New year, new Nicodem

Back on the  Wyrd Forum I saw a very nice conversion for Nicodem, the undertaker. Originally Nico has a vulture resting on his right arm. AntiZombie took the bird off and gave him a lantern (see thread here). As much as I like the vulture I think the lantern suits the mini more,  so I stole the idea.

The original mini and AntiZombie's version:

First I cleaned and filed the mini, then drilled two holes in the body where the right arm should join. I needed two holes because I wanted to use two pieces of wire twisted around one another to give a better foundation for the putty. In the same time I didn't want to make it too fat nor too weak so I used a thin and a thicker piece.

I also wanted to save my self the pain of trying to sculpt the handle of the lantern out of putty so I bent the end part of the thinner wire for that purpose.

After this I tried to cut and shape the wires to the size and positure of the arm, checking them on the mini every now and then.

I saw that the lantern piece was left too long so I doubled it up. This also made it thicker so I wont waste putty on it and it gives a firm frame. When all was set and ready I glued the wire on to the body and started to build up the arm.

Unfortunately the camera didn't want to focus on the green so the sculpted parts are slightly blurry. I mainly followed the shape of the original metal piece. However that has a heavy leather hawking glove on (it wouldnt do much good to your favourite jacket to let vultures sit on them, would it?) that is obviously not needed for handling a lantern so I tried to keep the same style as on the left arm: jacket's cuff folded back with long shirt hanging out.

Now I need to wait for the putty to dry before I can carry on with it. Having a second look I noticed that the lantern is somewhat too small and the handle is a bit too low compared to the hand (or where the hand will be anyway) so I will have to do something with that. I might make the handle into an 8 shape so the upper circle will fit in the hand properly. So much about not sculpting the handle... ¬.¬