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Hellboy: Vignettes and Bases

This new(er) Hellboy 'Clix figure turns out to be a very "open" model from my conversion perspective. If you look at the garish green arrows, you can see the places where one can make an easy cut. Some highlights:

• The head has a well defined neck and no hair connecting to the torso
• The gun and sword can be removed with a straigh cut (this is typical)
• The knees have a clean cut at the shorts
• Both upper arms make a "T" with the torso
• The Right Hand of Doom has a clean border

The right half of the pic shows a typical chop job. See if you can figure out which conversion this one is from. I can't remember.

This is a pretty simple conversion. The idea behind it is what would Big Red be like if the Nazis had picked him up instead of Bruttenholm. (If you don't know what that means, check here.)

The first thing is I replaced his sword with the Spear of Destiny. Well, a spear nonetheless. I didn't drill all the way through the Right Hand of Doom, instead I just made divets on either side and cut the spear. I appear to have lined it up pretty well. This method also holds well. It can break, but then again, so can spears in general. In my experience, the spear always breaks at the hand, which is a lot eaiser to fix than when one breaks in the middle of the shaft.

I also added long pants. Nazis don't like shorts. And before you reply with scans from your personal archive of Herr Göring in lederhosen, yes, that's exactly what I was going for in a comic book character conversion - historical accuracy.

And I added horns. There's a whole deal about HB grinding down his horns to fit in, which I thought wouldn't apply in this context. This is a favorite trick of mine. I can't sculpt horns. But I do have tons of extra bows from ancient figures. They end up the same size with the same elaborate curvature.

This one, Collection Day, is almost as easy. BTW, I lost the WIP pic. I cut both arms at the sleeve and swapped positions. I even cut the elbow from the right arm and grafted it on to the left side for the bend. And, yeah, this probably doesn't count as a decorative base for most, but it does by my standards.

This one reflects the contemplative side of Hellboy. Sitting up on some rail in a remote, desolate location. Brooding.

I had to bend the left leg to get a sitting pose, and add fill in around the knee. I cut the shoulder end of the arms down from the right angle into an oblique. You always loose space when you do that, but a bit of greenstuff fills in the shoulders quite well.

I also turned his head and had to replace the thumb on the Right Hand of Doom, since it was cut off in removing the sword.

So even though I've started to have to do some sculpting here, they are big areas and don't require a lot of fiddling around.

Here are two with the right leg modified. The one on the left required redoing the thigh. I superglued a bit of plastic in as a place holder and then sculpted around it. The one on the right just required a cut, reposition,and a bit of fill on the back side.

The one on the right (which keeps looking more and more like HB trying out for the cheerleading squad) has flames added to the base. I did this by squirting out a bit of silicone weather seal on the base, then teasing it upwards with a knife.

I like the leaning and shooting one for two reasons: (1) it is leaning the opposite way from the sculpt I started with, and (2) this one is the most generic one for general use.

This one is an homage to the first Hellboy story, though you can find tentacles in tons of the stories. This is my classic tentacle build. In this case I use a twisted up piece of paper as an armature, then wrap clay around it.

The suckerpods go on before positioning the tentacle. They are made with a toothpic by drilling in, and picking out. This makes a quick and simple sucker shape.

Last, the tentacle is added to the base and wrapped in a suitable pose.

You can't see it (yet), but Bug Red's head is looking down, and the Good Samaritan is pointed downward.

And here is the final one, an homage to one of Mignola's cover drawings. Since the sword was in the Right Hand of Doom, I didn't bother switching it out. After all, you really can't recreate the effect of the artwork in a figure - it's just a different medium. The little demon is a Hellbaby figure from the same 'Clix set. (I'll be stealing the right hands from all of them for some steampunk gloves and making a small imp mob from the bodies.)

In this case, making a groove in the front and back of the figure makes a nice sword wound, as well. Bonus.

You might notice the custom horn hub. I figured this was a unique figure, so a little variation might be nice. Give it a one-off quality. Also, I nicked the nub off when decapitating Big Red...

And the last shall be first, so here's that one all painted up.

And the firewalker version. I painted layers of ink on the sealant, which is translucent when dry, so the flames remain a bit translucent. You can even see a bit of the Professor Bruttenholm pog I based him on.

I also used lighter reds when painting the legs, to give a glowing up from below effect.

Here he is complete on water base. I forgot to mention (and don't want to go back and edit it in) that I added a thin layer of sealant to the base of this one too, to make water ripples.

Apparently I can't photograph it, but the tentacle has alternating splotches of matte and metallic blue paint.

I think this one captures the brooding pretty well. Again, it's hard to tell from my picture, but I used three different shades of brown as a base coat, darker at the bottom and lighter at the top. Then I added one lighter shade and dropped the darkest one to to the highlighting.

Not much to say about this one other than, "Duck!" I think leaning shot HB will look good on the table in a game.

Boo! Hiss! But I think the cross-to-swasitka conversion adds a nice touch. ... nice?

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