Wednesday, October 4, 2017

I'm not dead yet!

"And there I was, yessir, amidst the dead of my regiment, the Spears of Hoffenmark, lying wounded and the only survivor on either side. And on down the road I sees a dust cloud coming up slowly. At first, I thought it might be the reinforcements we was promised. Then I thought it might at least be more of them, come ta finish me off. But i'twasnt neither. It was Death himself, come to collect the bodies!"




I've had this model in my collection for four or five years now. I've been wanting to paint him for a while, but the lack of a yoke for the cart has put me off as I've tried to figure out what I could use. I've seen many solutions, ranging from rubber bands to wire to plastic card. I had initially opted to go the plastic card route myself and cut a yoke and sculpted some woodgrain out of greenstuff on it. But when I went to mock it up, I wasn't happy with the look. Then I happened to notice that the plastic night goblin bows had a very bent and twisted look to them and where in the right shape. And it just so happens that I have several sprues of unused night goblin bow arms! So after popping one off, I was lucky to find that it fit perfectly.



After that, I posted a photo of each option onto the Oldhammer Facebook group and sought opinions. The split seemed about 50:50 between each, but I just wasn't happy with the handmade yoke. I futzed around with a few more attempts but never achieved anything I liked as much as the goblin bow, so that's what I went with. I had also received some comments about the yoke being to far back, which I tried to take into account. Unfortunately, this ended up being a necessity of the sculpt: if the yoke was placed in it's proper location, the cart was rubbing against the ox and there was no room for the driver! For the sake of posterity, here is what the other option looked like:


I also had a few issues with basing this model as I wanted to use an oval base, but those have no slots in them and the ox legs are way too skinny to attempt to pin. So my solution was to shave the sides off of an old cavalry base, cut a whole in my oval base, and mount the cavalry slots that way. In the end, it looked like this:









The final issue I had is that I guess I had mounted the skeleton pile a little too far to the side and one of the wheels wouldn't mount very well. I had to widen the hole a little so I could adjust the position of the wheel to get it around the extruding bones. The wheel was still a little off plumb, but I figure that's okay as it's a magical construct that doesn't worry about the nature of reality anyway! It also caused some problems later as it made the wheel harder to secure and I broke the model several times handling it!
The ox, the wheels, and the bone pile where airbrushed with khaki and then had highlights of bone and white applied in a progressively zenithal manner. Then they were shaded with MIG brown oil wash (now out of production). The deeper recesses received another pin wash of Payne's Grey and Brown oils mixed and thinned with white spirits. A final highlight of white was brushed on.

The cart itself was based with P3 Bastion Grey (I love this color!) and highlighted up by mixing in GW Ulthuan Grey and shaded with the same MIG brown oil wash. 

The driver's robes where painted with GW warboss green and shaded by mixing in blue. The highlights were applied by adding in a mix of orange and white to desaturate the green. The blue cowl was done in a similar manner. 

After the model was finished, I applied lots of pigments to simulate the dust that would accumulate on a cart rolling through the country with an unmoving passenger. 





7 comments:

  1. Good solutions to several problems. I was just thinking about this model yesterday as I made up a 1000 point undead list. Of course I don't have this model so I was going to substitute the Karr Keel zombie teamsters. Then I ran out of points, because 1000 is tiny.

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    1. You should definitely track one of these down, it's a great model!

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  2. Andrew - it's gorgeous. I love the glowing green light! A pitch perfect job on one of the absolute classics!

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    1. Thanks, I'm glad you like the glowing green light, although I'm not sure where that is! 😂

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  3. I had one of these back in the day. Was a pig for my young teenage hands to put together too. No idea what I did with it.

    Love the robes on this one. Your recipes for Blues and Greens always impress.

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    1. Thanks! And you should replace your old one 😉

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