Wednesday 15 January 2020

I'm seeing double

Hello everyone,

No, no, I didn't drink too much; I rarely drink alcohol anyway to be honest .
It's just a way to show off some of the recent conversions I did.

Maybe I need to explain why I'm doing this:
When I decided to do a Rangers of Shadow Deep project in 15mm, I checked what I had already laying around. Turned out I had quite a bit of monsters and villains, most meant for sci-fi or 28mm, and barely any heroes. To remedy this I bought some adventurer packs from Alternative Armies. I
have to admit, it got a little bit out of hand after this first order. G
through my order,  I noticed a few doubles and many models with a similar role.
Quite a few Men-at-arms, enough Wizards to start a council and the beginnings of a decent Thieves Guild but no archers or models suitable to be used as rangers.
And like I already mentioned in my previous post, I really like to have two of every follower.
So, in order to get myself all the companions I needed, I knew I had to do a few conversions.

Now, the best conversions are the ones where it's almost impossible to spot the original from the one you changed. I'm far from that level but I'm still quite pleased with how some turned out and I feel like I did a decent job. Some are better than others, but that's just the way it is.
One word of warning though, a few of the models are a lot smaller than others. Many are close to 18mm, but others are actually closer to 15mm (barely). Which means you can paint eyes on some but it's near impossible to do on others.

First up are a Tracker and an Arcanist, both started out as some kind of Druid. Strange enough he was carrying around a shield which didn't like, so I removed the arm holding it on both of them and gave my Tracker a bow. The Arcanist also got a headswap with a head I removed from a Blighthaven Southern Death Cult model. As I noticed a severe shortage of female characters among my companions, I also gave the model a sex change. The book, made from some leftover putty, didn't work out as I wanted but decided to keep it anyway.


Second is a Men-at-Arms and his converted Guardsman version. The idea was to give him and helbard, only after glueing on the blade I noticed how overly large it was and changed it into an axe. After all, the description of the weapon only says: "Two-handed weapon", so it could be anything from a spear to a helbard or a large axe. These guys are pretty small compared to the rest which is why they look a bit wonky ;-).



The Templar on the left was the most extensive conversion I did on a 15mm model so far as I had to remove large parts of the Knight's body to change it. I cut the head from one of the models with the winged helmet (I got three of those) and put this in place. The arm holding the spear is a bit long but it doesn't really bother me that much.


That's it for this time, thank you for reading!

28 comments:

  1. My goodness me, really impressive stuff! I certainly wouldn't have said they were doubles.

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  2. Excellent looking conversions, and painting. A very merry band of adventurers you have

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    1. Thanks Dave! A merry band of adventurers is a great title for a future post 😊.
      Just a few more and I'll do a group shot.

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  3. Beautiful and characterful miniatures!

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  4. Nice work mate. I particularly like the Templar. Given the scale you're painting at, I am mighty impressed by your brush-wielding skills. Damn, you paint finer detail at half the scale than I can manage! Keep it up!!

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    1. Thank you Jason! I'm not sure that's true regarding my painting skill, but it's very kind of you to say so.

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  5. Simply stunning.

    The scale you work with ain't the most conversion friendly out there, jeez there's even OSL on an mini (the one holding a torch light).

    But most impressive is how hard to tell that they are the same sculpt. It'd be the perfect crime if it wasn't for the lower parts of the bodies.

    Love them.

    Maybe a trick may be worth trying is to swap skin colors (greenish or blueish hues for half orks or dark elves...).

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    1. Thanks a lot Javi, I certainly hope that converting never becomes a felony.

      15mm scale is often less detailed and more forgiving than 28mm. However, they have a lot of the same problems that older 28mm models have: they're build from a single block of metal and are often difficult to saw or hack through.

      I currently have three skin tones for my humans:
      - A reddish one, starting with P3 Kardic flesh
      - A typical caucasian one, starting with Citadel Dwarf Flesh
      - A more yellowish one, using Army Painter Barbarian Flesh
      On my cultists I used a blueish/white tone to make them look a bit more creepy. It might be a great idea to add more to the mix like you suggested. So far I've been on edge about mixing in different races with the rest of my adventurers but I guess I'm just postponing and it's only a matter of time before I do.

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    2. I remember the cultists from few posts ago. The pale blue flesh really went well with the black tunics.

      The yellowish flesh has been always a mistery: it was the basic recipe we all started using in the 80s/90s but IMHO it never worked as well as the dwarven base. Glad you manage to pull the trick.

      In about two weeks (Feb the 6th) I'll be posting purple skinned stuff but for now let's celebrate Chinese New year with just a sculpting / building post.

      Wanted to keep u updated as you had problems with the subscribe shenanigans.

      Cheers.

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    3. Thank you for the heads-up Javi, much appreciated!
      I really need to catch up on everybody's posts as I've been away for a brief holiday.

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  6. Oh my, it's taken me some time to discern the original and the conversion. They all look genuinely different. Impressive work!

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    1. High praise coming from you Suber, when it comes to conversions you've been a huge inspiration to me these past few years. Thank you so much!

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  7. If you ask me, I'd would say that the differences between the various pairs are significant. Well done Wouter!

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    1. Thank you, I appreciate the kind comment.

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  8. Fantastic, Wouter! They really ooze personality!

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    1. Thanks a lot! Quite happy with how they turned out myself.

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  9. Any clue about what will your next post be about? Moar cultists maybe ? Some eldritch thing ?

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    1. Not yet, I'm currently studying for course I'm going to take next week (hence my absence on all kinds of social media). One of the things I need to finish is a commission work I'm doing, but I also have some more heroes in various stages of completion. I'd love to to an Eldritch thing, but lack the proper model unfortunately, and I have this idea of making a Frostgrave force out of my cultists. So they're definitely goig to see some reinforcements as well. One of the models I'm quite keen about is the old Chaos familiar carrying the scrolls to use as an apprentice, the prices they dare ask for it on eBay are crazy however so I might try and sculpt my own.

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  10. Excellent stuff Wouter, 15 mm is a great scale to do Rangers oSD in, it might be something I have to do myself, cheers for the inspiration :-)

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    1. Thank you very much Darryl, very happy to hear I could inspire you. 15mm is a great scale in my opinion; costwise a lot less demanding than 28mm and terrain takes a lot less place to store while still having really nice characterful sculpts, which are not too hard to paint.

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  11. I'd be holding either my breath or my next post till you update something.

    Dude, it's covid-time: in normal conditions it's real life pushing us away from the hobby but now it's ramming us into it!

    Stay safe, hope to know from u soon!

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    1. Yeah, though we're not hit as hard as Europe, it's still crazy over here too. Hope all the courses I'm taking aren't going to get cancelled.
      Hope you and your family stay safe as well. Good luck over there!

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  12. Hi just wanted to check you were okay during the current climate as I hadn't seen you around on the blogs, stay safe

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    1. Hello Dave, yeah all good. Thank you for the concern.
      Main reason for my absence is the fact I switched phones recently, my old one had a battery life of two hours left. I usually do my blogging on my sofa in the evening, but that wasn't happening. Now I have a lot of catching up to do :).

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