Banana! Sculpting a minion

Another year another hobby challenge to craft a gift for my wife's birthday.  This year the choice was a minion from Despicable Me.  You've probably seen the Banana song doing the rounds recently...

So the question was how to make the little fella.  The sage advice my brother gave me for sculpting was to find or make something to sculpt over, so I got myself a kinder egg...

The story continues after the jump...

Its got nasty, big, pointy teeth...

My local games store 7th Heaven ran a painting/ diorama competition this year with an Easter theme - namely there must be a bunny in there somewhere.  I didn't have very long to ponder my entry or find different figures, so with my homage-o-meter running on full I decided Monty Python's Holy Grail was my best bet here.

So here's the finished entry.  Our valiant Sir Boris is ready to confront the beast at the cave of Caerbannog complete with a little title card in case its not clear to the casual viewer what's going on.

So here's a few more shots at various angles.  The piece is based around an old GW Bretonnian foot knight model I've had for an age.  As a grail knight he seemed to fit the bill nicely.

Facing him is a little bunny I put together in a hurry with green stuff and pro-create (not for any clever reasons, just my green stuff is a bit old so after making a few bits I threw it out and used whatever else I had).  Someone pointed out I could have used the Malifaux Jackalope instead - I wish I had thought of that (and had time!) as I do want to add one to my collection, but this little fella did turn out ok and definitely cuter.

The bunny and the knight are about to duel over a small clutch of Easter eggs as you can see from this shot.

Sir Boris, close up

Sir Boris, with film accurate heraldry!

The beast, ahhh cutey

Defending the eggs

Close up of the combatants

 

The base is made from mounting card with a couple of increasingly small circles of foam board stuck on top. Into this thicker base I was able to cut appropriate sized holes for the miniature's bases.  Next I used bits of cork, slate and sand to add some texture.  All the gaps were filled and smoothed using wood filler.  Lastly I scattered a selection of GW skeleton bones around the site to show just how wide the vicious streak this rabbit has is.

Nightmare after Christmas

So I made a snowman - well snow sculpture anyway.

The subject matter might be escaping you - answers after the jump along with the miniature related goodness that inspired this endeavour...

Carried Away

So I've had a busy couple of weeks and am in that 'in the middle of too many projects without finishing any' phase which has meant I've not posted any new pictures on here.  I have managed to play a game of warhammer with my vampires against the local GW manager (a very sociable gent called Anthony) and enjoyed a victory against his nicely developing Orc and Goblin army.  I also had a second game of Malifaux, The Ortegas vs. Kirai, again far more of a learning experience than competitive, but very interesting as I get to grips with the rules and different characters.

On the hobby table at the moment is a Garden of Morr scenery set, a Contemptor dread (with 5 different arms), my entire Kirai crew, an ABC warrior and a few tactical marines.  I really must finish one of these...

My idea to make the Kirai crew a bit more individual to me is to include some references to the excellent Spirited Away.  Hopefully as I work through this I'll share the ideas.  In the meantime, the reason I know this film so well is that my wife is a huge Studio Ghibli fan so for her birthday I am working on a small diorama with hand made characters from the film.  Last weekend I started with the centre piece, 'No Face':

'Uh'

The little fellow is made of Fimo, (not the most fun I've had to tell the truth) and then painted with the usual GW acrylics.  He's holding a soot sprite, I intend to have more of these on the piece. 

Here he is from the side - he's got a Chibi (not Ghibli!) style to him so he's a bit pudgy but still clearly the character from the film.