Japan Makes Me Cry

I’ve mentioned before that my favourite manga series of all time is Yukito Kishiro’s Battle Angel Alita (Gunnm in Japan).  When I was in high school I owned this resin garage kit:

The main thing I remember about this kit was that the fingers were frighteningly thin and brittle.

Unfortunately it’s vanished into the mists of time.  I remembered it a little while ago though and had (what I thought was) a great idea.  I’d get a resin garage kit, maybe 1/32 or 1/48 scale, of a shirtless anime guy in tight pants. Then I’d go nuts and make him into an Avatar for my Iybraesil Eldar. Anime dudes are skinny but muscular, like Eldar, and I thought the chances of finding one with leather pants was pretty good.  Hey, I’ve seen anime.

I should have known better.  If anyone reading this is into anime kits and can help me out it’d be much appreciated!  The only remotely appropriate design I found was a Devilman, 1/6 scale (18″ tall).  The Avatar is pretty boss, but he’s not bigger than a warlord titan.

Everything else was . . . well . . . type “resin model anime” into Google image search and see what happens.  Even with the safe search on moderate I felt like a predator.  I think the second or third picture was a naked pregnant girl.  The rest seemed to be Rei and/or Asuka from Evangelion in provocative poses, or school girls in underwear with massive guns or axes. All beautifully sculpted and masterfully painted, which kind of made it even worse.

Hence the title of this post.  I just wanted a sweet-looking, unique Eldar Avatar.

Why Japan? Why do you use your powers for evil?

Inquisitor Izumi

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Lucienne Izumi looked up as the whitewood door slid open, revealing her old sage and advisor. Orgone Accumulator stood tall and thin in the doorway, dressed in his usual musty dark robes.

“News, milady.”  He said breathlessly.  “The xenos Tau have expanded their front and a cadre of their filthy warriors have made landfall on our moon.  The garrison is moving to intercept as we speak, and I project that battle will be joined within 3.2 hours.”

The Inquisitor tilted her head to the side and regarded her advisor.  Coming to a decision, she slid lithely to her feet, whipped open her desk drawer and began checking her archaic bolt six-shooter.  ”Get my Kasrkin and the precog, and have the chaplain bless my rosarius.”

“But milady, surely we have more pressing matters.  The Heaven’s Gift are beginning to delve too deeply into Malavar’s Grimoire.  Surely others can handle this development, we are Hereticus, and – ”  Lucienne silenced him with a look.  Her sage, while valuable, always did speak a little too freely.  She flexed the fingers of her bionic hand, lazily watching the light reflecting off the polished blue-steel.

“Yes Orgone, we are Hereticus.”  She said.  ”And all xenos are heretics.”

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So, I finished my new Alita-inspired Inquisitor after a bit of a drama – I managed to drop her on my concrete porch just before I undercoated her, and her arm and coat smashed off.  Pretty annoying.  Still, all’s well that ends well as my Gran used to say.

I try to experiment with new techniques whenever I paint characters, partly to increase my skill but mostly just for fun.  With Izumi I tried to get a lycra pants effect by starting with super-thin coats of pale blue-grey and then adding shadows outwards in darker and darker layers.  It looks OK but I probably could have got the same effect more easily some other way.  I used different base colours for the bionics (blue), glaive (dark grey) and six-shooter (pale grey), to try to give the impression of different grades of steel, but it turned out more subtle than I hoped for.  I got some metal medium and I’ve been highlighting with that, it’s awesome.

I aimed for a shiny red-leather effect on the coat by highlighting with dapple brush-strokes.  The fur lining was meant to look like fox-fur, but I didn’t get the colour quite orange enough.  I’m pleased with the result though, it frames the dark model well I think.  I need to stop taking such close-up pictures – my painting style looks pretty decent to the naked eye but doesn’t hold up well under magnification!

Izumi will be christened soon.  I’ll be playing a game against my mate Josh’s Tau, and I told him I’d use an Inquisitor because he’s never faced one.  Let’s hope she does me proud.

Inquisitor Lucienne Izumi: inspiration and modeling

Today I’m going to show the process for my latest Witch Hunters Inquisitor.  I’ve made a few of these guys since Codex: Witch Hunters came out in 2004.

I find Inquisitors really fun to model, to the point where I have way too many of them (of uh . . . varying quality).  Years ago I grabbed an Escher juve from GW’s Necromunda line to convert into a Callidus Assassin, but I was never happy with her.  She seemed a bit too cute and little to be a psychotic bio-engineered shapeshifting killer.  It’s a pretty good model though, and probably one of the only models GW has ever made that I could actually call “cute” come to think of it!

So, I stripped her down and I’m going to convert her a bit to make another Inquisitor.

I’ve decided that Lucienne Izumi is going to be inspired by my favourite manga of all time, Yukito Kishiro’s Battle Angel Alita (or Gunnm if you’re in Japan):

Yes, I like manga and anime, but because I am in my thirties I only like the best.  And by the best, I mean the stuff from when I was young of course!  I don’t know, all you whippersnappers today with your spiky-haired death-god ninja school kids with two-foot wide swords . . .

But I digress.  Since Alita is my inspiration, I’m going to give Lucienne a bionic arm with a combat glaive.  She already has a revolver like Alita’s, but she needs a coat to flap dramatically around her bodysuit.

Nearly ready for an undercoat. Just a little more greenstuff on the interior of the coat.

The arm is an eldar one, shaved down with a knife and sandpaper.  I think it’s a Dire Avenger Exarch sword arm.  The coat is from the Empire pistolier kit, a good one to have if you’re going for a steampunk feel (which I usually am).  For the glaive I used parts from a kroot rifle, a leman russ heavy stubber rack, and an ork choppa.  The base detail is a hacked-up killa kan skorcha arm left over from building Julius Borgez.  I think it gives the model a nice cyberpunk touch in keeping with my inspiration.  She has a bit of an old-school 40k look, rather than grimdark gothic and dripping with purity seals and skulls.

I’ve learned with Inquisitors that since they have such a wide variety of wacky wargear to choose from, the best thing to do is to give them some kind of impressive melee weapon and an ambiguous pistol.  That way you can mix it up with power weapons, force weapons, close combat weapons, bolt pistols, laspistols, plasma pistols, inferno pistols, whatever you feel like smiting the heretics with today.  Lucienne’s polearm could even be a power stake.

Hmmm.  I could be one of the first people in history to actually field a power stake on the gaming table . . .

Check out the finished product here!