Anirion, Wood Elf Wizard (conversion)

Reaper Bones #77068 "Anirion, Wood Elf Wizard" -- plastic 32mm scale game miniature, slightly converted, with putty detail on base, and acrylic paints.

Originally, this plastic miniature held a staff in both hands, but the "Bones" plastic is prone to warping for really thin parts such as long swords, staves, and spears, and although a soak in hot water can do wonders to straighten out the thicker parts of plastic, the relief seems to only be temporary for such especially spindly parts as the staff.  (And too much worrying will cause paint to flake off -- and with the plastic as soft as it is, it's easy enough to bend under its own weight while in foam storage.)

Sometimes, I'll fix this by just snipping off the staff/spear, drilling a pinning hole, then running a piece of wire through to serve as the new staff/shaft, and gluing or sculpting back on any relevant details.  However, here I decided to skip the staff route.  


Originally, I was fixing this up as a possible PC miniature for an Iron Kingdoms RPG campaign for a player who gave me very scant details on his character -- that he was a "sorcerer" (essentially an untrained spellcaster specializing in elemental magic, subject to potential persecution because of sorcerers' reputation for causing disasters when untamed magic goes berserk -- hence they tend to try to be low-key about their profession).  I wanted to convey the idea of a mysterious fellow in a cloak with a hood (partly because since I had so little information on the character, an obscuring hood meant I could be shy on the details ), and with a "spell" effect, including runes meant to only appear when actually casting magic.

After removing the staff, I used a shard of plastic trimmed from the translucent blue plastic base of an "Iron Man" HeroClix figure (which I had used for another conversion project).  With a few whittling cuts, I made it look semi-faceted, like some sort of "ice crystal," perhaps, and it fit nicely between the two hands.  I painted the figure mostly in dark colors, so I could make a "forced light" effect from the vicinity of the crystal (and then only glued in the "crystal" after most of the rest of the painting was done).

For the runes on the cloak hem, I painted the hems in dark grey, then used a fine, two-bristle brush to paint "runes/sigils" in white.  I used a semi-translucent purple paint to paint over the runes once dry, applying repeated coats the further away I got from the "light source," and with extra applied within recessed/shadowed areas, in the hopes of making the runes furthest away from the "magic effect" look faint, whereas those closest would be nearly white, with high contrast.

The background, entirely inappropriate for a "wood elf," was picked just because I thought it fit the Iron Kingdoms setting well enough (where we started off in a fairly urban area).

As it was, the player revealed that his second career was going to be alchemy, so he was going for the traditional Warmachine "alchemist" look, complete with plague doctor-esque gas mask and wide-brimmed hat and cloak, diverging considerably from this stand-in mini.  I still might find use for him as some "generic" spellcaster, and it didn't take long to put together, so I don't consider it a waste.