I feel like blogging again, hope it's not boring...

 I know I know, I just made a big post. 

I never made a post about my smashbash last year. I don't think I'm gonna get around to making on this year so I wanna share some process and the thoughts behind what I was doing last year.

I hope this post isn't boring!

I don't necessarily love grimdark stuff, which shouldn't be a surprise. There should be an element of ridiculousness to it, otherwise you're reveling in misery and I generally have not had a nice time doing that. I kind of wanted to make something edgy though. I'd been thinking about hand tools and stone age surgery for a bit and the two things kind of coalesced in my design. I'd drawn up some sort of cultish guys a while back that I referred to as Trepanants (people who do trepanation) which were hooded creeps holding big dainty hand drills. I wanted to explore what they could be a little more. I'd been thinking about Mek28 a bit too I think. I also took a bit of inspiration from Trigun. 

So we got these sketches, big guy with holes all in his head with a hand drill. As well, a companion on his back. The theme for the year was Battle Royal, and who would be more likely to win than a guy with barely any weapon? I think there's some weird themes in this, I think it kind of has some layers to it. It's a bit perverse, it's a bit suggestive and pretty dark. The big guy sculpt also has a fig leaf over his bits which you can't really see unless you look for it. Why you looking for it???

Sculpting it was an inelegant process. I made the drill out of tank bits and some pen parts. The bit is twisted wire. I tried to do more kitbashing on it with some hands I'd bought but they just weren't right. I sculpt the arms seperately from the body and built the body out of a base of aluminum foil and just layered on blobs of greenstuff/milliput. I mean, it's sculpting. I glued the arms on once I had the body sculpted how I wanted it. I tried using tamiya putty to fill gaps in the epoxy but that stuff just kind of sucks to work with, for me. I ended up using greenputty instead. 

plasticard base for the feet is really a choice

I was originally sculpting a holey head for the rider but I went with a Gardens of Hecate headsculpt instead

I really feel a lot of anxiety about picking color schemes for miniatures. I think I'm getting over that a bit, but last year I really felt inadequate about it. So, to cheat I looked at my inspiration folder and picked an Alien illustration by Arthur Suydam and just ripped the colors from that completely.  I promise the pose similarity was just serendipity! Though I did already have the image saved so maybe it stuck in my mind idk.

cheatin'

Well, anyway. Like I said, I'm probably not going to pressure myself this year to do a smashbash entry. I'm kind of bummed about it but I just don't think I have the spoons. I got pretty burnt out after building this guy last year and I'm really trying to take it easy with the hobby (even though I just started a competition) so I'm going to do just that. I can't wait to see what everyone does this year!

(By the way, I've conned my friend Julian into scanning their Mischievous Man cast so there will be an stl to 3D print sometime soon!)

I hope wherever you are you're doing well!