The Last of the Mohicans

Once again the title says it all ;)

The wife is a huge fan of 'The Last of the Mohicans' movie (she says it's way much better than the book as it's more romantic; well, that's another story...). She asked me if I could find a figure of Daniel Day-Lewis.

 

The guy

 

 Unfortunately I wasn't able to find anything in a suitable scale. Right, Warlord Games produces a 'Last of the Mohicans' set for their FIW range, but that's 28mm. scale and I was aming for something a little bit bigger, for a vignette.

Most probably someone now can tell me any obvious option, but I must say that, after browsing the net for a while, I wasn't able to find one. But what I did find was this gorgeous 54mm. mini by Andrea Miniatures:

 

Pic taken from their webpage. Go visit!

 

'The Volunteer (1776)'. Ahem. Definitely a Not-Mel Gibson in 'The Patriot'. The mini fitted the scale and general purpose, it was running and... it had a tomahawk! Looks like we have a winner...

(Beware! What you are about to see is a bunch of awful phone pics which, besides my legendary clumsyness taking photos, may result in eye harming to the viewer. Go on under your own responsibility)

 

Told you. You were warned

Some green stuff here and there

And then some more

 

The most challenging issue was transforming Mel Gibson's face (the sculptor of the mini is great, you could see the very Mel Gibson there) into Daniel Day-Lewis'. Mel Gibson's face is kinda wide with round compact edges and a quite characteristic nose, while Daniel Day-Lewis' face is longer, thinner and with very distinctive hairlines, cheeks and chin. Of course I lack the skills to sculpt a whole face, not even talking about portraying anybody in a mini. So I had to do what I could with the base face.

 

I deserve a 'you tried' internet meme

  

He might not exactly look like Daniel Day-Lewis, but I think that the mini on the whole should be recognizable enough.

 

Hope that the hairlines and hair help to contribute to the general concept

Sculpting flowing hair was a pain in the *ss

 

The original mini came with a tomahawk, but it was on the wrong hand. I cut out the tomahawk and used a Games Workshop knife for Nathaniel's left hand. You might have heard about the ridiculously oversized weapons used in 'heroic scale' games (never liked that absurd euphemism). Well, that's true. A knife designed for a 28mm. mini fits perfectly in this 54mm model. Makes you think about what's wrong with weapons scale in Warhammer...

 

Just as if it was designed for the mini

 

After replacing the rifle in his right hand for the tomahawk, I had an idea of how the model would look in the end.

 

That's it. Now the paint!

 

I was unsure about what to think of the results. The palette I had to use was quite limited and I was afraid of being all the same, with little varation between the face and the clothes.

 

Grrr, I'm the crazy albino berserker

 

But it didn't end that bad (at least I want to believe that):

 

I almost miss the Indian tattoo, had to do it when I was already working on the base

 

Using the original base as a starting point, I expanded it a little. The model also included a couple of trees without leaves, so I had to add some vegetation in order to make the vignette a resemblance of the movie.

I always talk you about the OST of every movie. Come on, in this case it's unavoidable!

You have it in your mind...

Running to the rescue!

So this is it, a small vignette of a movie. Some hard work (and a lot of time!) required, that's why I've been slow on my general paint production rate. I'm currently working on another totally different project involving a huge number of minis. What can that be...? I'll disclose you the secret in a few days!