I Saw Billthulu and Lived!
Since the Mormon Enforcers were a little upset at me skiving off for far too long, they thought I would need some motivation. I was hoping for a motivational poster from Despair.com, but they had other ideas...
- Yep, off to the depths...
- ...of the Dawghouse I went, to see things man was never meant to know...
- Yep, there is a reason...
- ...Bill has no pic of himself on his site...2km-tall armoured fish gods...
- ...that can wipe someone out of existence with a tiny flick of electrons are pretty freaky stuff.
- Still...
- I did get a T-shirt that said "I saw Billthulu and lived!" and the best part is it only cost me my sanity. Cheap at twice the price!
(Get 20 of those printed up with the TMP URL on the back, Bill, and personally sell them at cons - I recon people would buy one.)
Anyways, let's get nose to grindstone and finish this off.
Now, last time we finished the flamer, so give me a sec to figure out what else is to go, and then we will be off and racing.
Oooo, I remember now!
We still have eyeballs, gas mask decoration, and the base to go!
OK - eyeballs first
Now because we are doing a simple Workbench report, we will do simple eyes. If you follow this lead, I can assure you your eyeballs will pass muster.
Now with this fig, one of the eyeballs was a bit sculpted-over in the conversion process. In order to make it look like it was meant to be that way, I decided an empty eye socket was the go. Never be afraid to think outside the square when something goes wrong. It's just a chance to make it better than it was.
Pretty meaty, eh! Just use the same process we used to make the scar tissue, with lots of gooey red in the socket and Bob's your uncle. Reminds me of the time my mate Bill Smith took his eyeball out with a meat hook. Poor fella had his eyeball bouncing on his cheek, dangling from the attachment to the brain bit. Being the big lug he was, he didn't panic - he just walked up to the foreman, tapped him on the shoulder, and said. "Um, boss, I have hurt my eye. Can I please go to the doctor and get it fixed?" He took his foreman fainting as a yes, and toddled off to the sawbones to get it popped back in.
Maybe this sort of tale is the reason I'm not allowed to tell the nephews and nieces bedtime stories...
Now the other eyeball is a bit more technical
It actually has an eyeball in it, for a start.
OK - here is the gist of what we are doing, in a nutshell. The very thick black line is the eyeball. The white paint, as you can see, has spilled over onto the flesh areas 'cus it's easier to paint it bigger than it should be, then fill in with flesh colour. Finally, the colour dot is not placed in the centre of the eye but slightly above it. Hint: Blue eyes look the best! Trust me.
Of course, this is fine-detail-brush time as well. OOO size is good.
Next, get some Flesh and fill in, as below. Then use a little watered ink in the valley on the outside of the eye socket to do instant shading. Finish off with some Flesh and a little White mixed to a highlight colour, and use to highlight the ridge of the eyelid - ending up with something like this:
Here it is on the fig:
Now, I'm assuming at some point here, I must-of cleaned up the face's flesh a little. Pretty easy to do. Make up some flesh, keep the paint semi-watery, and fill in carefully any ink overspill from the shading (by overspill, I mean where the ink has shaded areas outside the valleys), until it shades down to slightly darker than the normal skin tone. (This will give a gradual transition from shadow to light.) Finishing up, mix a little White with the Flesh paint and highlight the ears, eyebrows, brow, tops of cheekbones, and - if they have one - the nose. This will give the face depth and character.