Custom Miniatures Two-For-One (Speed Painting and a Kitbash)

My previous article on kitbashing and speed painting miniatures was a lot of fun to put together, so I decided to do it again with two more mini-projects. This time, the projects consist of one kitbashed miniature using Heroclix as a base and one regular, non-customized miniature that I thought looked cool.

Starting with the kitbashed miniature, I using a Hulk and Bronze Tiger Heroclix. While I have many Hulk and Red Hulk Heroclix miniatures, I decided to go with this one largely due to its vaguely pro wrestling/fighting game-esque pose. Plus, I’d already used this model’s head for my last custom miniature project and hadn’t put its decapitated body back in my junk drawer yet. My mind immediately drifted to King from the Tekken games, Tiger Mask from the anime/manga series, and Red Tiger from Super7’s “The Worst” toyline. I decided to make my own version of a “pro wrestler with a big cat mask” character (it’s practically its own archetype at this point). A head donation from a Bronze Tiger Heroclix would get the ball rolling.

As a side note, I did make a tiny silicone mold of the severed Bronze Tiger head in case I would get any future ideas for more cat head wrestlers. It’s a highly likely scenario that will be the case since I really, really like that character type for reasons that I can only attribute to my lifelong fascination with professional wrestling and big cats of the Panthera genus variety. Come to think of it, that’s probably also why I was such a huge fan of the Thundercats back in the day.

Transplanting the Bronze Tiger head on the Hulk body was a simple matter of using a pin vice to drill a tiny hole at the bottom of the head and the top of the neck stump, inserting a tiny “pin” that I cut off the end of a paperclip into the neck hole and securing it with superglue, and then inserting the head on top of the protruding pin so that it had a strong, mechanical connection. After securing the head with yet more superglue (precision applied with the tip of a toothpick), I sanded down the rips and fringes in the torn pants and the pockets in the back since I knew this figure would be wearing a pair of wrestling tights.

Unwilling to repeat past mistakes when customizing Heroclix, I gave the model an acetone scrub to remove as much of the factory paint as I could so that my paints would better adhere to the surface and prevent the factory paint from possibly bleeding through.

I laid down an in initial primer coat (either Citadel Wraithbone or Army Painter white, I don’t remember) so that I could better see the Magic Sculpt epoxy clay that I would be using to make his wrestling gear. I’ve said it before, but epoxy clay isn’t my preferred sculpting medium but it was my only choice here and it doesn’t hurt to practice. I started out by sculpting his wrestling boots and kneepads.

Up next, I sculpted his elbow pads and the first layer of his wrestling belt. 

The next layer of the belt consisted of the overlapping strap along the back and the plate at the front. Note that this picture was taken while I was still sculpting the front plate and didn’t have a chance to smooth it out yet. It’s also a godawful picture and I apologize for that.

Channeling the Ultimate Warrior, I thought it would be fun to add some tassels hanging from the top of his wrestling boots.

Once the epoxy clay was cured and I glued the miniature to a base, I primed the figure in flat black in preparation for slap chop. This base was another resin casting of a standard 28mm base that I modified with excess epoxy clay to make a stone tile or brick-like texture. I think I also added some more epoxy clay to better unify the original Heroclix base (not the dial, of course, but the thing directly under the feet) with the custom base.

And per the standard slap chop protocol, I dry brushed light gray over the black and then white over the gray. I really should have went heavier with the white on this project but I think it ultimately turned out okay.

I used my Army Painter Speed Paints from the original Speed Paint starter set to lay down a basecoat.

I don’t know if anyone else has this problem since you can’t really tell from highly polished, well-lit youtube videos I’ve watched, but miniatures that I paint using just Army Painter Speedpaints or Citadel Contrast paints always have this dirty, washed-out look to them. To counter thing, I go back over the transparent base coats with light, drybrushed passes using regular opaque hobby paints to bring the colors and vibrancy back up. In this case, I used some Vallejo Sunny Skin tone for the skin and Reaper Dragon Blue (mixed with a drop or two of Vallejo White) for the pants and elbow pads. I used Citadel Yriel Yellow for the mask and tassels (I did other colors too, but those are the ones I remember).

I drybrushed the belt’s plate with my favorite gold paint, Citadel Retributor Armor.

I added some white markings to the mask, as well as attempted to paint the eyes, which didn’t go as horribly as I initially thought given how obscured the actual eye areas are on this headsculpt. I half-heartedly tried to use black acrylic ink and a brush with the finest tip that I could find in my collection to paint some stripes on the head but I’m still not at all comfortable with free-handing that kind of thing, especially on a model this small. The stripes ended up looking like a comb-over, so I wiped off 90% of the acrylic ink leaving only the vague impression of black stripes, which is good enough for me.

I also thought I went too overboard with the blue highlights on the pants, mixing in a little too much white, so I went back over the pants with Citadel Talassar Blue Contrast Paint. I did some work on his base as well, but I’ll get into that a little later on.

Shifting gears to the other miniature that I chose for this project, behold this awesome six-armed dude. I don’t know who this character is or where he’s from since I got him in an eBay lot of about a dozen random miniatures but I wish I did because the character design is fantastic and I want more like it. I attempted a Google image search of the model but it was a dead end. Oh well.

No kitbashing or over-sculpting here since this miniature has more than enough great detail.

Like all my excursions into speed painting/slap chop, I primed the miniature in black. While I’ve used Krylon and Rustoleum black acrylic spray primers in the past (and continue to do so, depending on the project), I’ve grown quite fond of Vallejo’s black acrylic polyurethane primer (its code thing is 70.602). It’s thin enough right out of the bottle to brush onto a model without leaving obvious brush strokes and its consistency also makes it easy to apply via and airbrush. I think when I run out of my 17ml bottle (which I’ve had for almost two years now), I’ll grab a 60ml or 200ml bottle.

And like my last (and every) zenithal prime job, I dry brushed the model with gray and then with white.

For the base colors, I left it up to the users on one of the crafting discord servers that I post on and they were unanimous in their desire for me to paint him purple with gold trim but a little torn on what color they wanted for the hair. It would come down to either bright blonde, orange, green, or white hair. I ruled out green because paired with all the purple, it’s way too much of a Joker vibe. I initially liked the idea of white hair, since Citadel Apothecary White is great for that, but given his hair style I thought it would make him look too much like a q-tip. I would ultimately go for yellow hair with some orange highlights to go with a sort of flame effect.

Again, I used my Army Painter Speedpaints Starter Set for the basecoat, using Zealot Yellow as a non-metallic placeholder for the gold trim that I would go back over with (what else?) Retributor Armor. I used Pallid Bone for his loincloth thing on a total whim and I was really taken aback by how well that paint works for a kind of off-white linen color. It kind of makes me want to paint a mummy and use it on the bandages. I think that would look really cool.

For the highlights with opaque paints, I focused mainly on the skin as I thought the rest of the Speed Painted areas looked solid for a change. I mixed some Army Painter Alien Purple from their Warpaints range with a few drops of white and gave the model a generous drybrushing. I highlighted the hair with Yriel Yellow and either Citadel Jokaero Orange or Vallejo Hot Orange.

Whenever I do a drybrush job like this, the first round of highlights will consist of the base color (in this case, Alien Purple) and a few drops of white and then subsequent highlights (if deemed necessary) will be more white with a few drops of the base color. I know there are infinitely better ways to do this, and I plan to try them out eventually so that my miniatures look more like the ones I see in photographs and youtube videos, but the goal here was still getting the paint job to a point where I personally deemed it “good enough” in as little time as possible.

Finally, I added the gold trim for the bracers, which I ended up painting the most prominent two bracers entirely with Retributor Armor because I liked how that looked.

With the minis painted or mostly painted (this pic of the tiger wrestler was taken before I painted his eyes), I needed to figure out what I was going to do for the bases. I didn’t really have any grand plans in mind, so I slathered the six-armed guy’s base with Mod Podge and dunked it in my oversupply of white craft sand. For the tiger wrestler, I dabbed Mod Podge in a few tiny spots and sprinkled on some grass flocking. Though prior to that, I gave the tiger wrestler’s base an Agrax Earthshade wash and a quick drybrush with some Apple Barrel Granite craft paint.

Once the Mod Podge was dry, I gave the six-armed guy its first coat of Vallejo matte varnish to seal everything in before giving the sand an Agrax Earthshade wash and stippled on some Citadel Zamesi Desert. I ended up not liking how that looked and stippled some Apple Barrel Khaki craft paint over that. 

Whenever I need to find something for a dollar or less to qualify for free shipping on an Amazon order, I’ll usually pick up one or two bottles of Apple Barrel paints usually in “terrain” colors like browns, grays, burnt umbers, or sandy beige colors. I’ve amassed a bit of a collection but I use so little of them that I will probably never get to the bottom of a single bottle in my lifetime.

After another protective coat or two of Vallejo matte varnish, we’re on to the final beauty shots.

As I mentioned before, I’m well aware of the fact that my miniatures don’t really look like anyone else’s miniatures in terms of the quality of highlights and details but most of the people whose videos I watch for inspiration and guidance (Lyla Mev, Dr. Faust’s Painting Clinic, etc) as well as other miniature painters I come across on Discord have likely painted more minis than I’ve had hot dinners. I fully cop to the fact that I’m not great at miniature painting yet, but I still have an absolute blast doing it and will continue to do so.