Ater Inanis by Deadsculpt

Inanis in the box

Some time ago I backed the kickstarter for the Ater range of 54mm figures.  I got the Inanis figure.  He (it) came in a nice little box with a base included.  The figure sat in the cupboard for awhile as I didn’t have a colour scheme in mind.

Recently I’ve been playing with some of the Jo Sonja’s range of paints.  I got the idea of a forest/dryad ish figure, hence the recent terrapin trials.  However I wanted a much cooler green so I purchase the Phthalo Green which is a lovely cool green.  That combined with VMC Lemon Yellow and white makes a great cool light green.  Shading down with VMC Vermillion works pretty well too.

Figure assembled

After gluing (with superglue) the figure together there was a bit of putty work needed to fill the gaps.  I find that using a 50/50 mix of Milliput (standard) and Kneadatite (aka green stuff) gives me the benefits of both.  I can sand the putty after it dries but it is softer than just Milliput.  The mixture shapes like soft butter and is really easy to work with.

I preshaded the figure by painting it black and then some progressive highlights of lime green, yellow and finally white.  Rather than painting the whole figure in one base colour I started with a 50/50 mix of Phthalo Green and Lemon Yellow and as I moved up the figure I increased the amount of Lemon Yellow.  This way I’m not trying to later highlight over a dark colour (i.e. the single colour base coat) on the top of the figure.  It’s always easier to get darker over a base coat than get lighter.  The picture is of the ‘base coat’ although that base coat varies across the figure.  Slowly learning how to do things better.

Base coat

The figure has raised (armour?) sections all over it.  It’s a bit hard to decide what is what as the figure is very organic and some areas morph into various shapes.  Very alien looking, but some head of scratching over “what is that bit meant to be”.

I first went for a darker green on the armour bits, but that made too much green.  I’m now trying for a cool brown/red highlighted up to off white/tan.  I’ve done one leg but the lighting of the picture puts that area in shadow so you can’t see it very well.

I plan to have the figure in a pool of water with some water spouts rising up and flowing through the holes in the hands.  Rather than use fishing line (like the Violinist fountain) I heated and stretched some plastic sprue.  Need to do some more trials on that combined with the Vallejo Water effects gel to see if I can get some nice water ripple effects.  I’m also thinking of using cotton wool for some waves.  All out for the water effects trials :)