sho3box

Well, strictly speaking its not a “Blood Bowl” elf per se, but the figure is painted for use in my Blood Bowl games.

The miniature is from Shadowforge and a very nice figure it is too.  Some of the Shadowforge sculpts are a bit overly sexualised for my tastes, with high heels, chainmail bikinis, S&M accoutrements and ensembles etc, but these figures dont suffer too badly from that.

Obviously long flowing hair isnt very practical in a contact sport and the “belly top” (are they still even called that?) seems more of a fashion statement than a sporting decision, but in the context of the vaguely WWE panto that is Blood Bowl, I am ok with this look.

I found this photo while confirming that common or garden humans do still use the phrase (and indeed occasionally wear) “belly tops”.  I can confirm that “belly top” is still in use as a term and also a garment, as this mildly amusing photo shows.

The sculpting, detail and general design of the figure combine to give a simple and somehow vintage look.  There are few extraneous bits and pieces hanging off the figure but it still has lots of character.  I like this approach to miniature design.  The figure looks more iconic than the overburdened designs often seen from GW and the like.  Extra detail does not automatically make a figure better.

The model was very nicely sculpted and cast too.  It was genuinely a pleasure to paint, largely because of the clearly defined sculpting.

I considered painting the gems blue rather than the amethyst that they ended up, but I wanted to use some of my new purple paints.

I also couldnt decide on a suitable area to paint the player number on, which is a bit of a failing for a miniature designed for use in a football game.  I may resort to simply painting the number on the base, but that somehow feels like cheating.

The yellow and orange were painted in ways that I hope will be fast and simple to replicate (I do have about twenty more BB elves to paint after all), whenever I get the Blood Bowl urge next.  The pale flesh (of which there is a fair amount) was a bit time consuming to paint, but painting any significant area of flesh to any sort of decent standard always takes a while really.

As a test piece for my long awaited (since the 1980s) Blood Bowl elf team I am reasonably pleased with it.

Filed under: Boardgame, Miniatures | Tagged: 2012, Blood Bowl, Elves, Fantasy | 4 Comments »