Shady business

I had some spare parts. To be exact, I had 5 Corsair cloaks, a few left over Daemonette heads, some Wood Elf parts and some more Corsair arms.

So I figured, why not make a small unit out of these?

My eye fell on a pretty useless one indeed: Dark Elf shades (only surpassed in uselessness by Shades with great weapons). But since it was all going to be made from bits, I thought, I might aswell give it a try.

So here is another WIP project that patiently waits to get painted :)

Enjoy

I did not feel like using wood elf cloaks AGAIN, since I have done so already on my Dark Riders (soon to be revealed) and my assassin. So I used Sea Dragon Cloaks... I think it was not a too bad decision after all. It looks okay I think.

I added a little bit of detail with Green Stuff. Since my Dark Elf army is winter-themed, I thought thick scarves were in place here.

A few inaccuracies in equipment: I did not have any Repeater Crossbows, that Shades should normally carry. I only had some Repeater Handbows (rule wise, the R-Crossbow's little brother)... but who cares really?

Dark Elf Harpists, nay... Harpies

All right, out with it!

Like almost every collector, I have quite a lot of unpainted miniatures (mostly conversions) and virtually no time to paint them.

So instead of hoarding pics of my unfinished projects on my hard drive, I might aswell start sharing WIP pics (with no guarantee that these projects will be completed anytime soon).

Here is a little project I have started a while ago, but, like many others, is currently on hold. For some inexplicable reason, I felt the urge to make some harpies for my tiny dark elf collection, because it sounded like a cool challenge to try and top the "original" GW models.

So I got myself a little box of the newly released Daemonettes, since I thought the models are just PERFECT to represent harpies (with a little conversion of course).

Below you will find some WIP pics of my conversion attempts!

My special thanks go to Alan Preuss, for his generosity. He provided me with A LOT of plastic dryads, which partly found their place in my wood elf army and were partly used for this project.

I hope you enjoy these few modest pics ;)

My 6 plasitc harpies... in the making.

I wanted the bases to reflect the harpie's role in combat. The massive "stone" formations should suggest that Harpies are there to overcome difficult/impassable terrain.

I also imagine them as dwelling in caves, somewhere high up on mountains (who cares what the Dark Elf Codex says, the fluff in there is abysmally unimaginative and badly written anyways :).

The bases are pieces of bark I scratched off a tree. I made sure to take it from the very bottom of the tree and to only remove loose bark to avoid wounding the tree too much. No trees were harmed in the making of these bases! :)

The wings are a bit of a challenge. I don't know if this will work, but so far I am optimistic. I cut out rough wing shapes from cardboard and attached it with a pin/hole system to the torsos.

The bodies are Chaos Daemonettes. The hands are transplanted from Wood Elf Dryads. I added some thumbs where neede as dryads often only have 4 fingers. I think they make pretty cool talons (albeit a little disproportionate).

I intend to reinforce the wings by adding green stuff detail.

[EDIT]: Here's a little tutorial on how I made the Harpie's wings.