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| A Forest Spirit from Beldolor Studios is cornered in the woods by a swarm of giant spiders |
Sticking with my pledge this year to alternate current projects with batches of "clearing out the lead pile," So, I came up with this small group of figs to paint up. The spiders are from the
Wargames Atlantic Giant Spiders plastic kit. The towering
Forest Spirit deer thingie is a 3-D mini I picked up from
Beldolor Studios last summer. I can see them getting used for various fantasy games. The Forest Spirit is bizarre enough I can maybe slip him in as an alien in my
Majestic 13 games. Maybe...what do you think?
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| Plastic giant spiders - a kit from Wargames Atlantic that is NOT easy to assemble...at least for me! |
Anyway, assembling miniatures has never been my thing -- one of the reasons that I prefer metal. I pulled out the two sprues of the spiders that I picked up from
Firelands Games last November (they sell sprues individually, as I've mentioned her before), and went...ummm, whaat? How the heck do I put these together?? I guess I am not the only one who has wondered that, though. There were a number of instructional videos on YouTube on how to glue them together. The one by the British-sounding guy even seemed a bit peeved at all the critics of the box and mentioned it one or two times during his tutorial. He felt that it was unwarratned that
Wagames Atlantic got some heat because there were no instructions included!
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| Assembling difficulties aside, they are really cool plastic models that hopefully are not too fragile |
Personally, nothing about assembling the two larger spiders was intuitive to me, and I paused my way through the video and did my best to follow along. I screwed up a bit on the legs, but they look good enough, I imagine. I did modify it a bit, though, and decided to pin the two halves of the spider's body together. That was just too fragile of a small, flat connection point for me. Still, it was about an hour and half's work and the two Shelobs were glued together and to the plastic base. The four little ones require no assembly, a fact that the video narrator seemed awful proud of! For that matter, neither did the 3-D printed Forest Spirit. I shudder to think how many parts a plastic kit of that figure would require!
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| Big ones look grotesque and menacing while these little guys look just plain creepy - heebie jeebies! |
I spray painted all seven of the miniatures in Krylon Fusion Acrylic Black Matte, and followed up with a 50/50 of water and acrylic black paint. I then went online and Googled images of spiders, a process which can give you the heebie-jeebies if you look at too many pages! I was looking for inspiration for a color scheme, and honestly didn't find one that I liked from nature. So, I decided to dry brush the all black spiders with a medium gray. I liked how they looked, but knew they still needed some color. I examined the miniatures more closely. I ended going with the striped pattern simply based on the modeling of the figures. The colored bands are raised joints or surfaces on the legs. I decided to do those in various colors and hopefully they would look nice. The nasty looking talons on the end (and their fangs) I did in a bone color to stand out more.
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| Elevated view where you can see the big ones' multiple eyes -- okay, heebie-jeebies here too! |
I do have to admit that, occasionally glancing over to my left as I was painting, and seeing the ones I'd finished the stripes on, did give me that "Gaaahh!" moment. I took that as proof they were looking creepy enough. Doing the color outlining on the head and around the eyes was the trickiest part. Luckily, I had just bought a new detail brush and the tip held up nicely for this work. I did the eyes black, and for the larger spiders, added in little dots of red to prove to the world that they are indeed evil, repulsive creatures...ha, ha! I put a brown wash on the talons and fangs. That meant I was done except for the flocking. That step was more fiddly than normal because my brush had to swipe in underneath the bodies and between the too many legs of the spiders.
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| In the end, I was happy with how this big guy came out, though early on, I wasn't 100% sure |
For the Forest Spirit, I wasn't 100% sure what colors I wanted to use. I decided to make it deer-ish. Not exactly like a deer, because it is quite clearly not one. However, I wanted it to not simply be random colors like purple and yellow or anything. So, I went with the brown color palette, with tans, oranges, and such. I used the highlighting color to tie everything together so the various tones looked like they actually belonged together...unlike the clothes that some people I know wear!
As I was finishing the Forest Spirit, I sat back and looked at it. I thought it was just "okay" -- not great. I began to wonder if I should get creative and give his fur a pattern or something? Like stripes or giraffe-style splotches? In the end, I decided not to go to that extent. Perhaps I should have, though. I'd be curious to hear what folks think about it. I bought it kind of on a whim as it was in Beldolor's "misprint" bin at Origins Game Fair, where I have seen them the last two years. After I did the final brown wash, I feel it tied the color scheme together even more and I am reasonably happy with it.
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| Another look at the drama in the forest better showing off my new photographic backdrop |
I am not sure when these figures will see the tabletop, but they started the year in my unpainted pile and now they're done! Woo-hoo!! Expect more one-off batches like this from me this year, if I follow through on my pledge to reduce the lead pile. Speaking of which, other than with Miniatures, I am doing fairly well on the Painted vs. Acquired in 2026. But don't get cocky, kid! I go to my first convention of the year this weekend. And you know what that means....purchases!
MINIATURES Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2026
- Miniatures acquired in 2026: 95
- Miniatures painted in 2026: 49
TERRAIN Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2026
- Terrain acquired in 2026: 0
- Terrain painted in 2026: 21
SCATTER Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2026
- Scatter acquired in 2026: 2
- Scatter painted in 2026: 24
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