The Scheme Maketh The Man (3?)

A long… long time ago (gosh, I’ve kept up a wargaming blog for a while now), I posted on painting army men in different schemes to really differentiate the figures.

I have over the years built my own sci-fi universe using cheap army men, and so being able to present those figures differently was key. I wanted different forces within different factions to have really different aesthetics, and when you’ve only got a handful of fixed poses to work with, this was key.

My first, long ago post is here. And I did a more recent post here.

With my wrestling project in full swing, I had a similar problem, making a characterful and diverse range of figures from a handful of fixed poses. Though of course I went more into converting this time, since I’d only have to pull off each conversion once (I’m not building an army after all).

I utilised a lot of techniques I’ve perfected over the years, including loo roll robes (as seen on Wraith above).

Having toothpicks in your hobby supplies is always a good idea, whether you need horns, shivs, spikes, lead pipes.

The Blobmen were an obvious and easy win, based on my old Selenoid aliens for Deathzap, however adding the stick on gems was a new and great touch. The same gems were used for bug eyes and clown noses too.

For 40k Ork lovers out there, or if you’re just a fan of big shoulder pads, the chopped up superglue lid is not to be overlooked. Several of my Wrestlers have them as armour, and they really change the look.

The Wastelander above taught me that you can make decent looking barbed wire, pretty easily by cutting scrim tape into strips.

It’s also always good to have a couple of bags of cheap tat on hand – animals, dinosaurs, cowboys, pirates, knights and army men.

I did very little reposing of the figures themselves, only altering Baalzebozo above by chopping off his army and moving it down.

A key technique is to paint your standard figure in different ways (obviously), but what I mean (as you may notice above) is that First Mate has on a vest and pants, whereas Spinez is wearing a leotard. So if you’re building a force of army men, you might have your bog standard troops with a single colour across their uniform. Then you might have a slightly better unit with different helmets, and maybe your elite special forces with different coloured helmets and trousers.

The workhorse of this whole project is of course my home made texture paste/ goop. If you don’t mind that grainy texture, it genuinely means you can get any crappy plastic toy to work. You just need a mix of no more nails, filler and pva glue.

Don’t forget to squirrel away any spare parts you build up too. Another easy win, and a new kind of mutant was my guys with multiple heads. Which just meant keeping all the heads I’d cut off in a safe spot until they came in handy later.

You can never underestimate being a little bit juvenile too.

I’d also vouch for painting bad figures, because I think it makes you better at painting good figures. Sometimes you have to freehand missing details, sometimes you have to go that extra mile because you don’t have the sculpt to fall back on.

My favourite conversion is probably Bugsy above. Especially since the three figures above were probably all made from in my opinion the worst figure in the set. The guy lacked detail and didn’t have all that much in terms of details that screamed ‘wrestler’. Of course for Bugsy I made good use of stick on gems, but his antennae were crappy Halloween spider legs that I snipped off, and stuck into a couple of holes I’d drilled in his head.

Dr Omeghoul’s cape was all made from masking tape. It’s a great technique for banners. I fold it over itself so the sticky side is all on the inside, and then cover it with the kind of thin superglue that comes with a brush applicator. A little trickier to get a good looking cape, however it is easy to wrap some around a banner pole, cut it to shape, and then apply some glue.

So that actually is my full roster of 32 wrestlers. You may have noticed I’ve not included Bograal (the Balrog) or my Golem from last time. I was thinking they looked a tad too imposing to be standard wrestlers, but may make for interesting special matches. Put 3-4 guys in a ring with either and see who can pin Bograal or the Golem first.

Anyway… now to stat up all 32 guys…