“Coz’ he’s worth it” (part 1)

It’s been a while since I last posted, in fact it’s been a while since I last touched anything wargames related to be honest, and indeed this post isn’t actually wargames related as such, but I thought I’d share with you what I’m currently up to if only to try and get me back into the habit of posting (and hopefully a few of you might find it of interest).

Now back before Christmas my brother-in-law “Dennis” decided to buy himself a sewing machine with a view to making himself a “Game of Thrones” style cloak. This he did with great success, but as anyone with any experience of Dennis with tell you, he never does anything by half so as you can see in the photo to the right he is now the proud (very proud!) owner of the full “Stark” ensemble all made by his own fair hands (not bad as these are the first things he’s ever sewed, I said he didn’t do things by half didn’t I!). But I hear you ask what has this got to do with me? Well I’m coming to that (impatient!!). A couple of weeks ago we went to a small local “Comi’con” event and Dennis entered the “Cosplay” competition (well he had the outfit after all, this however didn’t have any pockets, so I had to accompany him as baggage handler), to say he loved it is a bit of an understatement, we did however discover a couple of problems, first of which was that he needed the accouterments, sword, pieces of armor etc.. to finnish it off, and good as the costume is, it’s a little too non-specific (a few people thought it was from the Vikings, or Lord of the Rings). So I (see I said I was getting to my bit!) mentioned that he could do with something that was specific to a) Game of Thrones and b) the Stark’s. Now I feel I should point out at the juncture that I have never watched G’of’T, but after Dennis showed me a picture of the “Dire wolf” that they use as their insignia I stated that I should be able to knock one up in greenstuff that he could add to the fur collar of his cloak to aid recognition. Now there are four main reasons I volunteered to do this….

1. It was a good excuse to get out the old sculpting tools and see if I could
2. It would give me something to blog about
3. It would hopefully kick-start me back into painting again, and
4. I’m just a really, really nice chap*

So for the last week (and probably the next) that is exactly what I have been doing, I began by printing out few pictures of said “wolfie” (it is worth noting here that it appears no two versions are exactly the same, which plays right into my wheelhouse. Hooray!!), We then discussed what size Dennis would be looking for, deciding that it needed to quite big so as to be easily seen and would probably be mounted on either a round or oval backing plate. So the final size decided on was six inches from rear fur point to nose tip. Anyway I decided the best way to do this was to print out an image at full size then tape a piece of acetate over this and build the piece up on this, so as it could easily be broken away once complete. Once this was in place, I then laid down a base of greenstuff over this (that’s just a posh way of saying I rolled out putty all over the wolf-head shape).

Next day I added some rough details for his maw, his chin whiskers, teeth and a test scale/ fur piece at the back (I’m not sure what you would call these but the look more like scales to me so I’ll refer to them as that from now on).

The row of scales down the back came next day, each one added individually and shaped with a ridge running down the centre (not sure you can see this on the photo’s very well).

Same again next day, but this time along the bottom.

Now when it came time to added the scales that would cover the neck, I pondered how I would avoid getting them too far out of position, my solution was to print out another full sized picture and partially cut it out, so I could accurately place it over the top of the greenstuff version, then taking a spike I pushed through at the tip of each scale leaving a grid of holes in the greenstuff below, I was then able to take a felt tip marker and roughly draw in the scales as a guide. Lastly today I added a couple more of the bottom row of scales.

Last of the bottom row of scales and the next row up were added the next day. And I bet you can see where this is going..yes the next row and the first of the row above was added the day after this, and that is where I’m up to as I write, now luckily I have plenty of greenstuff (as I bought a job-lot from Salute a couple of years back, but even so I do appear to be chewing through it at a rate of knots! There is about another weeks work left in this (at the rate I work anyway!), then it will need mounting on its backing plate and painting, and I’ll post again once I’m up to this point along with (I hope) a couple of pic’s of it in situ on Dennis’s’ cloak.

So sort of back, even if it’s not strictly about figures (trust me Dennis is defiantly not 28mm scale).

Till next time, Cheers Roger.

• *This last reason is of course open to debate!