Saturday, February 4, 2012

New Figures for Our Fantasy Campaign

This is, more or less, a re-posting from my other blog. But as it pertains directly to the DragonLance Campaign chronicled on this blog, I've posted it here as well...

Anyone that's been following this blog for a bit with know that last fall I started a couple new campaigns. The Saturday evening game (as well as the one for the kids) has been the old TSR AD&D Dragonlance campaign. The players made their own characters that I fit into the campaign (which is really written for use with pre-generated characters, but making your own is more fun).

Around that time I’d painted some fun cartoony fantasy figures (Dork Tower and Cerebus and Thrud) which were a lot of fun and I also happened to start sculpting again and I got thinking… “Wouldn’t it be fun to do some cartoony figures for my players characters…?”

One Sunday afternoon in September I sat down and drew pictures of the various characters. A couple days later I got sculpting. It was going good for a bit – but it’s a long process for me and I got going on other things… and they only worked in fits and starts…

I had originally wanted to keep it a secret until I had them all done... but the project stalled and I also didn't get them done in time for Xmas (which I'd originally planned to do)... of course no one was really showing up for games in December anyway... so... Anyway, here's what I've got done so far!

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)

Here’s a pic from my sketchbook of the original drawings:


These are the first three I finished:


From left to right are: Lorena Whiteswan, Henry FitzArnulf, and Roscoe Thorngage.


Their backsides – all kitted out for adventuring. I was inspired a bit by Citadel Miniautres, who used to make some great character adventure figures that had lots of adventuring kit dangling off of them…


These are the masters of the above figures. They're kind of leaning against each other because otherwise they'd topple over... not terribly well balanced figures...

These are the masters of the remaining characters:


From left to right are: Norfindel, Marcus Cabot, Magnus Blackburn, and Curly. Magnus is actually finished… I just have to get around to making a mould and trying to cast one.

Unfortunately Curly is dead. He did die an “obscure death”, however... so I could conceivably reintroduce him to the campaign… washed out to sea… found half dead on the shore… captured by Draconians…

I was actually torn as to whether I should make moulds and cast them or just paint the masters. How many am I ever really going to need?! Ultimately I decided to make moulds and cast them. Though I lose some of the detail, I just really like the WEIGHT of metal minis…

7 comments:

R Singers said...

Very nice. Definitely worth casting. You could always start selling some via your blog like the White Knight http://whiteknightminiatureimperium.blogspot.co.nz/ :-)

tim said...

Thanks!

I'd briefly thought about that - selling them - until I actually tried casting them. I had to cast a half dozen or so of each to get one that cast "not-so-bad" - and even then I had to make minor modifications with green stuff... They're really awful as castings - but once they're cleaned up and painted up, they turn out okay...

Sean Tait Bircher said...

I'm impressed! I'm just happy I figured out how to make paper minis on my own, and I still get the scale wrong a lot of the time.

Thomas Jakobsen said...

oh this is great. Makes me wish I was just half decent at sculpting.

Gordon said...

Is no news sad news? No game updates in over a month. Are the games not happening / on hold for some reason? Or is it a time to write the updates issue?

tim said...

Oh, it's mostly that I've been busy...

There was one more game for each campaign in February - which I never got around to reporting - and then I just got very busy with stuff - not the least of which a Dark Ages DBA Campaign on my 40th birthday...

Since then well... stuff happens - the kdis campaign got cancelled for week because three of our participants homeschool book club got bumped to a friday... We did play this past Friday - and they finished off DL02 Dragons of Flame without a Total Party Kill... but I just haven't had a chance to post anything about it....

In the other campaign people have been busy... one of the very regular player is off to Florida for spring training with the Kayak club, two of the other very regular players have been involved in volleyball tournaments, two of the others rarely show up anyway...

So updating this blog is on the list of "things to do"... It's just that it's a very looooong list right now..

cheers!

David Finch said...

Awesome. My players where impressed when I made tri-fold paper figures for there characters but this is just cool.