lahatiel
New member
On October 11th, just ten days from now, I\'ll have the honor and privelege of marrying the love of my life. But like Romeo and Juliet, Tony and Maria, Buffy and Angel, she and I hail from opposing factions: in the great internet rivalry, Shelly is a pirate and I am a ninja.
Her own initial idea for a cake topper was to try and find some little plastic Japanese, tokidoki-style toys of a female pirate and male ninja. She wasn\'t having much luck finding what she wanted, though. Around the same time, she was also asking me to help out with more of the planning; among other things, then, I told her not to worry about the cake topper -- I\'d have that covered.
She tolerates my miniature-painting hobby with reactions ranging from bemusement at best to mild annoyance at worst (depending on how much time I\'m giving it versus her). She\'s joked several times since my pronouncement: \"No miniatures!\" However, she\'s really only used to seeing things like my Blood Bowl, fantasy-football-style figures, as well as things like Space Marines. So I took the chance that I could come up with something that, when done, would make her forget her \"no miniatures\" edict. She won\'t see this until it\'s done, but I got the approval at this stage of her best friend/maid of honor, so I feel safe about my decision.
Thus it came to pass, the union of Reaper Miniatures\' \"Sela Windsprite, Elf Pirate\" and \"Edo, Male Ninja\":
I looked across a wide array of ranges and various pirate/ninja figures, but these two were far and away the best for my purposes. Having them both be in fairly neutral poses, and lacking a lot of extraneous detail, was important. Our wedding will be weapon-free, but these poses made the weapon snips a relatively simple matter. Sela\'s pet monkey is actually a nice touch, because we both love monkeys and, in fact, one of my first presents to her was the Build-A-Bear pirate monkey stuffed animal she\'d wanted.
I was going to want to turn Edo\'s head; that way the figures could stand facing forward, while still holding hands and looking at one another, for which Sela\'s pose was already well-suited. And since Edo would be losing his head anyway, I decided to replace it with a bald one, giving him the personal touch mimicking my own shaved head. Luckily, I just happened to have a GW plastic bald head in my bits box. Detail-wise, that just left skulls on Edo\'s outfit... especially the large one on his back:
Those were all a bit much. And since I was already getting rid of those, I figured the pouches on his belt could go, too. So I started with a clip of all the weapons, as well as taking a chunk off the back of the ninja\'s new head. The head was shaped for a much more heavyset figure, and I was going to be adding a mask around the lower half anyway, to maintain his ninja mystique:
While Sela\'s left arm and Edo\'s right were in fairly good positions for the hand-holding, it turned out they were a bit too far off to simply be bent. Therefore, I chopped them off so they could be pinned back at better angles. I\'d also started taking off Edo\'s skulls and pouches, cleaning up the weaponless hands, and adding a bit of plasticard to Edo\'s feet -- the removal of his integrated base had left them a bit uneven, so I added two different thicknesses of card to rebalance them:
I reattached the arms, added the pins to the feet, and attached Edo\'s new head. You\'ll also notice I took some chunks off of Edo\'s new cheeks, too. Again, the face was too heaveyset and was going to be puttied over anyway; the bald head was all that was really important. Edo\'s hand was cleaning up fairly nicely, but Sela\'s were proving to be problematic; I cut them off after figuring it would probably be easier to sculpt new ones myself at that point:
I lined them up in a test post after beginning the putty work. I\'d started Edo\'s new mask and cleaned up his shirt where a skull had been removed. I\'d also started rebuiling his forearm where the sword hilt had been, and rebuilt the built where the pouch came off. Sela only needed some work on her shoulders where I connected the arms to by body and, obviously, I\'d added some wire work to the wrists to support the new sculpting. However, with time being a factor, two more Reaper Miniatures, \"Tristan Loremistress\" and \"Merith of the Flame,\" offered to lend a hand -- one hand each:
I went through other miniatures I had laying around and found that Tristan had a perfectly usable open right hand that could easily be swapped in. I hadn\'t thought that Sela\'s left hand would be much of a problem since it would wrap up with Edo\'s hand, hiding the inside where the weapon had been removed. However, the basic shape of the hand made that a more difficult proposition than first believed, as it was too closed; I needed a more open hand to fit into Edo\'s. Merith\'s left hand turned out to be perfect as, once the flame was removed (and again, the inside from where it would be cut would be hidden in the end, anyway), the hand itself was nice and flat as is seen better from the back:
With Sela\'s new hands added, I finished the putty work and the general mini prep. With them finally ready for painting, I took one last shot before spraying the primer:
I\'ve also made the boxes on which each figure will stand. They were made from 3mm Taskboard and are shown here stuck via bluetack onto popsicle sticks and sprayed with white primer. The tops on the right will be set into the boxes on the left and each figure mounted to one -- the boxes are actually sized so they\'re slightly wider than the spread of Edo\'s feet:
The texture of the Taskboard is a nice substitute for the wood surface of the real boxes they\'re designed to represent: the two boxes that are in the corners of the dance floor at Malediction Society, the Hollywood goth/industrial club where Shelly and I met. The real boxes are about 3 ft. high and 4 ft. and are there for people to climb up and dance on top; some do it to show off but for either Shelly or I, we would do so just dance with some space and air, away from the rest of the crowd. The mini boxes will be much smaller, relatively speaking, compared to the figures on top, but I obviously didn\'t want the boxes to distract focus away from the figures. The boxes will be a deep purple color with a golden fleur de lis design, as seen in the crappy cell phone pic I snapped one night before the club opened, so that I\'d have the design for reference:
While it helps that I work nights and Shelly works days, the toughest part by far has been trying to do all this without her knowing I\'m working on anything miniature-related. That\'s why I have the figures primered now, but didn\'t have time for that picture before she got home. I\'ll get a couple hours to paint on Wednesday afternoon before we have an evening appointment at the wedding venue, and then I\'ll have all day Thursday and Friday, with both those nights off, in which I hope to get the bulk of the work done. I\'ll try and get some updated shots posted in the interim, but that will depend on how my schedule (and hers) goes -- getting the painting done in time will be much more important than getting pictures taken right now!
(edited for a couple of misspellings)
Her own initial idea for a cake topper was to try and find some little plastic Japanese, tokidoki-style toys of a female pirate and male ninja. She wasn\'t having much luck finding what she wanted, though. Around the same time, she was also asking me to help out with more of the planning; among other things, then, I told her not to worry about the cake topper -- I\'d have that covered.
She tolerates my miniature-painting hobby with reactions ranging from bemusement at best to mild annoyance at worst (depending on how much time I\'m giving it versus her). She\'s joked several times since my pronouncement: \"No miniatures!\" However, she\'s really only used to seeing things like my Blood Bowl, fantasy-football-style figures, as well as things like Space Marines. So I took the chance that I could come up with something that, when done, would make her forget her \"no miniatures\" edict. She won\'t see this until it\'s done, but I got the approval at this stage of her best friend/maid of honor, so I feel safe about my decision.
Thus it came to pass, the union of Reaper Miniatures\' \"Sela Windsprite, Elf Pirate\" and \"Edo, Male Ninja\":
I looked across a wide array of ranges and various pirate/ninja figures, but these two were far and away the best for my purposes. Having them both be in fairly neutral poses, and lacking a lot of extraneous detail, was important. Our wedding will be weapon-free, but these poses made the weapon snips a relatively simple matter. Sela\'s pet monkey is actually a nice touch, because we both love monkeys and, in fact, one of my first presents to her was the Build-A-Bear pirate monkey stuffed animal she\'d wanted.
I was going to want to turn Edo\'s head; that way the figures could stand facing forward, while still holding hands and looking at one another, for which Sela\'s pose was already well-suited. And since Edo would be losing his head anyway, I decided to replace it with a bald one, giving him the personal touch mimicking my own shaved head. Luckily, I just happened to have a GW plastic bald head in my bits box. Detail-wise, that just left skulls on Edo\'s outfit... especially the large one on his back:
Those were all a bit much. And since I was already getting rid of those, I figured the pouches on his belt could go, too. So I started with a clip of all the weapons, as well as taking a chunk off the back of the ninja\'s new head. The head was shaped for a much more heavyset figure, and I was going to be adding a mask around the lower half anyway, to maintain his ninja mystique:
While Sela\'s left arm and Edo\'s right were in fairly good positions for the hand-holding, it turned out they were a bit too far off to simply be bent. Therefore, I chopped them off so they could be pinned back at better angles. I\'d also started taking off Edo\'s skulls and pouches, cleaning up the weaponless hands, and adding a bit of plasticard to Edo\'s feet -- the removal of his integrated base had left them a bit uneven, so I added two different thicknesses of card to rebalance them:
I reattached the arms, added the pins to the feet, and attached Edo\'s new head. You\'ll also notice I took some chunks off of Edo\'s new cheeks, too. Again, the face was too heaveyset and was going to be puttied over anyway; the bald head was all that was really important. Edo\'s hand was cleaning up fairly nicely, but Sela\'s were proving to be problematic; I cut them off after figuring it would probably be easier to sculpt new ones myself at that point:
I lined them up in a test post after beginning the putty work. I\'d started Edo\'s new mask and cleaned up his shirt where a skull had been removed. I\'d also started rebuiling his forearm where the sword hilt had been, and rebuilt the built where the pouch came off. Sela only needed some work on her shoulders where I connected the arms to by body and, obviously, I\'d added some wire work to the wrists to support the new sculpting. However, with time being a factor, two more Reaper Miniatures, \"Tristan Loremistress\" and \"Merith of the Flame,\" offered to lend a hand -- one hand each:
I went through other miniatures I had laying around and found that Tristan had a perfectly usable open right hand that could easily be swapped in. I hadn\'t thought that Sela\'s left hand would be much of a problem since it would wrap up with Edo\'s hand, hiding the inside where the weapon had been removed. However, the basic shape of the hand made that a more difficult proposition than first believed, as it was too closed; I needed a more open hand to fit into Edo\'s. Merith\'s left hand turned out to be perfect as, once the flame was removed (and again, the inside from where it would be cut would be hidden in the end, anyway), the hand itself was nice and flat as is seen better from the back:
With Sela\'s new hands added, I finished the putty work and the general mini prep. With them finally ready for painting, I took one last shot before spraying the primer:
I\'ve also made the boxes on which each figure will stand. They were made from 3mm Taskboard and are shown here stuck via bluetack onto popsicle sticks and sprayed with white primer. The tops on the right will be set into the boxes on the left and each figure mounted to one -- the boxes are actually sized so they\'re slightly wider than the spread of Edo\'s feet:
The texture of the Taskboard is a nice substitute for the wood surface of the real boxes they\'re designed to represent: the two boxes that are in the corners of the dance floor at Malediction Society, the Hollywood goth/industrial club where Shelly and I met. The real boxes are about 3 ft. high and 4 ft. and are there for people to climb up and dance on top; some do it to show off but for either Shelly or I, we would do so just dance with some space and air, away from the rest of the crowd. The mini boxes will be much smaller, relatively speaking, compared to the figures on top, but I obviously didn\'t want the boxes to distract focus away from the figures. The boxes will be a deep purple color with a golden fleur de lis design, as seen in the crappy cell phone pic I snapped one night before the club opened, so that I\'d have the design for reference:
While it helps that I work nights and Shelly works days, the toughest part by far has been trying to do all this without her knowing I\'m working on anything miniature-related. That\'s why I have the figures primered now, but didn\'t have time for that picture before she got home. I\'ll get a couple hours to paint on Wednesday afternoon before we have an evening appointment at the wedding venue, and then I\'ll have all day Thursday and Friday, with both those nights off, in which I hope to get the bulk of the work done. I\'ll try and get some updated shots posted in the interim, but that will depend on how my schedule (and hers) goes -- getting the painting done in time will be much more important than getting pictures taken right now!
(edited for a couple of misspellings)
