tinfoil

Man, I love the bold use of color in your stuff! Exquisite craftsmanship.

I like the green and blue.

Maybe that face looks a bit washed out? Not sure. Certainly the skin pallor is characterful.

Either way, the painting is first rate.

Yes, the "rich purple" looks velvety pretty.... and lethal. Nice scheme, and tight painting. Well done.

Excellent work. Wonderfully painted.

Thanks for the kind words, all. Your feedback is very encouraging.

As I brought Lilith along, I started considering what to do with her peon, the Cherub.

I do love the Wyrd figure. And it’s angelic, cherubic (for lack of a better term) accessories (those wings) do set up a chilling aesthetic/thematic irony. Still, as Lilith took shape I began to feel that the Cherub’s fluffy, cottony angel wings looked out of place.

It took me a little while to work up the nerve to try any radical alterations, but eventually I held my breath and shaved off the “feathers” on the wings. Then started in with a more tendril-y alternative…

Well, once you start that kind of thing, there’s no going back, right?

Nope. I plunged ahead…

… and yet farther on. Until I found myself with this:

I think I may have gotten a little carried away. But hey, there’s no mistaking the lethal, sinister, Mali-feral nature of the ‘lil critter, is there?

Somewhere along the way her arms came off, along with her bow. I’ll re-attach them.

Let me know what you think. Personally, I think the effect may be a bit over the top. And it does look kind of rough and “dirty.” But then I kind of like that aspect of it. And "over the top" is kind of a signature element of mine….

Wow! I love the glowing eyes effect, particularly on the Nothing Beast. Well done!

Nice story. I like the change of tone--the way the mood subtly shifts, coaxing us from gothic to romance.

Great post! Lots of wisdom here.

I don't play a lot of tournaments, but when I do, I'm always surprised at how worn out I am by late afternoon. Game one is usually fun; I'm usually feeling sharp. Game two is about keeping things together. Game three... Well by then I'm out of the running and focusing on having fun. And playing very sloppily.

Is it possible to cultivate tournament stamina?

Thanks for the feedback, and the kind words!

Hmmm, long hair. I like the sound of that. I've never tried sculpting hair, and I've heard it's tricky to pull off. But now I'm tempted.

I think I'll practice on a few disposable heads, and give it a go on Lilith if I like the results.

Nice! Great sculpting on the guitars. (Er, I mean axes.) And the painting looks tight.

I’m venturing through the Breach, into Terra Wyrdia!

More specifically, I’ve found myself drawn to the Neverborn. The idea of playing a horror/gothic skirmish game has been one of the big draws, luring me not only into Malifaux but also, irresistibly, into the dangerous embrace of Lilith and her brood…

I’m a Warhammer 40k refuge, and a compulsive converter. But I’m coming to appreciate that converting Wyrd minuatures will be very different than converting space soldiers or space tanks or space daemons. Malifaux models are graceful, elegant, lethal and sinister. Limbs are lithe. And compositions are beautiful, figure by figure. I don’t want to mess them up.  Many of the techniques and much of the aesthetic I cultivated for my Warhammer work (which was chaotic and over-the-top daemonic) won’t work here.

Still, there are things I want to tinker with: aspects I want to draw out of the figures.

Take Lilith. She’s a gorgeous miniature, super-model posed and supremely poised. Cosmetically and compositionally, she’s already exquisitely imagined. Radical amputation could only end badly. There’s little I could lop off or replace with anything that would look “better,” given my limited sculpting skills

And yet, parts of the model do seem bland to me. That cape hangs so flatly. That face doesn’t strike quite the right note. And more generally, the figure seems a bit too humanoid to my eye, too tame, too still.

She is Mother of Monsters, after all, Master of Malifaux. What is wanted is not just Barbi, but something more barby. The very terrain of this extra-terrestrial place is hers to command: its vines and thorns, its thickets and jungles. Her figure should evoke some of this sinister possibility. The wildness she is capable of leashing and unleashing should be couching at her feet and cloaking her person, coiled, at her call.

So I tried grafting some viney/thorny life onto her.

(Sorry about the blurry pic.)

My original idea was that in place of the plain, smooth cape that comes with the model, she’d be wearing a cape of vines, and that they’d curl around her, weaving according to her whim and mood.

As I set in with greenstuff, I realized that weaving a completely smooth, “clean” cape of vines into the figure would take more craft than I have. My version looked pretty crude.

Still, I kind of liked the contrast. From the front, Lilith appears as a strikingly beautiful human creature, while seen from behind, she becomes something more elemental, something wilder and wyrder –thoroughly unhuman and horrific.

Along the same lines, I decided to replace her (very human-looking) head with a more sinister, daemonic visage:

This looked a bit rough, but a great learning exercise as I figure out how to work with these figures.

Further work took me to here:

I liked that well enough. I was particularly pleased with the composition of the model and base, which seemed to me to convey the whole "Mother and master of Malifaux" theme.

 Until one of my gaming buddies pointed out that she doesn’t have any neck. Doh!

So I pried the first head out of its cowIed socket and worked in a replacement.

I did rip up her cowl a bit, extracting that first head. But I’ll fix that somehow.

Thanks for looking. I’ll post up more as it takes form.

What an ending! Very nicely crafted.

And I love your take on the oceans of Malifaux! Great stuff.

Nicely done! I particularly like this part:

There’s an odd sort of calm that comes over me. The calm of my partner losing their lines in front of a hostile crowd, the calm of my fingers going numb as I try to work the lock in the water tank without the right skeleton key. I’ve been a lot of things since I crossed through the breach, things I never meant to be; a revolutionary, a spy, a killer. But in this moment everything is clear, I know who I am.

 

I’m an escape artist.

 

Everything in the world is a lock and a chain, a wall is no different than a straight jacket escape. The stones start glowing brighter. The wall behind me is mostly just empty space so long as I arrange the molecules just right. It’s no different than the tumblers in a lock, not really.

 

Hey Dez. Yeah, Dorkamorka is our crew. Let me know if you're coming east and we'll get a game in.

Hello. After several months of prodding and coaxing from friends in my gaming group, I'm venturing into the breach and exploring Malifaux. Very happy to be joining the boards here.

I'm a Warhammer veteran/exile, and a big fan of gothic/eldritch gaming, so I'm finding myself drawn to the Neverborn and to Lilith.

I'm still wrapping my brains around the rules and getting to know the basics of gameplay.

In the meantime, it's Wyrd's wonderful figures that lure me deeper and deeper in.

I game in Boston, by the way. We are nurturing a steadily-growing Malifaux community here, so definitely PM me if you're in the area and looking for games.

Fred