In my last Insider I finished the base sculpting of my Skorne gatorman’s body. Now it is time to add armor. The Skorne miniature range is packed with armor bits, so it was easy to find a great piece for a conversion without sculpting the armored bits from scratch. I wanted my gator to be Cataphract-influenced, so I knew I’d want to add the signature Cataphract shoulder armor. I chose Tyrant Vorkesh’s armor because I like the added stature provided by the large horns.

I had to modify the shoulder armor to fit the much larger anatomy of the gator, so I used a combination of rotary tool, hobby knife, and files to enlarge the interior space to ensure they would fit. I also snipped off the hanging banners attached to the back of each armor piece because they looked strange hanging straight down when the gator’s pose is full of movement. I bent each banner to reflect the directional movement of the gator, then glued them back into place and used Brown/Aluminum Putty to smooth the transitions. I then added ropes made from putty to hold the pads on.

Ropes are an easy place to start building your sculpting skills. Roll out a thin sausage of putty, keeping the diameter consistent for their entire length. Sometimes it’s easiest to do this by putting the log of putty on a flat surface and rolling it beneath another flat object like a piece of blister pack. You can then stick the putty to the model and gently press in equally spaced diagonal lines. Make sure your diagonal lines bend around the curve of the rope, because they represent one long spiral winding around the rope’s length.

On a hard surface, I sculpted the loincloth separately from the miniature. I applied a blob of putty to the surface, cut out the basic shape with a hobby knife dipped in Vaseline, and then used a sculpting tool to press in the folds of the cloth. Once this piece was cured, I added the armored bit —made from the paw armor from a ferox arm—along with dangling ropes taken from a Basilisk Krea. The paw armor had to be clipped off, and the backside was meticulously hollowed out to make it as flat as possible. I bent the hanging ropes to match up with the bend of the loincloth, which helps communicate the direction the miniature is moving and adds life to the figure. I then added more ferox paw armor as plates for the gatorman’s hips.

I was a little stumped about how to tackle the rope the loin cloth would hang from, as the back scales of the gator prohibit the rope from reaching around the entire model. I decided to have the rope tied to rings drilled into the gator’s back scales. For the rings, I used the butt end of Vorkesh’s pole arm, which had tassels attached. The headdress was made from the Archdomina Makeda’s back banner. I sculpted a few tiny ropes, waited for them to harden a bit, and then glued them from the headdress to the corners of the gator’s mouth. The last step was to sculpt some nasty pain hooks, wait for them to cure, and glue them on so they emerge from beneath the large back scales. Ouch! Now, this gatorman warrior looks like a true Skorne convert.

Next time, I’ll paint the model!