Forgotten Heroes Challenge 2 - Mina Converted

This was never going to be a massive conversion project. In fact, as you'll see, I've got as far as the base colours. 

Back to Basics

First job was that solid base. I started with a razor saw, but either it's getting blunt, the metal was particularly tough, or I'm getting weaker in my old age. I switched to a small saw from a Parkside set from Lidl, which did a reasonable job. It's quite a wide set* though, so I had to be careful with positioning so as not to lose any detail. 

Lost her Bottle?

I wanted to remove the bottle, and found a suitable right hand holding a knife on the Frostgrave Soldiers 2 sprue**.

The original hand plus bottle was easily removed, the donor hand trimmed and holes drilled for pinning. 

I have to admit that the hand is a bit large, even though the sprue is of female soldiers, but the Westwind mini is quite petite. I trimmed the hand so pretty much just the knuckles show,  hopefully it won't be too noticeable. 

The Scarf

I had a couple of goes with the scarf; I tried tissue paper with the intention of soaking it in PVA once I was happy with the shape.  But I struggled with the tissue, it kept tearing, and I didn't like the shape.  Then I tried newsprint, a material I'm much more familiar with.

I cut a long thin strip and creased it laterally.  I wrapped it round her neck,  then soaked it in water to make it easier to 'sculpt'. Once I was happy with the shape,  I dripped liquid superglue on it, which hardened and set it in place. 

After doing all this I found some nice strong foil that would have been even better, ah well.  I'll save it for future projects.

Base Colours

On to painting, and I needed to decide what colours to use. There's plenty of options in the source material, so I wasn't short of inspiration.

In the end I went for fairly plain colours. If I ever get the Irene Adler mini and convert that, I'll choose something brighter and fancier, but this is Mina being covert (rather as she is when investigating the Rotherhithe tunnel in volume 1), not Mina mixing in high society.

Still some shading and highlights to go,  but I'm confident that I can hit the deadline on the challenge. 

*The 'set' of a saw is the distance between the outer edge of the teeth.  The teeth are bent out slightly to help smooth cutting,  but this does mean that quite a bit of material is removed.

** I considered using an arm from the Frostgrave Wizards 2 set holding a book, as a nod to the cover of the volume 2 collection, but it looked far too large.