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I've spent many hours now searching through mini's online to find a best fit for the Taldoran Bard/Chronicler I've rolled up for an upcoming Legacy of Fire game. I've given myself 3 criteria, the figure must be male, medium sized, wielding a whip, wearing a hat that looks explorer-like, and holding a shield or book in his off hand. Now I believe I've found a solution at Reaper:
A fairly good base mini holding a book in off hand
The perfect hat, top row, 3rd from left
Now, I think I could get some decent looking results with the above. However, I was wondering if any of you have ideas on how to do it better/cheaper? I'm new to mini customization. Frankly, any advice at all would be appreciated.
Here are some other base figures I'm kind of in love with but am not sure how to make work..
I love the pose of this one but can't find another figure holding a left handed whip.
I think the pack this guy has is really cool, but am unsure how easy the staff would be to remove..
I would dispense with trying to match up hands and hats. If you try to stick one of those reaper hats on a character with hair, it will look silly unless you file down the hair.
It would really be pretty easy to use your green stuff to make the whip and hat. For the hat, look up how to make a felt hat on a form. Then use the end of a brush as the form and green stuff as the felt.
You whip might make more sense coiled up in the hand, which would be easy to do.
if you really want a whip already attached to a hand, look on the secondary market for superhero figures like heroclix. Lots of them have whips and they're cheap.
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Honestly, I know I'm already in for some filing work. I'm not afraid to file down hair to get a fit for a hat before it can be attached to the figure with green stuff. The real question I have is if I can attach the hand with the whip to the severed arm with green stuff without pegging and have it hold. Using little teeny tiny drill bits does not sound like my cup of tea.
Using a whip from the hard rubber collectibles like Heroclix sounds tempting, but I'm leary about how they will epoxy to the pewter base figure, let alone getting the paint finish to match.
Sculpting a whip and hat out of green stuff is a great idea for someone with even the most basic of artistic talents. Alas, if it can't be made with a play dough fun factory, I'm probably outta luck.
If, however, someone was convinced that they could replicate such items, I would not be beyond paying to have them commissioned if the price was reasonable.
I know there are some frequent posters out there that are experienced mini enthusiasts....
In my experience, the plastics are much easier to epoxy or super glue. They bond plastics really well.
Whips are tricky, looking through my bits box, I have three from various heroclix figures, and they are all much thicker than a real whip. All of the metal figures I can find pictures of have big silly whips as well.
Here is what I would do if you want something "realistic" and not cartoony.
Don't cut off a figure's hand unless you want to drill and pin it. If you are going to use the figure at the table, the wrist is too small to be very strong. Whey I want to swap out weapons, I use a pair of cutters to open the hand between thumb and fingers, just like a real hand. Then you can insert whatever weapon you want.
As for the whip, it occurs to me that I once needed to make a rope belt and arm wraps for a minitaur monk, and after much gnashing of teeth, I finally went with...a rope. I bought twine of the right size and applied it, then applied watered elmers glue as a sort of sealer. This worked great.
You could make a whip coil from twine, which would be cheap, and either fit it in the hand or epoxy it to the stubb of a staff or other weapon which you cut off.
Based on your description, perhaps a pewter miniature that looks a bit like this? Granted, you'd have to replace the idol with a book, but it's close, right?
I've spent many hours now searching through mini's online to find a best fit for the Taldoran Bard/Chronicler I've rolled up for an upcoming Legacy of Fire game. I've given myself 3 criteria, the figure must be male, medium sized, wielding a whip, wearing a hat that looks explorer-like, and holding a shield or book in his off hand.
Might I suggest you check out RAFM miniatures and their Space 1889 figs? Here's one box set with some rather dandy figs :)
The gent with the book and the cross should be easy to adapt if you like the majority of it. Trim off the cross pieces, gently drill out the hand and add a piece of pre-curled and possibly wrapped wire with glue, and you should get what you want.
Edit: Also check out their Call of Cthulhu figs :)
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The gent with the book and the cross should be easy to adapt if you like the majority of it. Trim off the cross pieces, gently drill out the hand and add a piece of pre-curled and possibly wrapped wire with glue, and you should get what you want.Edit: Also check out their Call of Cthulhu figs :)
You're right the gent with the cross would work alright. His clothes may look a little modern for Taldor, but not too bad. Although honestly, my buddy brought over an actual cast rope coil that could be painted to look like a whip that I can glue to the original figures belt and then I think I'm gonna take a dremel tool to it's head to fit the hat and file down the sides of the sword to thin the blade and make it look more rapier like.
Has anyone tried something like that before?