I've (just about) finished Francis. He's good enough to be used tomorrow night anyway.
Here is how I converted the mini, now here he is in all his painted glory.
As a first for me, I used the suggested 'triads' for Vallejo Game Color paints. These aren't sold in sets or anything, but the leaflet available with the range gives suggested paint codes to make your own (you can find an online copy of it
here).
I didn't quite follow the method, instead I started with the shadow tone and gave it a wash before resetting then working up to pure highlights. This is a technique I still need to do a lot of practice on, and random character minis should be ideal for this. If only I had loads of unpainted minis to practice on...
Francis needs varnishing and basing on a clear acrylic disc, then he will be finished. I'm really pleased with how he came out, the figure is pretty good considering he is just a common mook originally. Even without the modifications he would look pretty good just with a better paint job than the original.
Here are a couple of Francis' friends. Well, they aren't really friends yet, but once they've had to work together to escape the pirates they should be colleagues at least.
First, Citronella, the dwarven cleric. She started out as
Freya Fangbreaker and is a Reaper bones mini. She has had her axe replaced with the head of a mantic dwarf shieldbreaker, with a bit of cocktail stick as the shaft.
She also has a pouch from the ever useful Frostgrave Soldiers sprue.
I removed the molded on arrow (of Law?) from the shield. Citronella is a cleric of the Ocean god, so a nice hand painted wave would look good here.
Next, Hana, the human rogue, a WotC pre-painted mini, actually an elven sorceress. The original had a wavy dagger, but the character has a short sword, so one was taken from a set of Fireforge historical minis. I was going to add some pouches or rope, but the mini has a cluttered belt of items already. I did trim the ears slightly to reduce the elven look.
These last two minis will be painted by one of the players. With her permission I'll show you what they look like when she's done.
