Wee Free Men

This is Tiffany, walking back home. Start with the boots. They are big and heavy boots, much repaired by her father and they’d belonged to various sisters before her; she wore several pairs of socks to keep them on. They are big. Tiffany sometimes feels she is nothing more than a way of moving boots around. Then there is the dress. It has been owned by many sisters before her and has been taken up, taken out, taken down and taken in by her mother so many times that it really ought to have been taken away. But Tiffany rather likes it. It comes down to her ankles and, whatever colour it has been to start with, is now a milky blue which is, incidentally, exactly the same colour as the butterflies skittering beside the path. Then there is Tiffany’s face. Light pink, with brown eyes and brown hair. Nothing special. Her head might strike anyone watching – in a sauce of black water, for example – as being just slightly too big for the rest of her, but perhaps she’d grow into it. (Pg14-15)

The starting point for the whole army became the final piece to finish it. Not out of some sense of deliberate planning, storytelling or the conceit of a finale. 

She is the final piece because she is the one I have been most scared of messing up. If you mess up a Feegle, no one will really notice, especially not when they are 17mm high. But a human that is 170mm tall? There are fewer places to hide.

The base model has been this beaten up Mantic Giant that I got second hand several years ago for a tenner off eBay. Way back in the first or second post in this project, I showed how the whole army is scaled to this one model. Obviously to make it look like a nine year old girl was going to take some effort.

I started with a simple, albeit time consuming, task which was taking off excess details and smoothing out the model for the green stuff to go down.

I’d hoped that working through the sculpting over the rest of the army would build a confidence for this one but did it? I guess in terms of playing around with different sculpting materials and tools. I don’t think I’d say I came in feeling super confident though. 

With that in mind, I realised I needed to focus less on the whole. How do you eat an elephant? One clompy old boot at a time.

This was the point that my supply of green stuff ended. I don’t know why I thought a single 12” strip would be enough given how big the model is and the sheer amount of work needing done. An overnight order from our Bezosian overlords was in a necessity as none of my usual hobby shops had any in stock.

With new green stuff clutched in my sweaty little hand and the UKGE coverage to keep me entertained, it was time to crack into day two.

I finished the dress, gave her an apron and then worked on some details. Working on such a big model with so much green stuff, one of the biggest challenges is not squishing the parts I’ve just finished. The whole thing is going to need some work to get rid of cured in fingerprints but that is a future me problem.

Next up it was time to start on her frying pan. To help with the strength of it, I trimmed down the existing weapon but kept most of it as the backbone. The first attempt was far too big once I held it up to the rest of the model so I ripped it out and started over. I was working with a circle drawn on paper and put under some clear plastic so I could have a rough template. This is where I stopped for the night to allow my work to cure and to think about the arms.

The arms were going to differ from the reference art because I had realised early on in cutting off the extra details that I would struggle to get them to look like normal bare arms. Full sleeves it was then and the best way to do those would be to attach the arms first. Super glue and a power drill for the pins was an excellent start to a Sunday morning.

Over the course of the final day of UKGE coverage, I managed to get the arms done while being tempted into Battletech by John and the chat. Not spending money is hard when the entire community are enablers.

The head was the final piece of the model and the one I hummed and ha-ed over the most.

Should I just try sculpting one from scratch and making it as much like the art as I could? 

Probably yes, I should.

Did I?

No.

I decided from some unknown reason to greenstuff over the existing heads (yes, both of them) to see if I could make one that I didn’t hate. I think it looks funny (as in haha) but I’m not sure it’ll be right in the final army. I have a feeling that I need a bit of distance from the project to really get a grasp on how much I like it though. If needs be in the future I can always pry it off and start again but that won’t be before the end of the Spring Clean Challenge.

I now have three days to paint her up. Oh, and prepare for my first trip out of the country in nearly seven years… but mostly painting a giant.