit of blood so things didn’t look quite so…dry.  He came with a pair of raggedy wings that I decided to leave off.

03553: Kallaguk, King of the Trolls

I’m really happy with how this Reaper mini turned out.  I tried a glazing method described by Eric Louchard of Antimatter Games.  I was a bit more patient with this mini than I am with most, so my blending is smoother than usual.  The original mini’s face is angled down, so it isn’t easy to see.  I built up the front of his base to tip the mini up so that you can see his face better.  I think it works.

77183: Frost Wyrm

This is the Reaper’s version of the D&D Remorhaz.  The creature dwells in cold climates, hence the snow base.  The back of the creature gets furnace-hot when it is agitated.  I sculpted a pair of eggs out of Green Stuff that mommy is protectively coiled around.

In our Against the Giants campaign, when the characters found this creature at the bottom of the Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl, they purposely woke it and then ran away.  The remorhaz crawled out of its lair, stretched it out across the chasm floor, tucked in its legs, and steamrolled down the length of the rift, flattening and frying about a dozen winter wolves, ogres, and giants.  Good times.