54mm Samurai with Naginata and base work

Continuing on from last week I did the eyes on the figure.  I surprised myself by only having to do them twice.  They are quite recessed so I was pretty chuffed that I didn’t muck them up and need 5+ attempts.  I’m sure I’ll go back to them and try again before the figure is done.

54m Samurai

Next I started on the breastplate and face mask.  Since these are base coated in VMC Hull Red they are the darkest part of the figure.  Originally I was only going to highlight them up to the Warlock Purple (i.e. what the coat is base coated in) but that wasn’t enough.  The area still looked too dark.  So I increased the highlights some more on the point areas.  Also to add contrast I darkened down some of the shade areas with Hull Red and black.  Originally I wasn’t going to do any shades but by darkening an area the colour next to that area looks lighter in colour.

When I had enough of that I did some work on the base.  Firstly I’m using the base I originally made for my 54mm Prince of Novograd.  The large black facing of the base I think will work better with the bright colours of the samurai.  I envisioned the samurai standing in front of a castle gateway so using one of my J’s Work molds and Easycast resin made a small area of cobblestone road.  Then the stone wall corner I had made sits at an angle to the base and the road comes out of the suggested gateway and covers approx half of the base.  Never have things like a wall or road parallel to the base edges as it makes it look very dull.

Base with wall area at back

For the stone wall this is made of plastic card.  To add some strength to it I chopped down a piece of wood and glued that onto the card with PVA glue.  Some Milliput was used to bulk up the back of the wood.  Then i used thin (0.25mm) styrene card to cover off the sides as that will paint much better than Milliput or bare wood.

Plastic card hides all sins

So next week I need to move onto some other area as I could easily keep fiddling with the breastplate for a another 3-4 hours without really changing it.  So I’m thinking the yellow will be next.