Hail To The King, Baby!

So I picked up HassleFree Miniatures' Oakley model ages back. Cos I'm a big fan of... Oakley. As is usual for me he sat there unassembled for a long time, then when he was finally assembled he sat there unprimed for a long time, then when he was finally primed he sat there unpainted for a long time. Hey, I do most things except painting in batches, and I'm a slow painter, so basically everything moves slowly.

Anyway, when the new Oakley vs Evil Dead started airing (coughlastyearcough), I decided it was finally time. Then I realised I wasn't good enough at painting cloth to do him justice because I've mainly just been painting armour all this time. So I put him back on the shelf, half-painted as he was, and started painting some cloth-y models, trying different ways of painting blacks, beiges, and blues. I eventually settled on a painting method I was happy with and some colour schemes that looked about right, and finally pulled him back out and finished the job.

Then I realised that the way I had planned to do the swamp water wouldn't actually work. So back he went while I spent many weeks experimenting with different water products, paints and inks, as well as different ways of combining them.

It turns out that typical water products shrink quite a lot and have a lot of surface tension so they tend to get wicked into crevasses. Not a problem when you're using them to fill a simple, large water feature, but the results were terrible when trying to fill a small, complex space like this guy's base - at least if you were expecting to do it in just one or two passes. Also, paints don't always mix well with water products, and even if they do then they actually seem to exacerbate the shrinking problem.

But yes, finally I figured out how to apply the water (Woodland Scenics Realistic Water) in extremely thin layers, applying heavily thinned-down paint (Woodland Scenics Green Undercoat mixed around 1:2 with Lahmian Medium) on top once each layer had dried (except the last obviously). A very slow process, but eventually it was done, and he was ready to be photographed.

I tried a lot of different methods and combinations!

After the first couple of layers, the colour and depth is starting to build up.

The final result.

I think it looks pretty good overall.

The shirt was just Enchanted Blue highlighted with with Ice Blue using my "highlight plus drybrush" hack. The trousers took some experimentation but ended up being Snakebite Leather highlighted with Bleached Bone and washed with Gryphonne Sepia and Devlan Mud (possibly watered down). I believe the hair was Shadow Grey washed with Badab Black then highlighted with Shadow Grey then a bit of Blue Horror.

The leather was Doombull Brown hightlighted with Skrag Brown. It was probably washed with Devlan Mud, but I'm not sure if that was before or after highlighting. Wood was also Doombull Brown, highlighted with I believe a mix of Doombull Brown and Pallid Wych Flesh. Bones were of course Bleached Bone washed with Gryphonne Sepia. Skin was my usual Elf Flesh washed with Ogryn Flesh; in this case I actually did some spot shading and highlighting with additional coats of those two colours.

The chainsaw body was Blood Red highlighted with Wild Rider Red and washed with Baal Red (not necessarily in that order). Steel was just Boltgun Metal washed with Badab Black and highlighted with Chainmail. Brass was Gehenna's Gold highlighted with Auric Armour Gold. The rusted metal on the base was Blazing Orange drybrushed with Boltgun Metal and highlighted with Chainmail (there may have been washes involved, I don't remember). The submerged sword hilt was Tin Bitz, with Nihilakh Oxide applied for the verdigris then Gehenna's Gold used to highlight.

I actually darkened the entire eye area (I think I used a brown or dark skin colour) before adding the whites and pupils, and it looks much better this way than without that first step. The effect is probably a bit too heavy, but I dont' have good enough brush control to do much better. I might go back and paint some gloss varnish over the eyes, I haven't decided yet.

This might be the best face I've ever painted.

There's actually a bit more conversion work on this guy than you might realise at first. The original model has it's foot on a single skull, but no scenic base or anything to go with it. So I decided to complete the skeleton using GW parts I had lying around. This led to the idea of a swamp full of skeletal bits. I actually deepened the stock PP base so I could get a deeper swamp effect, and cut and filed various bits to match the skull (kinda; GW skeleton bits are slightly larger in scale, but it's not really obvious in situ) and fill the base.

Ah yes, the good old "Black Reach" skull. It seemed appropriate.

Midway through painting I realised there was a small miscast in the face, so I had to carefully try to sculpt over the damage. The result turned out OK, except that I was so focussed on the cheeks that I didn't think to sculpt the corner of his mouth to match the other side. As a result he has a bit of a "Mona Lisa smile".

I didn't realise how bad it was until I started painting the skin.

Fortunately it looked fine once I painted over the greenstuff.

Finally, the gun. The model came carrying what looks like a pump-action shotgun, but in the movies A... Oakley uses a sawn-off double-barrel. I was not OK with this inaccuracy, so I ended up fabricating a shotgun myself. I cut off most of the original and re-sculpted the stock and receiver, mating them with a pair of (slightly oversized) metal tubes. The result is MUCH more authentic.

The original model.

My version.

Sadly I don't have any WIPs; bascially very little of the original remains.

"This is my BOOM STICK!"

Overall this guy took far more time and effort than you might think (or at least than I had been expecting), but honestly I think he looks good. This is probably the happiest I've been with a model in a while, so I guess it was worth it. Now I'm kinda wishing I had a game to play him in. Maybe I'll mock up some homebrew rules for him or something, although to be honest any kind of tabletop gaming is going to get harder for me to do for the foreseeable future, for a number of "real life" reasons that all kind of happened at the same time. Ah well, I'll just have to make do; I sure as hell ain't giving up on the hobby!