Miniature Customization - Dead Cells Homage #2 (Heroclix Coversion)

 This is one of my many projects that I started building a while back but never got around to actually finishing until recently. Much like my Dollar Tree Batman customization, this was another homage to the Beheaded from Dead Cells. But this time, I kitbashed it from a handful of discounted Heroclix miniatures that I bought on Ebay as part of a random lot.

From the dozen or so Heroclix miniatures, I set aside the ones I thought I would need to start Frankensteining them together. Using Robotman from Doom Patrol as a base, I snipped off Red Shift’s sword arms and severed Xavin’s fireball hand to potentially use as a head (though I would ultimately deem it too big and instead use the fireball hand from a Silver Surfer Heroclix).

After beheading the Beheaded, I glued the pieces in place. In addition to swapping out Xavin’s fireball for the Silver Surfer’s, I didn’t want this model to be duel wielding so I lopped off the left hand and replaced it with one from a Hollywood Heroclix (who, if I’m remembering this correctly, was some alternate universe version of Wonder Man).

Since Heroclix are considerably smaller than most of the other miniatures I work with, I wanted to keep the details minimal. I sculpted him some wrist-wraps out of Green Stuff and use worbla for his trailing cloak, sash, and loincloth. As you can see from the partially scraped-off Green Stuff, I tried to sculpt him a cyclopean eye but ultimately, I just took the smallest plastic bead I had, cut it in half, and glued it in place.

After priming the model with Bulldog adhesion promoter, I decided to try something new and coat the figure with Vallejo’s black brush-on primer. Previously, I’d only ever used primers from a spray can but one day it occurred to me that brush-on primers might be useful if, for instance, I want to only prime a certain area of a larger figure or prime some areas dark while leaving others light (hence why I also picked up a bottle of light gray brush-on primer). So I figured I would use this project as a guinea pig.

I thought the brush-on black primer worked great and covered extremely well. I got a little too excited though and started dry-brushing green and yellow onto the fireball head before I realized that I forgot to take a picture of the fully-primed model. Oh well.

A big reason why I put off finishing this project for over a month was because I couldn’t decide what color I wanted to paint it. My first Dead Cells-related project went for a more game-accurate deco so I knew I wanted to do something different for this one, I just wasn’t sure what. I scanned through all the different unlockable outfits in the game, but in the end, I just painted him with whatever colors I already had left over on my wet palette. I mixed the greens, blues, reds, and purples (adding in some drops of white here and there to lighten them up), making for a bright vaporwavey aesthetic. Since I wanted to make the most of the automatic shading that the black primer provides, I mostly dry-brushed on the basecoat using as little paint as possible.

I don’t recall exactly what I mixed, in what amount and precisely where I applied it, but here’s what I can remember:

• Citadel Death World Forest
• Citadel Yriel Yellow (for both the eye and to lighten up the green)
• Vallejo Blue Green (mixed with Citadel Mechanicus Standard Gray for the skin/arms)
• Vallejo White
• Citadel Mephiston Red (mixed with Vallejo White to create his pink/lightish red cloak)
• Citadel Runefang Steel (sword)
• Citadel Retributor Armor (gold boots, sword hilt)

After basecoating, I went over everything with a black Nuln Oil wash. Aside from the head and the wrist wraps that I sculpted, there wasn’t a ton of recesses sculpted into the figure but I still tried to get into the cracks the best I could.

The last step was to touch up the figure and dry-brush back over it using the basecoat colors. I ended up painting his base Death World Forest like I did my other Dead Cells-related custom. Afterwards, I sprayed the model in a glossy protective clear coat and that’s another quickie project behind me. While I don’t think it’s as good as the other Beheaded I made, it was still a fun process and I’m curious to see how else I can repurpose all my remaining Heroclix. I think they’re just small enough where I think they would go great in a diorama, but I don’t have any solid ideas for one just yet (aside from the vague notion of creating a three-dimensional throwback to all the old pulp sci-fi novel cover, but that will be a project for another day).