Painting Mister Hyde

About a year ago, I came across a set of skirmish rules written for super-hero battles (Clobberin' Time). As the rules were written with HeroClix minis in mind, I decided at the time to purchase a bunch of HeroClix from ebay. I've only played these rules twice: the second time played solo and the first time very watered down for my daughter, 4 at the time, meaning it was pretty well a solo game too.

This year, I am interested in trying the Pulp Alley rule set. So I downloaded the starter rules and cards to try it out. Having printed out a bunch of pulp-style paper figures (there's a joke in there somewhere), I have most of what I would need to play sans sculpted minis. Assembling those paper stand-ups reminded me of a BGG user's collection of modified Clix. He modified sculpts make superheroes not in the HeroClix line-up or characters from other genres: pulp, sci-fi, and others.

"Start simple" is the advice I see over and over from the advanced Heroclix modders out there. However, most of the sculpts I had received in that initial ebay purchase are not easily converted to other things. So I bought some Heroclix I saw at the dollar store, taking packs with figures I felt would not require much modification to fit in with a pulpy theme.

Then I tried paint washes and dry brushing of a few of the sculpts I won't be changing. After the success of washes and dry-brushing, I took a Mister Hyde figure (I ended up with two) and started painting. Like all my painting so far, I'm using the el cheapo-brand craft acrylics.

I figure it'll be a relatively easy mod to go with a western theme for Hyde; make him a burly tough. The colours can be seen in the image below. I mixed some red into my brown for the coat and I think it turned out well, except that it is now the same colour as his hair, so I plan on adding yellow to it. I could even chop off the top of his head and glue a hat there. I'd like to put something in one of his hands, but I haven't decided yet. I thought about a couple of six-guns, but don't like that idea due to the lack of holsters on the sculpt and the hand positions (which I could change once I've done enough "simple" stuff). Might work to add a rifle held in one hand or a lasso held in both hands. Whips? Knives? That would work. We'll see how ambitious I get when I get time to work on this some more.

 Original Mister Hyde following black wash on the right. My painting (so far) on the left.

Looking at this image kinda makes me want to repaint that one lazy eye. It's all eye can see now.