Knavecon Sheep

I figured it’s high time I followed up on the sheep I made for our Oldhammer game at Knavecon 2014.  Here they are in all their painted glory:

Baaaaaaaa!

And this was the original green for the little fellow.

The green

And with a slightly more careful paint job, the final ones got a pretty flat, devoid of highlights and shading paint job in the end:

A nicely painted prototype

Here is a scale comparison with my favourite scaling model.  As you can see they have been designed for the smaller people of miniature gaming (such as halflings), with an emphasis on cuteness over realism:

One of the Emperors finest protects His flock from the predations of xenos scum

They may someday even be used as nasties in a killer sheep scenario….

And remember RT aficionados you may think you are save but do not underestimate a sadistic GM

The final part of this project will be to take 2 of the little blighters and re-sculpt the legs to look like they are being carried and then send them along to the next stage in the production line to Mr. Saturday who will proceed to incorporate them into a commemorative fimir raider model to mark the convention.

A Sabre Tooth Tiger? In Lustria?

Time for an update to the Slann army project.  With the August Oldhammer 2014 meetup fast approaching I really need to literally get the lead out and get cracking on more units for the Slann army.  So far I am locked into Eagle Warriors, Warrior Priests, Lizardmen, Jungle Braves, Human Slaves and a Spawn Bands unit, so lots of work is pending.  Add to this some character models and cavalry and also some of my favorite troop types in any army list, animal handlers.

Warhammer Armies 3rd Edition Slann Animal Handlers

You can have up to 4 handlers who can control 2 – 6 animals.  In 3rd Ed. missile hits on the unit are randomised so if a handler gets killed and there aren’t enough handlers to control the animals, the excess of animals gets lost.  A ratio or 1 handler to 4 animals is about the sweet spot.  Options for the animals are excellent in the Slann list with access to some very nasty beasties indeed.  Even the cold one warhounds at the lower end of the spectrum deserve respect.  Spiders and Scorpions are nasty options but my heart belongs to the Sabre Tooth Tigers.

The Favorite

“The Favorite” is what we call our cutest feline at home, stuff you could never get away with with children gets great mileage with cats.

 

So today I present for you the first pair of Pan Tangian Tigers which I think you will agree make for some nice looking Sabre-Toothed Tigers.  No idea of who sculpted these but the are some righteous cats.  I will add in some more tigers to this unit at a later time to bulk them up to at least 8 models.  You will note that one of them is painted in the livery of Battle Cat from He-Man (crossover with the Mastorks of the Ooniverse project right there 😉 )…

 

Cringer/Battlecat

…and one in the livery of the Pink Panther…

 

The Pink Panther – as requested by Erny

 

So we end up with this:

Sabre-Toothed Tigers

Slann Animal Handler’s are known for their magical cosmetic breeding alterations apparently

So expect more celebrity cats on this journey, requests will be taken seriously. 😉

 

Roast Mutton – Designing Sclupting and Casting a Halfling Scale Sheep

As part of the preparation for Knavecon 2014 we ended up going for a Mordheim participation scenario which calls for livestock.  Last Saturday I attempted to buy some cheap plastic animals to be said livestock.  I was looking for the kind of plastic pigs, cows and sheep that we had as small kids.  This proved to be a tall order as I could not find a single diminutive creature to fit the bill.  Seeing as I had already spent half the day going around the city I figured that it would be a better use of my time to just sculpt some tiny critters and cast ’em up using Gildeo Siligum to create the mould and Prince August Model Metal lead/tin/bismuth alloy.

The finished Knavecon Sheep sculpt

After getting to this stage I had some issues with the moulding process as the legs were a little too long to get a good 1 piece casting what with the hard to ventilate air pockets.  When I feck things up I just chalk it up to experience and move forward, such is the way of learning the ins and outs of casting.  Like all things the more experience you get fecking things up the less you feck it up in the future.

 

First “failed” casting efforts

in order to get a decent casting I ended up chopping off the legs and creating two moulds, one for the torso and one for the 4 legs.  The legs are simple and generic in design so that it matters little which side of the body they attach to – I basically cast as many as I could and put them in a big pile ready for cleaning and sticking to the sheep torsos.  Sticking the legs on is a little tedious, this would not be a desirable feature of a full production model!

First quick test paint job with the rest of the flock beginning to take shape

So the end result is pretty good given the short time frame for execution of the idea.  As sculpts go it’s a little bit rough in places (although still way better than many so called professional sculpts I have come across over the years) but as I am under pressure to churn them out quickly they are perfectly fine for the job.  If I ever make some production animals I can obsess over the minute details then!

In terms of design she is specifically tailored for the vertically challenged races such as Halflings.  Obviously I favor caricature and slight anthropomorphic feel to my creatures over realism.  It makes more sense to me for animals for a fantasy game to be more like kids toys or TV shows than to be realistic looking.

I like to spend as much of my time wargaming in side splitting laughter as possible and cute characterful models really help.  If this kind of sculpt is not bringing a smile and a chuckle to the audience then I am not doing it right!

All in all how could I not be happy with how this one turned out?  Now to get busy making a flock of them for Saturday!