Jammies

We recently finished up a commission - and by 'recently', we mean a week or two ago. We knew our client from our local game haunt, but he had never talked with us regarding our services. When we wanted to put more business cards up, he timidly asked if he could get our opinion on something.... that he figured we may not be interested in, but he had to at least ask.

We advertise painting, but can we completely tear down a Pathfinder Battles, 'We Be Goblins' miniature, and rebuild it to look like his friend's pathfinder character? For those not aware, this is what the miniatures look like in the box that most game stores will carry.

The miniatures are in a foil bag, housed in a plastic container. This way, you have absolutely no idea what it is that you're going to get. There is only twelve different models, but it's still entirely random of what you can receive. 

This character, aptly named 'Jammies', was supposed to be wearing pajamas, that also would double as ninja wear. It was an interesting prospect, so of course we jumped on it. It was going to be a gift for his friend, so we promised to be quiet about it until well after it was given. In fact, the most awkward part of the conversation was that this person in question was actually at the game store that day as well. There were a small number of times where our client would make a complete 180 turn in conversation, and we had to keep up to avoid suspicion as the player shopped around the store and would eventually return to gaming in the back room.

Our client, the game store clerk, was mentioning how he wished that we could use one of the 'rare' models for use, but it was very difficult to obtain - especially if he didn't know if someone had already purchased it from the display. So, we did the only thing we could. He opened up just one pack and paid for it himself, and asked if we could do the best we can on a randomized model to make it into a bedtime ninja. The model in question that we received was this little guy:

Now, I don't know much about these models, but after sculpting and painting, and checking out what could have been, we are actually very happy we were granted this exact model. The pose seemed to fit the best for our task ahead, and with how little he is actually wearing, it wouldn't prove too difficult to work conversions in green stuff on him. 

After a bit of work, this is where we were prior to priming the model. We had clipped off the spear, shaved down his hat and his arm band, and did some trimming on his grass skirt... thing. We focused more on the 'Jammies' part since that is the character's name, and also that the client seemed more focused on that than the ninja part. 

After our greenstuff version, we visited our client again to ensure that he liked it, and to verify what color scheme he was looking into. Did he still want to go the ninja route? By now, his mind had changed - the ninja was a thing of the past. He asked for a lavender... or possibly pink color scheme. It was a cute goblin! We were joking around, and then came the bunny slippers. It's a tad hard to see in the photo, but we did add a stuffed teddy bear where the spear once was. This was to hide what was left of the spear in his hand,but also to add a little more interest to the model.  He was already cute enough with bunny slippers, why not a teddy bear to cuddle? Though, since he is a goblin, the teddy bear ended up losing a limb at some point... so we sculpted some fluff sticking out. 

 By the end of it all, we painted this on the bottom. It was a little hard to letter by hand, which we're looking into other methods. We tried to make it look like the original font there... but we're not entirely miracle workers. We just wanted to include that this little guy is literally the only one of his kind, so hopefully the receiver will make sure to take extra care of him. 

When we returned the finished goblin to our client, he was absolutely ecstatic. Apparently it was going to be her birthday in a few days,giving him just enough time to be able to wrap it up for her. We truly do hope she loved it! We had a blast working on him, and definitely opened our eyes to how hard some conversions can be, but also how fun it is. We will definitely have to do more in the future.