Bobby Wong won the 2001 Golden Demon awards Slayer Sword at the US games day with his magnificent Bloodquest squad. We invited him to tell us how he went about producing these amazing models and heres what he said ...
As the primary character of Bloodquest, Captain Leonatos will be the focal point of the group, and should stand out from the other Exiles. Since my original Leonatos was used in the Golden Demon competition the year prior, I decided to convert a new miniature, copying his pose from the out of production Mike McVey Black Library sculpture in homage to him. I like it, and decided that it was a suitable heroic pose.
A bit of sculpting will be involved in creating Leonatos, namely his cape and tabard, the numerous blood drop symbols, and wings on his belt buckle. In all Leonatos is made from approximately 85 separate components, but a majority of them are tiny rivets. To ease assembly I broke him down into these components:
Head - I used the plastic Marine Tactical Sergeant head to depict Leonatos. With greenstuff I filled in all the sculpted scars on the left side of his face. All the piping and cables were shaved from the back of his head and greenstuff was smoothed onto the top of his head. I then removed excess putty to get his distinctive haircut, cutting gently into it with the tip of my sculpting tool. I then took a pin and light poked this into the greenstuff to simulate his hair. To finish off his head, I cut 2 tiny discs from micro plastic rod, and glued them to his left brow to simulate his service studs.
Torso - Gluing the Tactical Sergeant torso together, I shaved off the round vent-like detail from the center of his chest. I then sanded down the front collar of the MK8 breastplate so it wouldn't obscure Leonatos' face. I also drilled in 3 tiny holes on the collar to simulate vents. Two tiny plastic blood drop symbols were then glued onto the chest and belt buckle, and a pair of greenstuff wings was glued to the belt buckle as well. I also glued a tiny rivet to each "nipple" on his chest, cut from micro plastic rod.
To create the blood drops:
1 - Cut from plasticard, a small triangle shape.
2 - Cut off the 2 bottom corners of the triangle.
3 - Smooth out the corners with sandpaper/emery paper until has a rounded shape.
