Abyst
by Laszlo Jakusovszky
I wanted Abyst to have the sort of menace I didn't think I got with ViC #1 - Sirthis just looked too nice. So I thought I'd do him sort of like the demon from Disney's Fantasia (Chernobog) - underlit and angry. Well, that was before the Curse of Abyst started to hit me.
One of my ideas was to use real lighting. Since I happened to have a nifty Grendel resin summoning-circle, I thought I'd just cast it in clear resin, mask off the circle, and paint the thing. Then I could add a light underneath, and voila - a glowing circle, right? Well, making the mold was easy, but 4 tries later I finally had a usable clear resin casting!Then it came time to think about color schemes - I knew a lot of people would use red, the traditional demonic color, so I decided to pick purple (Chernobog was purplish-black after all.) Well, he ended up looking like Grape Ape from Hanna-Barbara! One dunk in Pine-Sol later.
Okay, I gave in and decided to do red: to make it easier on myself, though, I primered him all black first, then shot white primer from directly below the mini, so it would approximate the way light hit his underside. So far, so good! Maybe this Curse of Abyst thing is a myth. Well, I was photographing the mini to get any idea as to the lighting (using hot glue to hold it on a flashlight), when the glue gave way, and Abyst fell off the kitchen table to the tile floor! >8^O
One horn-rebending later. Now more firmly attached to a baby food jar, I tackled him: I used RP Royal Red Silk, Orange, and Yellow, along with Aleene's True Poppy to blend the wings & body. I added lots of water to the paint, to allow the black primer to show through a bit. This worked great!
I had a quandary on what to do with the hair on his legs, since I couldn't really blend it, and I wanted to paint it black anyway, to contrast with the red body. I ended up carefully drybrushing the hair, going with darker colors of drybrush as I went up the legs. The hooves were black, blended using Dark Brown, Dunkel Braun, and Leather, with a final coat of True Poppy once he was attached to the base.
Metal was GW Brass, with brown ink used to darken/dull the areas of his bracelets and armor that weren't "in the light". Highlights were Lumina Pearlescent Copper ink.
His sword and the skull staff I got fancy with - just so people don't think this of me, though, I don't always modify my minis, even though I've done this with both of my ViC entries so far ;^) I thought Abyst was very cool, but the flames on the sword didn't look that great to me. And the concept on the skull of the staff was a good one (make it look like the same type of demon's head as Abyst's), but it just didn't look "right" to me. So, I filed off the flames and did some conversion to the staff - Reaper's "Orlath Hoarbeard" gave his horns so that Abyst might live! ;^) I attached the horns, filed down the teeth to a bit more reasonable proportion, and added milliput "eyes" for the skull.
Painting both was fun - originally I was going to paint the sword brass too, but I decided to do something I wanted to do with ViC #1 - paint damned souls trapped in an object. Here Abyst has fashioned his infamous sword "Wail", in which the damned souls are fated to suffer the same pain as the sword inflicts on others. The faces were done by blocking out the main areas of color with dark and light red paint. I then progressively blended the faces up using lighter shades of red, with brown-black added to pick out the eyes and mouths. (Can't claim this technique is mine, as I have to credit Derek Schubert for coming up with this in his excellent "Gate Crasher" mini from FORGE #3 - thanks for the description Derek! ;^)
On the skull staff I used a variance of Dr. Faust's bone technique from mini-painter, making heavy use of RP Khaki paint and Chocolate Brown ink - that worked great for establishing the lights/darks. After that I went in with lighter shades of Khaki and Ivory mixed. The final step was to drybrush the lighting up the length of the staff, from True Poppy to Khaki at the top. Eyes were shaded the same colors as the sword, to tie the mini together.
Phew. almost there!! On to the base - the dais needed priming, but to protect the clear circle and pentagram, I used artist's masking fluid. This dries to a latex-rubber coating, sealing the area from harm when you apply paint around it. Once that was on and dry, I primered it with the black/white primer technique. Painting was darn easy compared to the rest of the mini - I did a light touch of granite flecking, followed by blending with True Poppy and lots of RP Dark Grey and Black. The only thing that bothers me about the circle is that it seems too dark when the light isn't on, other wise it looks very nice.
Finally, I needed a base to mount the mini on and conceal the light - in this case a small, round flashlight I picked up. Not a lot of things seemed to work with the size of the flashlight I had, without making the base really tall - I knew the mini was already big, so I didn't want to send him into the stratosphere! I lucked on the perfect thing in the local hardware store - an ash tray! (Very fitting for a demon! ;^) I drilled a hole through the bottom for the light, then filled the cigarette holders with epoxy putty. After sanding it smooth, a few coats of flat black spray paint finished it off.
It seemed too plain, though. I toyed with painting a bunch of mystical symbols around on it, but I didn't want the base to be too busy and draw attention from the mini. I finally hit on the idea of using a phrase from the album "Chronicles of the Black Sword" by Hawkwind (based on the Elric of Melnibone novels by Michael Moorcock) - it was the Chaos god Arioch's statement to Elric, after being summoned - "I am here. what dost thou wishest?" Unfortunately, my penmanship leaves something to be desired, so I tapped my creative wife's expertise to do the calligraphy in an interesting font, which I then colored over in red to match the red stripe I'd also added to the base.
Well, it was all done! I started to assemble the summoning circle and Abyst together, when the Curse struck again!! I used Zap-a-Gap to glue Abyst to the resin, and it refused to dry! I've used Zap a lot recently (assembled all of Abyst with it), but the stuff just wouldn't dry. I eventually gave up (it was 2 am and I had to work the next day) and used 5 min epoxy instead. Some quick photos later, and here he is!
Phew. this mini took far longer than I intended, but I like the way he came out. sorry for rambling on a bit here, but it's 1 am again, and I'm waking up at 5am to get ready for my vacation flight!! I need a vacation so bad.. :^(
Laszlo Jakusovszky
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