January 28, 2015

Go With Ah-nuld if You Want to Live

"The Terminator' and "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" are some of my favourite movies of all time. I remember staying up late at a friend's house as a kid watching the original on BETA video, with the volume almost completely off, sitting a foot or two away from the small television screen. We weren't supposed to watch it, so we had to keep it really quiet so we wouldn't get in trouble. The eyeball extraction scene stuck in my mind for years, and still gives me chills every time I see it!

Fast forward nearly three decades and there have been more movies, toys and even a new movie on the horizon. There will be a coinciding miniatures game for the new movie, with 28mm figures. Consider me excited for that.

Long ago I painted some Copplestone Castings endoskeleton figures (check those out here) to use as some flesh-less terminator machines. Shortly thereafter I received my Reaper Bones box containing my Vampire pledge of stuff. Inside that box was a figure that you'd have a hard time convincing me wasn't based on Arnold in some fashion.

I chopped him off the integral base and super-glued him down to one of my magnetic 25mm rounds so he'd match my other terminators. This one would be an easy paint job too.



The Bones figures aren't supposed to need priming, but I prime them anyway. This time I used the Vallejo grey acrylic airbrush primer, painted on (I did the same with my Red Hulk). His skin was base coated with GW Elf Flesh and the t-shirt with GW Fortress Grey. The clothes and gloves all got two coats of black. The hair, boot heels, belt and holster were covered with GW Scorched Brown and the bottom of the gun hit with GW Gorthor Brown. Finally the belt buckle, zippers and gun barrel got some GW Boltgun Metal.

The skin and the gun got a wash of GW Sepia for some depth, then it was on to all that leather.

Black isn't a very eye catching colour to look at on a miniature. Ah-nuld is dressed almost 100% in black, so I needed to come up with a way to make him more interesting. I dry brushed him once with P3 Cygnar Blue Base and then again with P3 Coal Black. Following that I hit him with GW Badab Black. The effect is really subtle, but I'm very happy with it.

I toyed with the idea of painting one of his eyes red, but discarded it once I got to this point. The figure looks good, it's recognizable as Arnie, and I'm very happy with it.


4 comments:

Simon Quinton said...

Nice paintjob and good Choice of mini and fits the theme. Get some other copies for some alt versions and you could swap out some of the weapons.

Obsidian3D said...

The Bones figures are really hard not to like. The material is very durable, it takes paint well and they're extremely cost effective. The range is mostly fantasy but as they move more Chronoscope stuff into the Bones range it is something to keep an eye on.

PMMDJ said...

The fig is actually based on Mad Max pretty exactly, even down to the missing sleeve. But it totally works for Arnold too!

Obsidian3D said...

Very true, I hadn't consider mad max. Probably because I never enjoyed the original movie so it didn't jump to mind. The figure is pretty beefy compared to Gibson and the face doesn't quite match but the sleeve gives it away a bit.