McDeath WIP

[TristramEvans]

So, the moment the Golden Gobbo revival was announced, I knew I wanted to take the opportunity to take on a classic figure that I'd recently acquired after several years of searching - McDeath. If any single figure epitomized the essence of Oldhammer for me, it was this fellow. Over the next few days, I mulled over how I would approach this, and make it unique. Nothing screams "Oldhammer" to me like an elaborate banner, so I hit my bitz boxes cobbling together pieces. Originally, I planned to have McDeath himself holding the banner, but based on suggestions from the Oldhammer facebook group, decided instead to include a Snotling as a small standard bearer, and poured over ebay until I found one that suited the purpose.

After about a week I commenced with cleaning and priming. As the figure is mostly clad in armour, I went an unusual route and primed him with Army Painter "Steel" spray.

I tacked the face first, knowing it would case me the most difficulties, then started basecoating the armour:

Eyes have always been my biggest weakness. And even though I sort of enlargened them, I was at least satisfied initially with my attempt:

And so it went for about three weeks I worked on him whenever I could. I wasn't taking pictures during this process, but I'd nearly finished him when I decided to go in and try to "fix" the eyes, which had slowly began to bother me. My plan was merely to blackline and give them a bit of definition. But, tragedy struck. I completely ruined what I had done. A clumsy tremor left him with amorphous white blobs and each attempt to fix it just made the situation worse.

And so , reluctantly, after nearly a month's work, I doused the figure in acetone and started from scratch.

It took me two weeks to get back to where I was, but I'd learned a few lessons and made a few changes this time around. I pained the face with a series of light glazes this time, so I retained all the detail, and painted in the whites of the eyes directly as sculpted this time. Then I shaded the area around the eyes with light ink washes. I'd originally gone with brown boots and black gloves, but found that the red really tied the scheme together better. Thiss is him as he is right now, probably a two week's of work left to go, blending/highlighting the armour, finishing the beard, and painting in details, but I'm much happier with the face this time around.

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For the base, I went with a 30mm round, and raided my bitz box for skeletons, skulls, and the like to create a mound of corpses for MacDeath to stand upon. Once I'm finished painting I plan to add in a copious amount of blood effects

I also fashioned a cloak and shield for McDeath, both nearing completion:

And as for the standard, I combined several great prizes from my bitz box to make it suitably epic. I only just started painting this last night, and will be returning to it after this post:

A few more weeks to go, but I'm optimistic. This may be my most ambitious single miniature project to date, but I can't think of a mini more worthy of the attention

 

[Firstruleoffightclub]

Great work here.
Not too fancy with red boots and gloves,
but its still oldhammer.
Eyes: what always works with me is
to paint the eyeball black and do white dots
left and right of the pupilla.

Onward to Lady McDeath !

 

[TristramEvans]

Great work here.
Not too fancy with red boots and gloves,
but its still oldhammer.
Eyes: what always works with me is
to paint the eyeball black and do white dots
left and right of the pupilla.

Onward to Lady McDeath !

Thank you. I've tried that method with the eyes, unfortunately the McDeath miniature's eyes as sculpted are insanely tiny, even for 28mm, just little squinty globes. The real problem is, however, that I suffer from intermittent tremors, which means my hands always shake. I've come up with lots of ways to compensate for this, but when it comes to really tiny details on miniatures its ultimately just a gamble for me. On most minis I either do solid colour eyes (I mostly paint Skaven), or I just leave the eyes black (which I think looks just fine on the tabletop). Trying to go a bit fancy with this one however.

Speaking of Lady McDeath, besides being prohibitively expensive (I've never seen one selling for less than 150 pounds on ebay - except one very obvious scam from China), I really dislike the look of the model. The face is just way too cartoony - verging on Looney Tunes, for my tastes. Its a shame because I really like the Lady McDeath in the Blanche painting. I've been looking for a suitable proxy for a long time. Number one contender at the moment is this diabolist from Reaper:

(I'd just need to shave off the pointed ears)

Anyhow, some progress today:


I really like the look of the Cloak on the figure, makes it much more imposing. Probably should have waited until I was completely finished painting before attaching it, but I wanted to get a sense of the finished effect. I gave the boots a brown wash to dull down the red a bit, and did some highlights on the skulls.

These are obviously bad cellphone pictures, and will be using a digital camera for the finished pics, but I also find it highlights a lot of the little fixes needed that I don't really catch just working under the desklamp. Still, I'm pleased with how he's starting to take shape. Can't wait to get him on his base.

 

[TristramEvans]

Got him mounted on the base

And then added in his Snotling Standard Bearer

So, now just need to finish the Reliquary banner topper

...then add the blood effects to the base, and the banner itself will finish it off. Progressed much further than I thought (but then, didnt originally plan on working on this obsessively for 20 hours)