The Homemade Mini: Painting: SWED Project

Yeah, SWED Project. I just thought of that very original title for my project to make the Epic Duels game. That is how I will refer to it as I go.

Anyway, the reason for the post is the completion of a couple of Heroclix mods to make my first completed Epic Duels team: Grand Admiral Thrawn and his personal bodyguard/assassin, Rukh.

To start, I currently have somewhere around 150 miniatures: 100 from my recent CSI purchase, a bunch from an Ebay purchase years ago and a few from a number of Dollarama purchases. I've decided to keep some of the more well-know heroes and villains to play the actual Heroclix game with my 5yo son, who has shown interest in the game. The ones I keep are decided mainly by his ability to identify them. I'm likely limited by such a small collection of figures, but we'll see. As I get better at sculpting with green stuff, the limitations should lessen.

Grand Admiral Thrawn

Thrawn was easy to do, I found the perfect figure to use among my CSI purchase:

Meet Psion, a superhero or villain I've never heard of. Now say goodbye!

Mr. Psion here required very little sculpt modding before painting. I shaved the pant legs down to form boots. Then it was on to painting.

For the uninitiated, Thrawn is a humanoid alien with blue skin, black hair and red eyes. He is a Grand Admiral of the Empire. In the Timothy Zahn novels that introduced him, Thrawn is a patient and calculating individual. His rank is high enough that he need not fight anyone directly, he has a whole fleet of ships to do that, and Rukh. I think the Psion sculpt works well as a template as it is unlikely that one will see Thrawn getting himself into a one-on-one fight with anyone, so who needs an action pose? Almost all images of the good admiral depict him wearing a white uniform, usually with minimal adornment beyond his rank insignia.

Meet Grand Admiral Thrawn! I just couldn't get the lighting to work.

I mentioned his ysalamiri in my last post. The ysalamiri are brought up in the Zahn novels as a creature with the ability to dispel the Force from an area around itself. This attribute is always "on", so no Force user, Jedi or Sith, can exercise their powers on it or anything within its sphere of influence. Thrawn often keeps the animal very close, probably originally as a kind of insurance against Vader and Palpatine. I still think I'd like to add an ysalamiri, but later, when I've had some more practice with green stuff.

Rukh

Rukh is of an alien race called the Noghri. In the Zahn books, his planet is tricked into servitude by Lord Vader. The Noghri are all skilled assassins and are used by the Empire to take out tough targets. In Rukh's case, he is personally attached to Thrawn as a bodyguard.

Since the split of Star Wars stories into Legends and Canon, Rukh is depicted as either a rather large (Legends), or as a slimmer (Canon) reptilian being. I liked the look of one illustration in particular and I based my work on it.

Meet Turtle, a super-villain I've never heard of. Now say bye-bye!

Starting with the Turtle figure, I did a lot of cutting to slim the body a bit. After that, I broke out some green stuff to make a sort of poncho and added a shoulder bag, wrist guards, and side pouch (as the illustration I liked had). I didn't have the image available for a little bit and I added a feature to the ankles that I found later looks different in the picture I was following, but it still kinda works. I shaved of Turtle's hair. Then, using green stuff, I added a ridge around his crown and built up the lower part of the face, sculpting in a new mouth and nose to get a more reptilian look.

Another image I came across shows Rukh holding some kind of double-bladed dagger things. To make those, I snipped a pin and heated the pieces to melt them into his hands, adding a dab of super glue to help hold them there.

I did a lot more with washes and dry-brushing to get the skin tones where I wanted them. The image turned out looking darker than he actually is.