I wrapped up the Fimir Balefiend over the weekend.  Come Monday, it was all over but for waiting for the water effects to cure.*

I’m extremely pleased with the green skin.  It’s different, somewhat, from the approach I took with the Gremlins, but still worked really well.  I absolutely feel like I’ve Solved how to paint green skin… now I just need the spiritual fortitude to undertake a Orc or Ork army.  Also, the claws/horns worked out very well, too.  Distinct from the flesh, but not out of place.

The much hanging from him could be better.  I might return at some point to repaint it.  It’s too similar to the Fimir’s flesh; a series of different washes didn’t darken it up enough to make it distinct.

I’m quite pleased with the barnacles / fungus / whatever that stuff is.  I think it goes a long way to breaking up the flesh and making it more interesting; the same way the boils do on Skaven.

The little conversion details came out okay.  I think they definitely accomplished their goals, though I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something else I could have done with the gut plate.  I did try adding verdigris: which completely ruined it… so I had to repaint it.  That little plant coming up in front of his right foot made painting the gutplate super-difficult.

The water effects didn’t come out quite as well as I’d have hoped.  Unfortunately, they photographed even worse than they actually look.  Take my word for it when I assure you that it’s not amazing but it’s not terrible.

And, ’cause I was at it: some scenic/HDR photos (HDR Fusion, no Picasa tweaking):

Composition on these might could be better.  I tried to crop out the sides of the base, but maybe didn’t do myself any favors with it.

Anyway, what do y’all think?

* Not entirely; after photographing the bastard, I noticed a few spots on the side of the base that needed repainting… I retouched the photos to cover it up since it’s just the flat color and I don’t feel like taking the photos again.  Not something I normally like doing, but I’m untroubled by it here.

So, in my Storm of Magic list, I’m taking a Fimir Balefiend: Shadow’s a pretty happy lore.

I’d considered just cracking open my copy of HeroQuest; there are a handful of Fimir Warriors in there. But Casey pointed out that they’re a little small.  According to Wikipedia, initially (and when HQ was published, Fimir were man-sized… but then an ogre-sized sculpt was done at some point and it’s clearly had an impact: in Storm of Magic, they’re Monstrous Infantry.

So, I converted one.

 

 

 

The base, as is probably clear, is a River Troll.  There’s a Chaos Spawn tail on there, which was kind of a no-brainer.

I rolled the dice and bitz-ordered the Troll: unfortunately, it didn’t come with arms that would work at all.  I was lucky enough to trade them to a club member for better arms, though.  I thought they needed a bit more, so I stuck on an old Skaven banner bit to (hopefully) breakup the shape and make it look less like River Troll arms.  Same thing with the ring.  The sculpting there to make that banner bit fit?  The hardest part of the dang conversion.

The head is from a Krootox; the eyes and brow were drilled out and resculpted into a single eye.  The balefiend has horns, so I used some Gor horns I had left over from a Daemon conversion.  To make them fit, and to sculpted him a bigger head (since I’d list the three most distinguishing features of the HQ Fimir as single eye, club tail,  and big head).  It’s not huge, but it’s a lot bigger than it was, and it should be the right size for the model now.

And, just as I thought I was done with it, I realized that it needed a gutplate.  From day one, the lack of clothing had bothered me: Fimir are civilized (under certain definitions for the word) and wear clothes and armor, but I couldn’t figure out how to sculpt something on that would work.  Then I realized that Fimir have always had gutplates: that’s easy enough to do.  I sculpted a stylized Fimir face on it: I don’t think it’s photographed well, but it should paint up okay.

I’m leery of the chain: I don’t think it works well… but I think getting it to hide under the Troll’s rolls (which is what it really needs) is beyond my skill.

Anyway, I hope to have it done and painted before tournament in case I end up ringing.

Of course, I was 90% done with this (just tracking down an appropriate set of arms) when ForgeWorld posted theirs:

C’est la vie.