Big Wormy Maggoty Thing

I've made a start on Mashaaf, a gigantic maggot-like abomination that came with the Bones II Kickstarter.

It's a big lump of plastic, roughly 90 x 100 x 150 mm, and quite difficult to handle; I'm not really looking forward to trying to paint it. I can only imagine how difficult it would be to manage something like this in pewter.

It needs quite a bit of filling between the sections, but no more than would normally be expected with a miniature of this size. I haven't (yet) filled around its arm-sockets; that may not be necessary (I hope).

It's supposed to have a sort of panel-mandible on either side of its maw, but I was sent two of the same side and so one of them doesn't fit the moulded socket. I've filled both sockets, and I'll decide later on whether or not I want to try to mount the panels with pins. I may just leave them off entirely.

Also, there are a couple of smaller sockets moulded at the sides of the tentacly mouth section; I have no idea what they're supposed to be for and I certainly didn't get anything in the package that could go there. I've filled those sockets as well.

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Next Day...

I decided I would add the mouth side-flaps after all.

I pinned them with dressmakers' pins and superglued them in place, and then reinforced the join with Green Stuff textured to look (hopefully) like wrinkled skin.

Now, on to the painting.

Priming. I use Vallejo polyurethane Surface Primers almost exclusively these days; they're the best and most trouble-free airbrushing primers I've found. And they're tough too; once properly cured, I've never before had issues with paint rubbing off with handling, and that will be important for a miniature this size.

I've done an initial coat in a mid-toned khaki, then a downward "zenith" coat of white to hit only the upper surfaces. I find this brings out the form of the miniature, and helps me to see detail that might be harder to discern with a single, uniform colour.

I'll leave it now to harden for 24 hours before handling the model any more.

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Coupla Days Later...

I want the thing to have an unpleasant, pallid, fleshy appearance, so I over-sprayed the primer with Vallejo VMC Basic Skintone.

The rocks embedded in the back of it were washed with a mix of sepia and black inks, diluted with water and Klear.

The mouth, tentacles, and anal sphincter-claws I washed with a mix of artists' watercolours, a sanguine base with som crimson lake and Van Dyke brown, along with some Vallejo dilluant to make it water-resistant when dry.

I used the same wash to start the shading of the flesh of the beast — I don't want to go too dark here, just enough to pick out the form and details.

It's a decent start I think, but there's a lot more work to be done.

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A Bit Later On...

I've made a start on the multitude of eyes (at least, I assume they're eyes), using a simple three- or four-colour "jewel" technique, which no doubt everyone has seen a million times elsewhere.

I don't have the steadiness of hand or sharpness of eye any more to do it with much precision, but I think they're looking pretty good as long as you don't look too closely.

I'm starting to think ahead to the feet and slashers — I'm in two minds, whether to keep them pale and go for a bone effect, or to try for a chestnut-brown chitin. I'm leaning towards the chitin, if only because I think the colour and tone would be quite nice; I've done it before on an old model of an Umber Hulk, and I think it turned out quite well.

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About ten days later...

I've definitely decided to go with chitin rather than bone for the legs and slasher-arms, and I've started glazing them with various Vallejo inks. Next step will be a bit of highlighting in paint, just to emphasize the contours of the things, and then a couple more glazes to tie the colours all in together.

I've also done some progressive glazing on the mouth-tentacles to darken them towards their ends, with the aim of making them look even more disgusting than they already are.

I had been considering doing the teeth in dark, chitin-like colours too, but I think I'll make them ivory after all, to provide a bit of contrast with the interior of the mouth.

Generally speaking, I'm reasonably pleased with the way things are progressing.

And later...

This is about as far as I want to go with the slasher-arms.

I've pulled out more of the contours with some dry-brushing, and another wash with Vallejo Sepia.

I gave the scuttly legs another wash as well, but I think I might pull the tone back a bit at the shoulders so that there's not such a firm delineation between the soft, maggoty body and the hard, chitinous legs.

There's some quite nice texture in the modelling of the slasher-arms that really wasn't perceptible before all the paint and stuff went on.