I found an Episode II Luminara Unduli figure at work, took one look and said, “Wow, that’s cool… ridiculous pose for an action figure, though… hmmm…”
So, as you do in these situations, I decided to convert it into an Eldar Warlock.
First step was to get rid of all the extra bits… Turns out that these newer Star Wars figures just pop apart:
Started by shaving off her greaves, bucklers, and big puffy sleeves. These spots will then need to be sanded, as the soft plastic doesn’t shave smooth as easily as metal or normal miniature plastic. The arms swivel at the elbow, so I glued them in place with Polystyrene Cement.
I decided to leave the wimple, rather than resculpting her entire head, and just mold the helmet faceplate over her existing face. I did this by simply shaving down her nose and cheeks and smoothing GS over the top, and simply adding the detail over the resultant smooth surface. Poke in eyeholes with the tip of my hobby knife and ooh, look, she has a new face. I let that layer of GS set, and then added the second layer around the edge.
Her torso didn’t require a lot of work, as I was pretty happy with what was already there. I added the Rune Armour by applying thin strips of GS, and slicing them down to size with the hobby knife.
The Legs were finished off by adding plates of Green Stuff for armour…
The same thing was done for her arms, and I made a staff for her from brass rod and a Warhammer Fanatsy Elven lance.
And then, when put back together, we get this:
Then we pull her apart again, to paint her…
I wanted to keep the colour scheme relatively simple, as there is enough detail on the model to look nice and elegant without getting too carried away with paint. So, I started off by undercoating everything black, and then set to work on her legs.
These were painted Storm Blue, and then drybrushed with a 50/50 Storm Blue/Lightning Blue mix. For those who are saying “Pffah! Drybrushing!” … I didn’t particularly want to spend a year and a half painting this model, as it was just something I was doing for the fun of it. As for drybrushing as a technique; it works much better on larger stuff than it does at 28mm scale, if it’s done right. The clothing modelled on this figure is sufficiently textured that I thought the drybrushing would bring out the detail, and that rough cloth look, much better than blending would.
But moving right along… The armour plates were undercoated with Bestial Brown, then given several coats of Bleached Bone, and a final Highlight with Skull White.
While I had the Blue out, I moved right on to her cloak, which was just going to be all blue.
Then on to the body and skirt… These were re-undercoated in Bronzed Flesh, and then given several layers of Sunburst Yellow. (I always use either Bronzed Flesh or Bleached Bone under yellow, as they give a much richer colour than a White undercoat does, and Yellow over Black really doesn’t work… goes a strange off-green colour.) This was then drybrushed with a 50/50 yellow/white mix.
Then on to the head… Painted the wimple all blue, with the detail around the edge picked out in bone. The faceplate is also bone, with yellow eye-lenses. The rune on her forehead was a last minute addition, designed after a minute or so flicking through the old codex for Farseer runes, and scrawling similar designs on my painting sheet until I came up with one I liked. This was just painted on with Storm Blue.
Around about this time a discussion with M resulted in me discarding my original base idea (which was to use the snazzy display base that comes with the Anakin Skywalker Podracer model kit) and do something with a snazzy rune effect… A few minutes playing around in Bryce resulted in a rough design, and then I was up at 4:30 this morning, cutting a big circle out of a piece of cork tile.
This was glued onto an old CDrom with PVA glue, and then I copied the rune from her forehead onto the cork with a pencil. I then painted several layers of gloss sealer over the rune, the idea being that I would be able to drybrush the rest of the base, and the smooth surface of the rune would stand out, ready to be picked out in blue… Strangely enough, it worked quite well…
I undercoated the base in black, then drybrushed with a mix of Fortress Grey and Black, and then added a few touches with straight Fortress Grey, and some Burnt Sienna to dirty it up a tad. I then picked out the rune in Storm Blue, and added a highlight around the edges by blending in Lightning Blue.
Next came the arms. These were painted the same as the legs, in blue and bone. The spear was painted all bone, with the detail picked out in blue and yellow. I considered painting some sort of pattern onto the banner, but decided in the end that she really didn’t need it, so it was time to just call the job a good’un.
