Captain Kronos WIP

A quick WIP of the next Hammer homage…

 

Very happy with these even though my greenstuff is pretty much off. Just not sure when I’ll have a painting mojo moment…

Father Shandor

For some reason, after the Van Helsing heavy and Dracula absent sequel Brides of Dracula, Hammer decided to bring back Lee but not Cushing for the second sequel - Dracula Prince of Darkness. They still needed a vampire hunter and so came forth the character of Father Shandor (annoyingly called Sandor in the credits), a wandering gun-toting father that knew exactly what evils exist and what is just paranoid superstition wonderfully brought to life by Andrew Keir.

Well, just as I brought forward the introduction of pagan beliefs on Summerisle for my Silver Bayonet unit, I’ve done a bit of a smaller shift and brought the good father into the available roster. Passable as a Veteran Hunter, Supernatural Investigator, Occultist or Champion of Faith, I’ll see what fits best.

The character went on to live beyond the single cinematic outing and appeared in a regular comic strip as Father Shandor: Demon Stalker, in the House of Hammer magazine and then reprinted and continued in Warrior. Here, banished from his Abbey by a less understanding Abbot, he roamed Eastern Europe armed with the Talisman of Megistus and the Sword of Archimelsus fighting demons and evil, even running into the Brotherhood of Gustav Weil (Peter Cushing in Twins of Evil) before ending up in Hell.

I hadn’t given it much thought until I stumbled across a Celtic Priest from Gripping Beast’s Saga range who bore a more than passing resemblance. I extended his cassock bits, replace both hands and added a suitably heavy sword. I didn’t go full great sword as that was too ungainly for the pose I wanted. My greenstuff isn’t the freshest, but I’m happy with the end result.

Ah, and just have to throw in the ever brilliant Barbara Shelley.

More vampires…

And a couple more vampires, this time from the official North Star range and evocative of the Fearless Vampire Killers. They match well enough with the Oldman Vlad. She is a beast though in metal, so many magnets for storage to keep her in place.

 

Vampire Bat

Vampire Bat for the Silver Bayonet, he’s a big bugger on a 40mm base, bigger than I expected from Etsy, but we should now realise I don’t always learn when it comes to 3D prints. Lovely model though.

 

Vampires of great age…

A couple of ancient vampires for Silver Bayonet.

First off, a board game piece I got off eBay, I forget the game. Obviously based on Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, I didn’t notice until I was painting the face that mini was lacking a defined nose. Rather than add a greenstuff nose midpaint, I remembered my folklore and painted it as a missing nose and open nostrils, as suspected vampires would be buried face down so the nose would rot first and prevent them walking unnoticed amongst the living.

And a lovely mini from Statuesque Miniatures (sadly no longer on their website) of an alien Egyptian god with definite fangs. I forget which novel I read had the origins of vampires going back to Ancient Egypt (I think it was part of the Supping With Panthers series), but this fits perfectly. The figure has some wonderful delicately sculpted hieroglyphics on his chest, thigh, forearms and spine - and they were a bugger to make pop, I was really happy with the strange skin tone, but had real difficulty making the glyphs stand out. The spine especially just wouldn’t pop and after too many attempts, I realised I was loosing the detail. I could try and strip the whole mini or just admit a lost cause and filled what remained of the spine glyphs with liquid g/s. Annoying, but it worked better than the crappy painted glyphs I’d inflicted on it.

They are both tall miniatures, the alien god because he’s an alien god and old man Oldman because he’s a 32mm game piece. The towering alien god works as is of course, and in my head I imagine Vlad hovering slightly as he does his dark bidding.