The Monsters

The trainer models were full scratch sculpts, but there was no reason to start over on the Symbiomates– I mean, the entire point of these guys is that they already look like Pokémon. With that said, each one would require some alterations if I was going to abandon all subtlety and hammer onlookers over the head with the reference, so I busted out my clippers and green stuff and got to work.

Won’t be needing these…

All of the various head decorations were clipped clean off fairly roughly; afterward, I went in with a knife and shaved off any ugly leftover metal spurs. It wasn’t necessary to leave a smooth surface as I would be rebuilding each model’s head with putty.

I made the alterations in approximately ascending order of complexity. The easiest was Charmander, who only required a reconstructed cranium (including stubbly rock bits, which were delicately created with a clayshaper)…

…and a slightly longer tail.

In addition to the mean portion of the tail, Charmander would also need a small flame at the end.

To create the flame, I first created a teardrop shape out of putty, then went in with tweezers and pinches small ridges into it in a swirling pattern. When I was happy with their arrangement, I went back over them with a clayshaper to smooth their surfaces as much as I could (though I couldn’t push as hard as I wanted to, as the wire understructure ended partway through the flame, leaving the top part a bit too wobbly to easily manipulate).

And, yeah– that’s about it for Charmander.

Next!

Squirtle required a lot more putty than Charmander, as she would need a shell built around her entire body. However, this wasn’t really complicated to do– the shapes of the shell are simple, smooth, and close to the body, so it was simply a matter of smooshing a bunch of putty into a little vest and then cutting shapes into it.

Front shapes! Each panel is delineated using a metal hoe tool, and then smoothed out using clayshapers.

Squirtle has a fairly odd little tail— it’s drawn like a cartoon cloud, but I’m not actually 100% sure what it’s supposed to look like as a physical object.

To build it, I wrapped a huge chicken leg-shaped putty was around a curved wire…

…and then worked the best approximation of the illustrated tail that I could into the putty.

If I’m again being honest, this tail sucks and needed to be redone.

But I didn’t, because I suck.

So, yeah.

:/

Aaaanyway. The top of the head was rebuild in the same was as Charmander, by first smoothing a putty patch into the surrounding metal, and then creating skin bumps to blend in with the ones on the existing model.

Once the front and back of Squirtle’s shell were built, I ran a rough putty snake around the edges to create the lip of her carapace.

And then she got adorable widdle arms.

FAT SQUIRTLE IS GO!

NEXT!

Next up on the construction block was Bulbasaur. His eponymous bulb sticks out far enough to require wire support, so I embedded a small wire loop into his back.

A small putty blob was wrapped around it and left to harden.

With this structure in place, a much larger blob was layered on top. This was smoothed and lined to form Bulbasaur’s distinctive four-leafed bulb, as seen in the next photo.

Also seen here: Bulbasaur’s distinctive ears, which were a nice break from the smooth, bald heads of the first two figures. Other than the unique shape, though, this followed the identical process to the other two.

ADEQUATE BULBY CUTENESS ACHIEVED.

For the final Symbiomate, you would probably expect that I would construct a fat little Pikachu with an electric tail. However, you would be wrong, because f*** Pikachu. He is useless and weak and on way too many lunchboxes and hoodies to have any place in my hipster-ass Tohaa army.

There was, in fact, never any doubt for me as to who would round out my Pokésquad.

Audience, meet Karen.

You do not want anything to do with Karen.

Karen solos Elite Fours.

Karen is a murderous psychopath.

Karen will make you forget the names of your children.

Karen cannot be contained, or even directed.

Karen understands only violence.

Karen has an adorable hair poof.

Fear Karen, and give glory to Her, for the hour of Her judgment is come.

OH HEY LOOK GUYS THEY’RE DONE

The Encolourment

I have a colour scheme planned out for my Tohaa. It looks like this:

Regular dudes will use roughly the scheme on the left (with green paint distributed in different locations on different models), while symbiote dudes (who make up 75% of my models) will have added pinky-red bits.

Now, with that said, the reason I said this scheme is “planned out” is that I still haven’t actually painted a proper model in that scheme. My Tohaamon and their trainers are currently covered in paint, but in my commitment to hammer the joke home with merciless bluntness, I painted the models using almost the identical colours of their original outfits. This left little room for me to employ my planned colour scheme.

In the end, the only place I ended up using my scheme was on the models’ helmets, which have white faceplates and dull brown fiddly bits.

Brown bits were basecoated in 50/50 mix of P3 Umbral Umber and Bastion Grey, then highlighted in a few stages up to P3 Frostbite.

White bits were basecoated in 50/50 P3 Beast Hide and P3 Menoth White Highlight.

Paint stages were mixed on a wet palette and then thinly glazed from dark to light. I learned this technique at a painting class I attended with Elizabeth Beckley back in December; I’ve already been an avid wet palette and custom colour-mixing fan for years, but I had always gotten fairly mediocre results since I was applying the paint to my models in gushing brushfuls of full-thickness paint. Liz’ class was kind of a “duh” moment for me– the technique I had been using for years was REALLY CLOSE to something that gave really solid results (since I’ve always had a pretty good eye for colour and was able to put together fairly complex mixes on the palette), but failed completely on the application steps.

So, yeah. I spent $150 in class fees and $200 in travel costs to have someone tell me, “Dude, just stop gooping it on. Thin your goddamn paint.”

And you know what?

It was totally worth it. These models are the first ones I’ve painted since the class, and they look totally awesome. Thanks Liz. 🙂

The previous two colour swatches I broke down for you are pretty straightforward; I intentionally chose straight-from-the-pot colours so that I would be able to easily replicate the results over my entire army.

But for pretty much everything else on all six models, I ended up falling back to my more customary mixing technique, which consists of mixing bizarre combinations of a half-dozen paints together, adding new colours on the fly, until I have exactly the colours that are in my brain…

…and absolutely no bloody idea how I made them.So the next time I have to paint a Tohaa model with exposed skin, I will be no further ahead, and will have to re-invent plausible skin colours from scratch.

Sigh. :/

Anyway, let’s fast forward a bit.

Two days and one surprisingly beautiful palette liner later…

…I had achieved my desired comedic effect. >:)

Also, Chibi painting class really came in handy. 😉

Once they were all painted up, I lifted the trainer models off of their corks and transferred them to bases.

WHEEEEEEE!

Since these were my first painted Tohaa models, this was the point when I needed to commit to a basing scheme for the entire army. After digging around through my bin of various flocks and scatters, I settled on a two-material setup– first applying patches of rocks and sand…

…and then filling the gaps with static flock.

Nothing fancy, but pretty enough. 🙂

Alrighty, I’m tired of writing. Let’s just wade through forty-odd pretty pictures on the next page, shall we?