battelier

This text was originally for Maya Network News, a sci-fi portal run by a friend of mine, but since the website is gone, i guess i can resurface the piece – edited a bit and enhanced by the section on the display base. Lo, you, the Knightbot Hospitaller.

What follows was inevitable. Since (a) Knight Hospitaller is one of my favourite Infinity PanO sculpts with the Palbots in close pursuit and (b) i like all things tiny, you can guess what happened.

I had begun with only the photos of the original knight a reference and got hold of the actual mini later on. Thus there are some mistakes in this work, that i couldn’t force myself to fix.

The Palbot’s legs are spread a bit wider than the Knight’s, so i had to bring them closer. I chose to bend the back leg forward, to get that hunched pose. Having cut out the middle bit of the bar i started to bend the leg at the hip gently, taking care not to twist it off. Bending the leg brought the toes up, so bending the leg at ankle to rest it fully on the ground and twisting the foot outwards a bit were necessary, so that the pose was more convincing from a fencer’s point of view.

The initial idea was that the bot wore a tunic much on the large side, dragging it behind him, and wielded a wooden toy sword. I liked that idea, but realised that a great mass of creased fabric would utterly swamp the tiny model, so i limited myself to copying the Knight’s garment and replaced the waster with a proper blade.

Gluing the model together would have made sculpting the tabard difficult, so i started with filling the gap between the legs with a piece of putty (also to strengthen the hip that got half twisted off earlier). Tried to shape it like fabric straight away, but gave up in the end: can’t sculpt a damn thing without a rigid understructure.

When the initial piece hardened i added some Milliput and used a scalper and a toothpick to create the folds and creases, but i only managed to shape the part between the hips and knees finally. The nether part had too much putty there, and i couldn’t achieve satisfyingly sharp edges. Another layer of Milliput, and yet another of plumber’s epoxy putty were used to bring the tunic to the desired look.

Next it was time to do the top part. I went for a seriously plunging neckline, so that the tabard looked like stolen from a big brother after all. It was also there to left the breastplate showing, as i still wanted the model to be something more than a heap of fabric.

In general i tried to leave the underlying sculpture showing through. This was impossible below the ribs though, as there is nothing else than the spine down there.

The belt! What’s a knight without a belt, i daresay? Cutting a thin strip of putty, i wrapped it around the Palbot’s waist and made holes with a needle. Then i cut another strip and placed it so that it imitated that signature loosely hanging end. On top of that came another short strip to form the piece of the belt just behind the buckle, and the only things missing were the bottom metal bit and the buckle, which was made by placing a tiny rectangular piece of putty in the desired place and poking it with a needle&toothpick set, until it looked roughly like it should.

The tabard ready, i kicked off with the head. Needed to prepare a pair of holes to house the antennae, like the ones the Knight has sticking from his helmet. I chose a spot between the fore and back plate, pressed a little hole there and drilled it lightly with a 1mm and then a 2mm bit. The head was then superglued to the torso.

I drilled a hole in the right fist, to make room for the blade, and another in the rerebrace. Then another in the small cavity, where the arm was supposed to go. Then (after drilling: easier to deepen a hole than drill in a flat surface) i filed away the edges of the cavity and a piece of the right shoulder pad, to allow for the raised arm. This pined, i cut a narrow piece of plasticard, sharpened it edges with a file and test-fitted it to the figure. It looked flimsy, so i tried making another, broader this time, but this was even worse. The solution was a reverse-taper blade, narrow close to the grip and broader towards the point. Glued this in place and added a putty crossguard. A bit bulky, true, but i was worried that a fancy thin one would prove to fragile. At this point the fingers were added, as the original doesn’t actually have any on the right hand. An automatic pencil was a perfect tool here, the ferrule tip makes shaping small ball joints real simple.

The original mount of the right arm was no good, but did fine for the left. I bent it in slightly at the elbow to look more like the Knight’s left.

Those mechanical muscles were added in the armpits, to fill the gaps resulting from my unorthodox run at arms-posing and to strengthen the bond.

I planned to add a pair of small shoulder pads, but trashed that idea and went for a single big one. Firstly, because the small ones looked like... meh! and secondly, to add to the feel created by the largish tunic. He was supposed to have a wannabe look.

Next in the process were the ears, meaning the fancy PanO antennae. I cut two teardrop-shaped pieces of thin plasticard, sanded their edged and sliced the very tips off. The broad ends were glued in the pre-drilled holes, then i smeared the pieces with supeglue and put putty on either side of either of them, trying to make it look similar to the original. This would be heaps easier, if there were any useful bits left after putting together an Infinity mini, but sadly this is not the case. Then again, the originals would be too big anyway.

My Knightbot was scheduled to stand on a base with a rusty crate and eroded slabs, just like his older bro. I planned to put him on an elevated piece, because the model is too small to look impressive on a 30mm base. Unfortunately, the only material i had at my disposal was pink foam. This forced me to stick the model to the base nonetheless, as the foam was too soft to provide a satisfying bond. I did a little trick here, to avoid drilling through those little feet. The bar leftovers made quite nice pin-things, raising the model just the distance needed. First i glued everything (save the slab to put under the mini) in the base cavity and prepared the slab itself.

Having test-fitted the bits to estimate, where to drill holes (in foam and plastic) for the pin-things, i sliced the slab in two through both holes.

A conical cavity was cut under each hole in both halves. Then I glued one of them, along with the miniature, to the base and covered the exposed pin-things with epoxy glue, filling up the pre-made cavities.

Then came the missing half, with another ton of epoxy glue. The cut was showing, so i covered the slab with acrylic construction filler. This proved maddeningly dirty, with me getting that crap all over the mini. Thankfully it's fairly easy to remove when dry. The piece was sanded, and cracks/holes were added.
Ready for priming.

This project was my first attempt with the wet palette-thing, so no painting tips here. The sole thing i can say is that an ordinary cheap washing-up liquid makes a great glaze medium, even if you are using lower-quality paints, like Pactra, which have a tendency to dry with a distinct rim when seriously thinned. This is due to high surface tension if i’m not mistaken; any kind of liquid soap solves the trouble, just find yourself a colourless one, so that it doesn’t tint your glazes.

Appendix

As usual, the ideas multiplied out of any proportion during work, so i ended up craving to make a vignette to chase a funny thought i got somewhere in the meantime. Still lacking any better material i cut the shapes for the main block from styro- and the top detail from pinkfoam. Separating the bottom piece like that resulted from me wanting a cavity to suck up the base height and better fit the mini into the surroundings. A cardboard inset floor proved necessary, as for some reason i was totally unable to sand the styrofoam satisfyingly flat. The surface detail was dicatated by what was had already done with the bot’s base, i just broadened the design. You can notice my trademark piece of base detail in extensive use here – it’s the putty leftovers rolled flat with a corrugated-handle tool :D

Can’t remember where i got the idea to make it non-rectangular, guess it was just one of those queer moments. Prone to get carried away with thoughts like that, i believe i managed to balance it out in this particular case and not to overcomplicate the layout. The two-colour base plays a big part here, it tricks the eye a bit to see an even shape in an odd one.

The vertical part of the background was finished with cardboard. (This was when a stray halva wrapping came in handy. While working on this i was kinda 'between appartments' so without the usual commodities of all the leftover junk that you can get creative with.) Three layers went in to give it a bit of depth. This was in keeping with a major terrain-building project i had underway back then (well, frankly, still haven’t finished it). I’ve penciled in the all-important silhouette, glued the stuff together, speed-painted it and weathered the wall heavily.

And the great finale – did i mention an amusing idea for the piece earlier on? Well the thing is that the small guy had been converted to resemble another model from the PanOceanian range, the Knight Hospitaller, so i came up with the idea that the bot casts a shadow on the wall, in the shape of the official picture the Hospitaller blister comes with. At the last moment i got the idea to place a glowing first-aid kit in the wall where the Hospitaller’s cruciform vision slit would be.

So where is the joke? Well, it’s in the game rules that link these two fellas. In case you were not much into Infinity – the game system features specialists, such as Doctors and Engineers, who have access to specialised remote-controled units, that carry out the work on the battlefield in their stead. This is called Ghost: Servant in game terms and works simple – the medic declares an action, but it’s the servant unit that performs it, while the controller can be safely tucked somewhere, away from enemy fire. Knight Hospitaller does have a Doctor profile in the PanO army list, and the mini used for this conversion is actually the Palbot-Doctor Ghost: Servant unit.