Sarpedon Commander of the Soul Drinkers by Slorak

Description	:	This was a recent Commission piece that I just finished up. There are many firsts involved with this one. First and foremost this has to be one of the most complex conversions I have tried to date and all things considered I think it worked out very well. The spider body is that of Shelob from the lord of the rings miniatures. The upper torso is a plastic marine. I sculped the chalice on his chest with greenstuff. Head is off of a metal a veteran seargant (I think). Staff was made of 2 fantasy staffs cut up, wire, and greenstuff. The bionic spider leg is from a Necron Tomb Spyder. The base was the most complex to organize. I ended up gluing a hardened piece of milliput to the bottom and pinning a brass rodd up through the abdomen of the spider body. The rubble comprises of cork, blue foam, sand, bits of metal, plastic, guitar string etc. Snow is Techstar Snowflakes. The spider body was based with vallejo earth and then glazed with a watered down brown ink, this was repeated with another coat of earth mixed with bone white, reglazed, etc. for 3 layers. Purple armor is vallejo game color royal purple, highlighted by mixing in a bit of bone white and then re-glazing with purple ink. I should also note that the shoulder pads have a mix of decal (brettonian grails) and freehand. Overall I am very pleased with how this turned out. Bigger pictures can be found on my website: http://www.curdledmilk.com/wip/current_projects/nov_dec_2004/1.asp Cheers, -Mike

Poll results:
Number 7 overall.
Second Place: 2 votes
Third Place: one vote

From:	Javier Ruiz (Mergram)	(Tue 18 Jan 2005 05:55:22 AM CST)
Great conversion work, and a nice pose. The blue in the marine it's too plain for me, but the spider looks great. The basework is the best on this mini IMHO.

From:	Mike Pierce (slorak)	(Tue 18 Jan 2005 10:55:46 AM CST)
Actually the blue is purple. Kind of hard to tell in the picture. There should be bigger and better pictures of the different details on my website at the address below. I am very pleased with how the base turned out. Thanks for your kind words. I almost regret using all the snow as the plascrete chunks are probably the best that I have done. Cheers, -Mike

From:	Jason Knapp (jnmknapp)	(Sun 23 Jan 2005 10:04:26 AM CST)
I have encountered that problem with certain shades of purple too. I found that changing my camera settings to flouresent lighting fixed the problem. Direct sunlight I thought would fix problem, but it only made it much worse. I have no idea exactly what caused it, but it appears to be the auto-lighting on some cameras. I wish I could see more of the details on the marine, but the gold is really good (can't tell if it is nmn or not, either way it looks really good)

From:	Mike Pierce (slorak)	(Sun 23 Jan 2005 10:49:58 AM CST)
The gold is metallics. I started with vallejo game color bronze, washed with a brown in and built it up through the 2 golds. I have a fairly extensive WIP on my website in the description below that has some close up shots of various areas. Cheers, -Mike

From:	molebrain (molebrain)	(Tue 25 Jan 2005 12:40:27 PM CST)
An interesting idea and I like the brown patterning on the spiders body. Hard to see how the conversion works from this pic though, I'd love to see a closeup.

From:	Mike Pierce (slorak)	(Tue 25 Jan 2005 12:53:09 PM CST)
closer pictures and lots of in progress shots can be found in the link at the end of my description. cheers, -Mike

From:	jimbob1066e (jimbob1066e)	(Thu 27 Jan 2005 04:12:57 AM CST)
The base is quite stunning - I like the snow,and the I bars. Don't get me wrong here, but the pose seems a bit I don't know... It seems that he is leaning back too much. But after looking at it again, I see that you had his eyes looking in the right place so it all works.

From:	Mike Pierce (slorak)	(Thu 27 Jan 2005 06:57:45 PM CST)
The camera angle is a bit too high. I wanted to get as much of the detail as possible so that is why he looks too far up. As for why he is like that in the first place - I wanted to capture a moment in time where it appears that he is climbinb over the rubble. Cheers, -Mike