Usually in D&D I like playing rogues or rangers and stealthy types. But I wanted to try something different and went with a caster class, the sorcerer.
Since I'm usually a rogue player I like small races and went with a Ghostwise Halfling for my race choice. Unfortunatly, finding a suitable halfling miniature for a caster is no fun at all. You can find gnomes all day long, but more halflings look like either knock-off Bilbo Baggins or are rogues.
With that in mind, I looked at gnome miniatures instead and found the miniature that I was looking for.
The model I decided on was Corim the Kestrel, Gnome Sorcerer from Reaper Miniatures. This mini would actually work perfectly for a magus in Pathinder, since they can cast spells on their swords and deliver them via attacks. Sorcerers in D&D are the complete opposite of a front line fighter and before I had bought the mini for him, I had already decided on having him fight with a morningstar anyway, so the sword had to go. This meant that some conversion work would be in order, and I ended up cutting the sword off at the hand and cutting off his left hand completely. While working out the look of the model, I decided that having him pointing a morningstar made no sense at all, so I took a wand from another gnome mini and replaced the sword with it. The wand looked a bit too large and I wasn't happy with it, so I broke it off and looked for a different option. Eventually I found the end of a staff that would work well and used it to make his wand. While I was trying to figure that out I went about sculpting a fist for his left hand. I had never sculpted a hand before, so I tried as best as I could. It turned out ok, but was slightly on the larger side. One other thing I wanted as to have his familiar on him, which is a parrot. For the parrot model, I bought a copy of Pirate Sophie from Reaper as well and luckily the parrot was it's own piece, so I could just attach it to him without any real issues. With the conversion work all finished, it was time to get to painting. I've always saw sorcerers as the flamboyant spell caster, maybe not bard levels of showiness, but still with their high charisma you know they've gotta be snappy dressers. With that in mind, I decided that he needed a fancy coat and pants.I also gave him a soul patch. For the coat, I painted it in a green quilted pattern on 3/4 of it and brown leather on the other 1/4 of it. The reasoning being that it acts as a falconer's glove for the parrot to grab on to. With so much prominent green on the model, I decided on a red sash and a red crystal on the wand. Crystals are something I tend to struggle with, but this one came out really nice and I think I did a fairly good job of making it shiny. His pants needed a bit of pizzazz also, so I went with cream colored pants with blue striping. One thing I wasn't sure how to paint was the parrot. I kept looking at different types of macaws and wanted to stay away from the standard red/green macaw. Once I saw the blue/gold macaw, I knew I had my color scheme. It was pretty easy to replicate too, but I didn't get it as bright as I originally hoped I would. The yellow is a bit dark, but I knew it would end up that way since I needed to darken up the feathers to make them show up from across the table. And that's pretty much it. Check out the detail shots and 360 degree video below. As always, you can catch me on Twitter and Instagram and see all of these projects in progress as they happen. |
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