Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Lisbeth by Studio McVey - halfway there

Lisbeth has her base colours and fist run of shading done:



'fraid the pics aren't the best, but she's still WiP.


Still needs more detail work (logos on her helmet, dials on her watchs ect) and cleanup. The board isn't started yet. I'll be doing a hibiscus design in Ice Blue in the indented section, and surf/skate logos on the back and centre blue sections to make her nice and grommity.

Sunday, August 08, 2010

Lisbeth - Colours

Here's a rough map out of how the colours will work for her:



The pattern on the outside of the board will be a hibiscus design, and I'll be adding a variety of skatie/surfie logos to her helmet and board.


She's undercoated now, so I'll be working on her tomorrow.

Saturday, August 07, 2010

Lisbeth by Studio McVey - progress and adding earphones

Surf's up dudemeisters!


I've been continuing to work on Lisbeth from Studio McVey, finalising her mounting and cleaning up a few details. As seen in the picture below the grenade is finished being turned into a water bottle, and I've added the wire from what is now her iPod case (or whatever they have in the future) for her earphones.


The wire is a single strand pulled from some standard multi-core electrical wiring salvaged from an ancient stereo. I drilld a guide hole with a 0.35mm bit, and secured the wire with superglue.



Next step was to carefully wrap the wire around her body. Areas to be careful around are using enough pressure to bend the wire so it doesn't pull back, but not enough to pull it from its mounting. The other thing to be careful of is to not kink the wire, or it'll look like rubbish. In the above pic you can also see where I've re-sculpted her left hand's fingers.

As you can see the wire is bowed out to the right of frame (her left) to indicate movement.



Then I simply glued it into place under her helmet. If I'd planned ahead I could have drilled guide holes, but I didn't. It's out of focus, but the re-scuplted right hand can be seen above and below.



The second wire for her right ear is glued in place.



Leave it to dry and don't try to re-position it 'just a little bit'. It'll fall out. Trust me.
It's probably also a good idea to cut the wire shorter than I did.



The right ear wire gets bent into position, cut to length, glued to the longer wire and we're done!

Here she is in what will be her final positioning, ready for priming (the pin is mounted to the board so I can take her off for painting) - a bit of a difference from the original!

Cowabunger! Totaly tubular! Wiggity wiggity! Reaganomics!

Monday, August 02, 2010

100th post - Dark Sword, Red Box and Studio McVey


These three lovely ladies are from Dark Sword Miniatures, part of their line to of figures based on George R R Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, though I just painted them how I felt like.


Sansa Stark, who dislikes giving me a decent photo.



Lannister Lady in Waiting, who uses a lot of double sided tape methinks.



Catelyn Stark, who I thought looks very much like the lovely Cate Blanchett. Might even be worth getting a second to make into a Galadriel since GW's are pretty terrible.



Group shot from behind.


Here's one for the ladies:


Red Box's Hakar the Horrible WiP.


Also on the workbench I've got Studio McVey's (as in Mike) limited edition Lisbeth (I have #52):


First thing I did was swap her around on her board to make her a goofy footer. This is mostly due to her stance - it is very much putting all her weight on her left foot, which would indicate pitching the opposite end of the board upwards. The original stance had this the other way around, with her leaning away from her pursuers yet going upwards.

Another issue is that it is very rare for a skater/snowboarder/surfer to grab the board to their front with their leading arm - doing so would make it very difficult to see where you're going. This is of course the opposite when doing a method grab when you use the leading arm for the very same reason.

So, after swapping her around (and re-sculpting the fingers on her left hand [they were part of the board]) I chopped off her right hand and cut up her shoulder to bring the arm down and to the outside in a more natural position for balancing. Then it was sculpting on fingers.

I've also given her a singlet and converted her hand grenade into a water bottle. The holster for her now non-existent pistol has been cut down and I'll be adding some wires to her ears as if it is a MP3 playr case or somesuch. Her thong was also changed to simply be high underwear (it seemed like it would be uncomfortable). She also got some hair at the back.

Colours will probably be khaki pants, black singlet, red fancy top, and a white/blue board with a hibiscus pattern .