Caffeineforge

Creatures of legend, sometimes fox, sometimes in human form, but always mysterious! Come have a look at different takes on those sly shapechangers from japanese folklore!

(posting by Antonia)

Only slightly delayed, here we go.
The miniatures are finely sculpted, with a lot of nice, clean details (although there are some weird deformations, e.g. along the mould line on the male’s scabbard), and I guess humanoid/anthro canines are always useful since there are not that many on the market right now, and bonesium is so lovely easy to convert.
Combined with the catfolk (and dinosaur people) from Bones 4, the tengu/kenku and the were-animals (KS 3), reaper’s range of anthropomorphic animals in plastic is growing nicely! And since bust size in anthro animals is a subject to debate anyway, you could easily use the “male” resp. “female” to portray any gender without a lot of converting.

Anyway, let’s see some paint!

I opted for simple colors and strong contrasts:

In my mind I saw the kitsune in ghostly pale fur, so I used whie and cream as base colors and added mother-of-pearl on top for that special shimmer.
For clothing and armour on the other hand I chose bright reds and oranges (inspired by samurai resp. himalayan monks), plus blue metallic for the blades.
I’m happy with the paintjob so far and really hope that one day, my minis will once again get beyond the “base color/wash/drybrush” stage… All those details are waiting…! One day 😀

 

Arjen found inspiration on the net:

He wrote: “I only managed one Kitsune. I liked this one a lot: lots of little details. only my mini is leaning backwards a lot, so I trimmed the base and still am going to fix that (heating and bending did not help). I shamelessly copied my design from a design I found on the internet. Simplified it a bit to fit my painting skills and lack of patience. Looking at the photo I think I should have darkened the inside of his collar a bit, to make more distinction between collar and neck. For the rest I am rather happy with the result.”

I had the same problem with the leaning miniature, after heating it just went back to the same angle, so for now my fox is a bit skew… I’ll cut it off the base later so I’ll just leave it there for the moment.
Your choice of color scheme is indeed fitting, the green and orange make a classic contrast, which somehow reminds me of Robin Hood (Disney’s Fox version). I like the clean white markings, very important for the look, and did you add tiny white eyebrows? That works great to highlight the smirk!

 

Jim also worked with the expressions:

He said: “Overall these two Kitsune were pretty good sculpts. The exception being the female’s slight head distortion and some soft detail in a few places. I’m particularly pleased with the male as I think I got his sly, crafty expression well. I like my color choices as well. He’s kind of a combination of Asian and European but it seems to work. My only real problem with the female is that I really should have done some patterns on all that smooth cloth. She looks a little plain to me but otherwise I like the result.”

I really like how your paintjob brings out the facial expression, a bit coy on the female’s side and definitely rogueish on the male’s. On my screen it’s not 100% visible, but you gave them realistic fox eyes, right? Reddish brown with a slitted pupil? Very cool detail!
And although my imagination might run too wild with it, how did you decide on the male’s color scheme? For me, it totally has a “Han Solo” vibe 😀

 

Michael brought out the green stuff!

He wrote: “I was inspired by the Japanese legend that foxes grow another tail for every century they live, and so I added tails using Green Stuff (which I am not too awesome at using, but it turned out ok). My male is the very legendary nine-tailed fox, and his clothing design is meant to evoke the Hidden Leaf shinobi from the Naruto anime. The female is a character of mine, the shapeshifting kitsune sorceress Ame no Hikari (this is the third model I’ve painted for her, the first in this form). Her name loosely means “Rain’s Light”, so I made their blades rainbow energy.”

Why settle for one tail when you can have more? Very cool idea which I also toyed with (but since I’m happy if I manage to paint at the moment, the converting will have to wait for, well, the next century?). I never heard about rainbow energy, but it sounds super interesting, and the idea of using a color gradient on the blade for it is something I’ll remember for later.

Thanks for sharing your inspiration btw., I’m always interested in those bits as they bring the whole painting (and planning) process to life!
When you say character, which system are you using? We have been playing D20 “Legend of the Five Rings” some time ago but although I remember Ratlings and Nagas as player Characters I don’t think Kitsune were an option there.

 

This week’s gallery:

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Coming next:

06/10/19 Bones III Gwyddis, Dwarf Valkyrie (B3 Core)

Want to participate in the next post? Email the pictures of your minis until Friday 06/21/19 to

MondayMiniature@fantasymail.de  (It’s a .de domain, in case emails are bouncing)

–> Attention: The submission date for photos is about three days before publishing date, to give us a bit of time to actually write about your pictures  😀

This way you’ll have two weeks/one weekend to paint, and we have one weekend to write (which is the only time of the week where we have some open minutes).

You can of course send in pics later, but to take out a bit of the stress (most pics arrive here rather last minute) please consider the three day deadline. Later pics will still show up in an update  😉

I added tons of miniatures to the schedule now. We might still shuffle them around, do extras (like “Show me your project!”) or add more, just tell us what you think in the comments!

06/24/19 Bones II Sir Conlan (B2 Core)

07/08/19 Bones III Durok, Dwarf Ranger (B3 Core)

07/22/19 Bones III Wraith (B3 Core)

08/05/19 Bones II Alistrilee, Elven Archer (B2 Core)

08/19/19 Bones III Sigurd, Viking (B3 Core)

09/02/19 Bones III Brotherhood of the Seal (B3 Core)

09/16/19 Bones II Mi-Sher, Sword Dancer (B2 Core)

After that Bones 4? Or should we start earlier? Until then everyone should have had the chance to check their shipments or even bought some minis directly from the shop.

We’ll gladly accept your suggestions!

This entry was posted by Antonia & Dirk Vogel.