It was probably inevitable that once I got back into playing tabletop RPGs I'd take up collecting and painting minis again. I'm sure the magical allure of these detailed little critters was a crucial part of what drew me into the hobby in the first place.
After my first year or so of rediscovering this nostalgic joy I found myself increasingly customizing the models. Back in the day it was all lead or white metal, so the only modelling I ever did was the bases and that was usually with a tub of my dad's Polyfilla. But the plastic minis of today are easy enough to rework with a scalpel, a file and a pack of Green Stuff.
I started to wonder if I could model something from scratch, inspired by articles in (the brilliant and totally free) 28 magazine and awesome content on YouTube like this video here. But what to make?
The game gave me the answer. I had dropped the WFRP adventure The Horror in the Darkness into our play through of The Enemy Within, it features a mine with this huge, vicious monstrosity called a Brood Horror lurking in its depths. After one gaming session in March I realised the Player Characters would encounter it at the next one in ten days.
We usually play with minis, though it being a fairly low combat game there is rarely much call for them, so its always novel and fun to use them when we can. However I didn't really have anything appropriate for the Brood Horror, I mean it is pretty big. I thought maybe with ten days I could have a go at making one?
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| Illo from The Horned Rat Companion, copyright Cubicle 7 |
The illustration in The Horned Rat book seemed like a good place to start - I like the pose. A quick trawl on Artstation turned up some pics useful for thinking about other angles. I did a few tiny pencil sketches to get my head around the leg positions then got to work...
Plasticine
I started out by making a simple, very rough model in Plasticine. This was really just to get a sense for what size the underlying wire skeleton would have to be. It had no detail at all and lacked the solidity to even really stand up, but it totally worked for what I needed. I used another mini in a fairly neutral pose for scale reference.
Wire
I actually ordered 2 lots of wire from Amazon, but I know nothing about wire gauges so both were essentially unusable, one far too thick and the other too thin. In the end I used a small roll of steel wire I had laying in a tool box. I cut one long piece which I shaped into the spine, going from end of the nose to tip of the tail. I then took another piece and wound it round where the hips would be to form the legs. Tying them clearly wouldn't be enough to hold them in place, especially when I started shaping them into the leg pose so I dropped a splat of super glue on the join.
Its worth mentioning at this point that I used a longer piece of wire than I thought I'd need, so I could cut it down to size once shaped. I couldn't get a sharp enough bend at the knees just using my fingers so I tried combining the use of a pair of multi-tool pliers I had with a pair of (just googled the name) Pump Pliers. That obviously wasn't going to work so I ordered a 'mini pliers set' from Amazon for about £19 - I could have got something cheaper, I mean its not like I'm applying a lot of pressure or serious wear to them. There are 5 pieces in the set though and they are perfect for what I wanted - especially the bent ones.
After the legs I added another long piece wound around the spine to make the arms and fixed with superglue then twisted these into rough shape with my new pliers.
Shaping and trimming the final pose didn't take place until I bound the skeleton on to some kind of base. Without the feet being pinned in place it would too easy lose the pose. This was where I started using cut up sprue. I have been keeping offcuts for a while now in case they could be used as bricks, shaped into small objects or just to bulk out minis or their bases.
Often once I've remove all the minis from a sprue I will take a pair of clippers and snip the sprue up into strips. These are easy to store and make a great modelling material. So I took a strip and using my too-thin-for-skeleton brass wire I bound what will become the feet on to a piece of sprue. Then I drenched that in superglue.
Sprue
Other articles I've read recommend padding out from the skeleton with more wire, crumpled tin foil or some other malleable material before applying modelling clay. I decided to go with sprue. This was definitely slower than many other approaches would be, but it was a satisfying way to work, and I felt confident about building up the form this way. Cutting, gluing, sanding, trimming. It took a wee while but eventually I had a solid framework which admittedly at this point looked more like it belonged to Horizon Zero Dawn than the Old World.
The final step before moving to clay was adding the only details I did not make myself - an upside down jawbone to frame the top of the mouth from a Citadel box of Skulls and the tongue from a Demon of Khorne. I thought the shape and detail of these would be too tricky to do. In the end the actual teeth were just little shards of plastic whittled with a scalpel.
Milliput
The biggest quantity of modelling clay I used was Milliput, a 2 part epoxy putty - 'moulds like putty sets like rock'. Its not great on the hands and it makes a real mess, but it adheres to plastic well. It takes hours to dry, and once dry it can be shaped with a scalpel or file. I think I bought my first pack of it ages ago for modelling bases for which it is perfect.
I apply it in little lumps and push these into place, then mold and scrape with a set of stainless steel tools which look like dentist's implements. With the lumps I try to follow the underlying structure, big clumps of muscle mass or prominent bones. The Brood Horror also features a lot of gross pustules and tumors, these were added once the main form had hardened. I save all the little hardened crumbs of Milliput for applying as base details.
Green Stuff
After the Milliput comes the Green Stuff. When you pull a piece of Milliput apart it tears like a kind of crumbly clay, there is almost a moistness to it. Green Stuff like Milliput is a 2 part epoxy (one strip blue, the other yellow) but it doesn't so much tear when you pull it apart as stretch. It is like a sort of super malleable plastic.
It is great for details, you can roll out thin shapes and spread them on, then push them with a knife to create hard edges. It stays in this pliable state for a half hour or so after its mixed and takes hours to fully dry. I bought a cheap set of silicone and plastic modelling tools for working it which proved invaluable, especially for spreading the material and eliminating fingerprints. You can cut and mold Green Stuff, but not really sand it.
Details & Zenithal
I stuck the model to the unused oval base from a larger Citadel mini, smothered it in Milliput then encrusted it with sprinklings from my bag of scraps.
The final gross details for the Brood Horror were warts created by gluing on some of the tiny beads you find inside plastic water filter cartridges, a tip I picked up from one of the insanely talented Roman Lappat's pdfs. I applied some Liquid Green Stuff over these to better merge them with the body - that's the dark green on the back on the picture on the left.
Then it was time for a quick Zenithal pass - i.e. spray the miniature black, then white from above. And that was as close as it got to finished before being used in the game. All in it took 10 days to model from scratch, doing at most a couple of hours a day.
Painting
I did the painting at a more leisurely pace, it took less time to paint than make and those hours were spread out over a month. I started out by working up the zenithal coat until I had a complete monochrome version of the mini. Then a thin coat of flesh colour, followed by dry brushed white and successive washes of contrast paints, applying reds, purples and yellows in localised areas.
I'm fairly pleased with the finished result. The tail could be a lot better and those folds of skin around the neck could be better integrated with the muscles writhing up across the throat, the hands are ugh and half the face a bit meh, but for a first effort at modelling a mini from scratch I'm pretty happy. It was a satisfying project to undertake, even if the Player Characters did dispense with it in one session. Might try a Troll next.
