We Who Are About to Die...
Hopefully, that does not reflect my chances in the contest in this round! I chose the Gladiator because I did not have the time and materials to make the Signifer the way I wanted. The parts for the Gladiator are shown below:
I selected the bare head rather than the helmeted one, as I did not want to tackle the metallic details involved with a new set of paints. Unlike the last figure I painted, I planned on using this one as a test run for my new set of Reaper Master paints.
(Disclaimer: If the miniature looks bad, it's my fault, not that of the paint and its designers. I have become a big fan of the Reaper Master paints.)
The head gave me a chance to practice blending and layering with the paints, which is what they were designed for. While at Milleniumcon 8 in Austin, I had a chance to experience the Reaper Paint and Take. Reaper had a table set up with 10 desk lamps, a big tub of their Master paints, and several miniatures that had already been primed for folks to work with. (I had intended to purchase the Inn Keeper and serving women, but Al Pare convinced me I had to buy and paint the Strumpets to test the paints!)
The next figure shows how I assembled the miniature. I added a couple of cuts and gouges to the shield, as I wanted him to have been battling in an earlier round. I used a pair of snips and my Xacto knife in areas where I thought swipes might have come from an opponent's blade.
Those who read my exploits in the last round might remember how I had difficulty holding the figure, because I cut the base off to mount it in a diorama. This time, I managed to avoid that by leaving the base as it was, and gluing it to a plastic stool-leg cap.
If you look at the face and left knee, you can see where I had to take off mold lines. Again, I was pleased with the quality of the miniatures from Alpha Miniatures, as there was little clean-up to do.
The head I had chosen had to be worked on to get it to fit, because the attachment spot did not match that on the body!
I cut the extrusion off of the head I had selected, and did a dry fit to see how well it would work. Ouch! The neck was so long, it looked like he had been on the rack! I had to carve off about 4 mm of the neck to get it to fit. Once I did that and the glue had dried, I went back and looked at where I needed to fill-in and add materials. The fit was pretty good (which surprised me as I did not use a file, just a knife). I added a touch of greenstuff in the front to smooth over the hole that was there, and added some to the hair to cover the gap in the back of the neck.
