Custom Miniature – Dragoon (Legend of Mana inspired)

I’ve been enjoying the Legend of Mana remaster that was released last summer. It was one of my favorite PS1 games and boasted the most gorgeous 2D graphics I’d ever seen up until that point. When revisiting the game over 20 years later, I was delighted to find that the gameplay still held up (which sadly can’t be said about a lot of the JRPGs from that era that I so enjoyed in my childhood). In my latest play through, I found that I had an even greater appreciation for the game’s unique character designs and I became quite enamored with the character of Larc the Dragoon and his questline. A half-werewolf, half-dragon (who briefly turned into a centaur…yeah) beast warrior would make for an excellent custom miniature and digging through my cigar box full of unpainted miniatures, it didn’t take me long to find a starting point.

Using a 54mm Tehnolog werewolf as a base, I snipped the hands and tail from a random soft plastic Godzilla figurine that I had lying around and transplanted them onto the werewolf. I sculpted him some new ears out of Green Stuff and started building his headpiece. I cut the main flat part and the two side pieces out of plasticard and wedged it on his head with some more Green Stuff. Once it cured, I laid down another tiny strip of Green Stuff and cut some short pieces of styrene rod to line the headpiece with bones (or whatever those protrusions are supposed to be). I cut him a belt and some longer pants out of worbla, although much like my own bootleg Trap Jaw build, it would have worked out so much better if I’d remembered to craft the belt part out of Green Stuff to make it look more like armor and less like cloth.

For his weapon, I gave him a Marauder Gun-Runners hand axe that they were kind enough to include for free with my last order (they even threw in a sheathe accessory for the axe, though it was a little too modern/futuristic looking for a Legend of Mana build). Before I get to the painting stage, I should probably note here that this isn’t meant to be a game accurate representation of Larc but another one of my original characters that’s heavily inspired by his design. Hence why he’s not wearing boots and the colors are going to deviate a whole heck of a lot from the game (which I’ll be honest, I can’t really make out largely because I’m tritanopia colorblind).

I sculpted him some spikes for his shoulder pauldrons out of either Apoxie Sculpt or Milliput and gave him a base that I made quite some time ago from an old GI Joe stand using a one-part Oyumaru Blue Stuff mold and some more Milliput. In fact, I think this might have been one of the first things I’d ever made with Milliput and it had been sitting in my bits over for over a year before I found a use for it. After supergluing the Dragoon to the base, I primed it with Bulldog adhesion promoter and it was off to painting.

The Dragoon’s base fur color is another one of those situations where I mixed a bunch of different paints on my wet palette in unknown amounts until I hit on something that I liked, so I’m not going to be able to provide the most accurate account. That said, here’s the paints that I remember using:

• Armor/cloth – Vallejo Calvary Brown
• Hands and tail – Citadel Castellan Green
• Fur – Vallejo Dark Prussian Blue and Dark Gray, then some Vallejo White to lighten it up, then some Citadel Mechanicus Gray and/or Reaper Mountain Stone. Possibly some
• Teeth and bones – Vallejo White
• Axe – Citadel Leadbelcher followed by a dry-brushed layer of Runefang Steel
• Chainmail – Citadel Abbadon Black followed by a dry-brushed layer of Runefang Steel

I unfortunately didn’t save any pictures I’d taken for some of the in-between steps (washes, pre-clearcoat dry brushing, etc) so I hope the final shots below aren’t too jarring. At any rate, I went over most of the figure with a Citadel Nuln Oil wash to add some shading as well as a Vallejo Dark Rust wash to the axe and chainmail. I might have also given the teeth a light Agrax Earthshade wash to dull down the bright white teeth. I decided here that I wanted the snout to be a different, lighter color than the rest of the fur and brushed on some Reaper Desert Sand (possibly mixed with a little bit of gray) and went over that with an Agrax Earthshade wash to help blend it in. For his headpiece, I dry brushed on some more white and dry brushed his spikes and axe with a little Runefang steel. His fur took me some time as I dry brushed some trace amounts of blues, grays, and blue-gray mixes in alternating layers until I decided there was sufficient enough contrast on his fur for me to call it a day.

I wanted to do something different with his base, so I covered it in Mod Podge and flocked it with some sand that I was saving in an old glass energy drink bottle and using as a paperweight. After shaking off the excess sand and allowing it to dry, I went over the entire base with an Agrax Earthshade wash to “dye” the sand, creating what I thought was a pretty neat texture.

Like a lot of my projects of late, this is one that I’d had sitting around for several weeks (or possibly even longer) that I worked on a little bit at a time.

I’ve hit another patch where work has completely consumed my life. I’m putting in a lot of overtime to meet deadlines (y’know, typical technical writer stuff) so I haven’t had much time or energy for my poor neglected hobbies. As my in-progress crafting projects continue to pile up, I’ve mostly been messing around with mold making and epoxy resin casting, largely because (aside from the time it takes to set up an object for a mold) it’s primarily just pouring the mold compound or resin and waiting to be disappointed and fits better into my current lack of hobby time. Hopefully I get some more breathing room soon since there’s customs I need to paint, books I want to read, novels I need to write, and sleep I should probably catch up on. But until then, here’s a before and after shot of my Legend of Mana-inspired Dragoon: