Kroot Lone-Spear Bird Rider

 A couple of posts back, I mentioned projects that I'd acquired ages ago and not got around to finishing. This week, I turned to a model that I bought at a show in the golden age of 2015 or so. It's some kind of large bird, from (I think) Reaper. It's certainly made of some sort of rubbery white plastic, like their earlier (not very good) Bones miniatures. I think it might be something to do with the RPG Numenera.

Anyhow, I've been looking for a rider for this creature for ages. I thought it might work well as a Kroot riding beast. The original model had odd little wings and a very strange lower jaw, so I removed them.

 

I had a pair of Kroot legs - well, a pair missing one leg below the knee, so I'd have to make a bionic one. That was fine, but I had no body. So, I made a T-shape out of sprue as a basis for the upper body, and sculpted around it.

I recently saw some superb sculpting by a guy called "pax acrylica" on Instagram. It seemed that he was using a mix of green stuff and milliput, and I thought I'd give that a try. I found that this worked really well: the resulting mixture was softer than green stuff but lacked the slightly grainy, clay-like quality of milliput, and dried hard with a smooth texture like dry soap. I'd strongly recommend trying this.

This made a decent body, and I sculpted a cloak to cover the back of it, so I wouldn't have to do the shoulder musculature. I sculpted a saddle, some straps, and a weird beaky lower jaw for the bird creature. I added some reins, made out of string, which I slightly regret. String seems to always be a bit frayed when I use it on miniatures, as if it's coming to bits. Maybe if I soaked it in PVA first, it might work better. Anyhow, that was pretty much it. I trimmed his gun down a bit, and added a couple of pieces to the base to strengthen the bird's wobbly legs. 

And now for paint!

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To be honest, I nearly didn't post this at all. I simply couldn't take a half-decent picture of this model. Everything was either too dark or washed out - and trust me, whatever you might be thinking that I'm doing wrong, I have tried to rectify. Nothing works. There are quite a few models that I've painted now - the random space people seem to be particularly prone to this - which I just can't photograph. I have wondered whether to continue with this blog, as it's hard to be enthusiastic when I can't display my models - which is, after all, the point. I probably will continue, but I expect the updates will be less frequent.