Each year at my local store, we run a Christmas tournament. Each participant shows up with a painted model, securely wrapped, and attaches to it a label with a handful of hints to its identity. We play Warmachine all day (the last two years, the format was Thunderdome), and as people score points, they can unlock the clues to each present’s identity and creator. Then at the end of the day, people use the hints to choose which model they think they’d like to swap their current present for, with higher-scoring players getting later swaps to better ensure that they keep what they choose.

The entire exercise, from model creation to playing to opening presents, is the most fun I have gaming all year. 🙂

Two years ago, my entry models were a pair of festively-themed Basilisks named Herb and Lindy, while last year I brought the fury of Santa Reznik, High Naughtymonger of Menoth.

This year I’ve been trying to focus more on scratch-sculpting than on conversions, so I decided that whatever I ended up making, it would be entirely sculpted out of Fimo, which would give me more leeway in creating an interesting model. I originally tossed around some ideas for a custom warbeast, but had just finished scratch-sculpting a few rather large models, and was in the mood to work on something smaller and faster. In the end, I had a fantastic idea; a counts-as Withershadow Combine in the guise of different collection of immortal magical cobblers:

Boo-yeah. 🙂

Keep in mind when thumbing through this post that the entirety of the project was completed in an insane hurry– I rigged up the armatures for the models on a Wednesday night, and working only in the evenings after work, had everything completed at 4am the Saturday morning of the event. Fine detail, smooth surfaces, and competent painting were not priorities here– due to the time constraints, this was entirely about getting a concept across with the simplest forms possible.

I began the models where I usually do– with a 28mm printout of a human skeleton. I didn’t want these models to actually be the size and proportions of a normal human, but it’s still tremendously useful to work against a stock skeleton when coming up with an exaggerated armature, as it gives you a reference point to plan out where and how you want your model to differ from standard anatomy. For example, the third figure in this drawing is from an old project where I sculpted a 4’6″ generously-proportioned lady; to plan out her skeleton, I marked off where I wanted the top of her head, kept the skull the same size as the model, and then scrunched down her limbs and torso to fill the remaining space.

The same basic process was used for the Elves; I marked off how tall I wanted them to be, drew in their outlandishly-sized skulls, and then performed an even more violent scrunching job on the rest of their bodies to come up with the comically exaggerated cartoon bodies I was looking for.

Once I was happy with the design, I used it as a model to rig up a trio of wire armatures that approximately fit the drawing. Two were wired into their corks from the toes to accommodate standing poses, while the third was wired in from his heels so that he could be sculpted sitting down.

I’ve seen a few different ways to attach arms to a wire armature, but my personal technique is to bend them into a separate rig and then attach them to the torso with putty. Here’s how this works on a larger model:

The key is the downward V on the arm piece, which lets me hold them rigidly against the spine to prevent twisting later on.

While the putty on the armatures’ ribcages was setting, I worked on some of the extra props that the models would require– Admonia’s book, and a wooden train for Maelovus.

The book worked out nicely, but the train ended up a bit squished. If I had more time I would’ve fixed it, but I didn’t, so I didn’t.

Once the spinal putty was solid enough, I twisted the model’s arms into shape. I started with Tremulus, who would be holding up a pair of hand puppets.

Once I was happy with the pose, I started applying Fimo. Fimo doesn’t adhere to metal, so to attach it, I wrapped the entire skeleton in Green Stuff and then laid Fimo on top while it was still soft. The Green Stuff grabs onto the wire and blends with the Fimo, acting as the intermediary that binds them together.

After the initial Fimo layer is soundly attached, I started smoothing and bulking out various areas– the gigantic skull, a bit of a pot belly, and extra clay for the puppets and the model’s shorts.

I had a lot of trouble with the model’s curly-toed shoes; I couldn’t get them to curl up nearly as much as I wanted and didn’t have time to fuss over them as long as I would’ve needed, so they ended up more “pointy shoe” than “genie’s lamp shoe” as I had originally planned. 🙁

More smoothing and detailing occurs! I firmed up the edges on the model’s shorts, shoes, and jacket, and pressed in a front seam and a collar on the latter.

I went through a few different skull designs on the concept drawing above, ultimately deciding to go with the teardrop-shaped skull I drew onto Tremulus over the square-jawed head I sketched on Maelovus. The facial features are a combination of Nightmare Before Christmas and Grim Fandango– huge expressive eyes, small mouth, and little to no surface detail on the skull.

For Tremulus’ puppets, I went with fairly innocuous children’s toys– a dude and a dog. I didn’t want to get into Tim Burton-esque “horror toys”; to me, it’s funnier for these characters to have only one very pronounced horror element nestled in the middle of an otherwise adorable presentation. If it weren’t for them being skeletons, these models wouldn’t look at all out of place sitting above your mom’s fireplace.

A bunch more cleanup, and Tremulus was the first one finished, in a little over two hours from start to finish.

The last thing I added was the hat– I didn’t get good process shots here, but I’ll cover it when I get to Maelovus later.

Next in line for sculpting was Admonia. As before, I puttied her arms into place (she’ll be struggling to hold an enormous-to-her book), then covered her in Green Stuff to help me apply Fimo.

Her initial stages were identical to Tremulus’, so let’s just jump ahead a bit.

I had baked Admonia’s book beforehand, and now used Green Stuff to stick it between her arms. Then, I added Fimo and sculpted her a very simple skeleton hand on each side.

Speaking of skeleton bits, the reason I gave the models shorts instead of long pants was so that I could give them knobbly skeleton legs to make it clear that these aren’t just kids in weird masks– they’re definitely skeletons from top to bottom.

Plus, cartoon kids in tiny shorts are kind of adorable. 😛

The original Admonia model is distinguishable by her book and her closed hood; to maximize clarity, I wanted both traits represented on my proxy model. Instead of a robe’s hood, however, Li’l Admonia would be wearing a fuzzy parka. Here I’ve added the puffy lining of the hood by gradually layering on Fimo in about four stages; rather than simply laying on a huge putty snake, layering lets me examine the model at each stage to determine when the applied bulk is exactly right, without risking putting too much on.

I “furred up” the hood with clayshapers, then sculpted Admonia’s face similarly to Tremulus’. I debated closing the hood up even further, but wanted to avoid Kenny comparisons, so I intentionally left a bit of her mouth visible.

Admonia’s my favourite. 🙂

I don’t know what that weird yellow blotch is– there was nothing there when I put her in. I’m not sure if it was some kind of weird chemical reaction with the putty, fimo, and/or glue, or if something just fell on her when I was mounting the models to their rack.

One of life’s little (totally inconsequential) mysteries, I guess…

I expected the last model, Maelovus, to be the easiest since he was sitting down; seated models have more support and don’t wobble as much. However, he actually took the longest of the three at almost three hours, because his hunched-over position…

…and slightly enclosed arm pose made it really difficult to reach into his chest and legs with clayshapers (I didn’t want to risk scraping the soft silicone tools against the exposed wire ends, as this could tear the material and ruin the tool).

Despite that added challenge, though, Tremulus plodded along just like the rest– wire, then Green Stuff, then a thin layer of Fimo.

I’ve done my best to pick out the chest detail, but it’s definitely rougher than the other two.

And yes, it’s still visible when you have the model in-hand despite the train in the way.

Maelovus’ hands were done in the same way as Admonia’s, using a metal tool to cut out separate bones and then a clayshaper to smooth out the pieces. The original design had called for Maelovus to be using a hammer, but I didn’t want to get into sculpting this separate pieces, so I gave him a much simpler tool instead– a paintbrush, which he’s gripping like a five-year-old with a crayon. 🙂

To make the hats on Tremulus on Maelovus, I first applied a putty snake as a headband, then dropped a cone of clay on top and blended it in. I ended up applying a bit too much clay to this second one (which is why I try to avoid attaching components all in one clay blob– it’s really hard to estimate quantities when the blob isn’t on the model), which necessitated cutting about 20% of it off later on.

The cone was then flopped downward, and some soft creased were worked in with clayshapers (pictured below).

A bit more cleanup, and the last elf was complete.

If I had him to do again, I would’ve pulled the angle of his head up slightly to reveal a bit more of his face; however, this pose isn’t that bad, as it gives him a look of intense concentration on his brushwork. 🙂

BACK SHOT!

Here are the three models just before I popped them in the oven.

They look so cute. 😀

While these were turning out very nicely, there was, however, one last component I wanted to build. The Withershadow Combine have a number of unique powers, but their signature trick is definitely their ability to take down a warjack and then reassemble it into something more to their liking. My Kringlecrackle Workshop would likely pull the same trick off at some point, and when that happened, I wanted to give its owner something distinctive to put down on the board: a warjack stuffed in a festively gift-wrapped box.

I decided that the Clacker would be a crabjack, and ordered a set of old metal Leviathan legs from the PP online store. The body would be a simple box, so I went down to Michaels and bought a 1.5″ wooden cube to use as my base.

The legs were wired and glued into the bottom of the box; they remained a bit wobbly, so I later went back and applied some putty blocks on the inside of the leg mountings to keep them as stable as possible.

I mounted the entire assembly to another chunk of wood from Michaels using wire and putty– I has to make sure not to use any plastic in the construction, as the entire assembly would need to be baked, and plastic isn’t such a huge fan of being heated up.

Fimo isn’t any more excited about sticking to wood than it is about metal, so I once again used Green Stuff as my adherent,applying small putty snakes around the edges of each face.

I then flattened out some Fimo slabs and applied them to the model. I really wish I’d had more time to do this part– it was 10:30 on Thursday night by this point, and I was scrambling to finish as quickly as possible, so the Fimo slabs were extremely uneven, leading to a rather bumpy surface in the end.

I was having real trouble getting the legs to stay still while I worked on the box, so I added putty around the claws and used a brass rod to hold the model up under the upraised leg. It helped a bit, but the model was still really wobbly throughout the process. 🙁

The faces of the box really weren’t smooth at all, but I just didn’t have time to worry about that, so I proceeded to detailing the faces. I waffled a bit on whether I wanted the box to have a distinct lid or if I’d rather have it wrapped in paper, and decided that I preferred the mental image of the Kringlecrackle Workshop carefully folding paper around their handcrafts in the middle of a raging battle.

Having decided on giftrapping, I applied thin putty snaked onto the smooth surfaces; one side of the snake was blended into the surface, and the other was firmed up into a small ledge.

Rinse, repeat.

The last detail to add was the ribbon. I really should have taken more care when building this part (eg, wearing gloves)– as it stands, the ribbons are covered in thumbprints that I didn’t have time to clean up. 🙁

The putty ribbons were stuck to the model and blended into place.

Another band was then laid in the other direction.

The bow was simply a pair of ribbons folded over, then blended down in the center.

And finally, another pair of ribbons was curled lazily off to the sides, bouncing gently as the Clacker crawls across the battlefield in search of good little boys and girls.

There was a ton of cleanup that I would’ve loved to still do, but by this point it was 7pm on Friday, and I still needed to paint all four models, so I called it done and threw everything into my halogen oven to bake.

Paint went… well, it went as fast as I could possibly make it go, to be honest. With four models to plough through in one evening, I didn’t have time to get into multi-layered shading and highlighting. Instead, the models’ various colour areas were all given a clean basecoat and then a single two-brush-blended shadow (two on the bone to add dark grey lines between bones and within the skull’s various sockets). No highlighting, very little freehand… I was just sprinting through the models to get them looking decent so that they could be handed off to their recipient the next morning.

Painting started at 8, the three elves were done at 12:30, and the Clacker took me until 3:15. I think stuck the models onto the fastest cork bases I could slap together and threw on some fake snow, and that was that.

Behold their festive glory.

(The video definitely runs a bit longer than necessary– I ran out of turnaround videos, but didn’t want to prematurely end the awesome creepy song, so I stuck a slideshow onto the end. :P)

The paintjobs are extremely rudimentary, but I think ultimately it doesn’t hurt the models that much– given their cartoony appearance, the flat shading actually gives them a rather quaint look.

So, yeah. Could’ve been worse. 😛

And that’s about all I have to say about that, folks. I’ve put together about half a dozen models for various Christmas presents this year, so I’ll have an article up for each of them over the next month or so (blogging is hard, yo. 🙁 )

Thanks for reading, and to all of my regular, intermittent, and first-time readers, I’d like to wish a Joyous Presentsplosion. May the spirit of glorious commercialism warm you and yours through the cold winter months to come. 🙂

-Spud