The Lord of Death (again)
So I finished this second Mephiston conversion some time ago but my record breaking procrastination has meant I haven’t updated the site for a while.
This image is taken from Luther’s (the painter’s) blog TheMightyBrush.com and he has a lot more photos of the finished model so I urge you to check out his site. I’m sure you’ll agree the paintjob is fantastic.
For the model itself I made my first attempt at a 360 degree turntable video for this model. It’s not perfect, but it’s a good start, and I prefer this to having to taking multiple photos from all angles.
The conversion was done much like the previous Mephiston starting with an Astorath the Grim mini, which has a perfect torso and head. I then approximated the legs in brass wire to make a frame to build upon. The robes and cloak were slowly built and carved away in many layers. I’m sure it’s not how professionals sculpt, but I’m still very much learning.
This time around I wanted to do the sword differently from the first Mephiston and at first I used a sword from the zombie dragon vampire count which I’d been lucky enough to find cheap on ebay. However, I hadn’t considered the fragility of the piece and halfway through the conversion accidentally snapped it in half. Instead, I figured I’d just take the original sword from the standard Mephiston mini, only too realise just how thick the sword blade is.
To get around this I made a push mold of one of the faces of the blade (the profile) and made two (one sided) casts of the blade. I took both of these casts, each to end up being opposite side of the blade and sanded the underside until both were extremely thin (wet & dry paper and a lot of water and patience). Finally I glued the two halves together to form the blade. This way I was able to retain the shape of the sword but also give it a proper refined edge that the original lacked (due to having to be cast in lead no doubt).
One final thing worth noting is that the skulls on the edge of the cloak were originally sculpted onto a flat piece of plasticard and then casts made in greenstuff using a simple push mold. Before the casts had cured 100% I was able to bend them to suit.
